Tomorrow, April 9, is “CSS Naked Day,” or as I like to call it, “Back to The ’90s.” Today several hundred websites will comment-out their CSS files, and go without styles for the day. Why?
The idea behind this event is to promote Web Standards. Plain and simple. This includes proper use of (x)html, semantic markup, a good hierarchy structure, and of course, a good ‘ol play on words.
Lorelle’s definition:
This is the third year of the annual CSS Naked Day which honors web design and designers around the world who help make our websites and blogs look “pretty” to the eye while still being totally functional under the hood. Dustin Diaz wanted to give the web world an opportunity to remind everyone of the benefits of CSS web page design. By removing the stylesheet for the day, the world would see naked web pages, giving a little more appreciation for the skills of web page designers.
I like the idea. Not only does it promote well-crafted CSS, but it raises awareness of how important designers are. If enough sites did this, it may get people’s attention. Too many people think that bad design isn’t that big a deal.
I may like the idea, but I’m not about to kill my styles for a whole day. I did, however, use the Web Developer Toolbar to disable styles on my end, so I could test out a few of my designs without CSS. They look pretty good to me, even being style-less. Try it yourself if you have FireFox.
One of my biggest reasons for not joining in on this is my sponsors. People are paying me directly to have their ads in a given spot. If I were to remove my styles, the 125×125 ads would appear at the very bottom of the page, which is arguably where they should end-up according to Rules 235 and 247 of web usability and SEO. I’m not going to shaft them by removing my CSS file for a day. Sure, I could edit my template to move the ads up to a better spot, but wouldn’t be cheating? It kind of goes against the whole idea of the event to “fix” your template to look better sans CSS.
