Why I’m not entering #CSSoff
To cut right to the chase: the supplied designs are, in my opinion, awful.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This is a competition that has been generating buzz for many weeks now, not least because of the apparent value of the prizes. First place gets a brand new MacBook Air, for example, plus a year’s subscription to an online training course network. No small amount of cash in either instance.
Second and third place see a tiered selection of the numerous prizes bestowed upon the ultimate winner. So it’s apparent that there’s plenty of money sloshing around in this. And you think, “it’s got to be worth entering,” right?
So it was my assumption – rightly or wrongly – that entrants would be expected to demonstrate a high level of complex and varied skills, to be pushed to provide something at the limits of what contemporary CSS, markup and scripting technology would allow. Otherwise why all the tinsel?
This sounded like it should be my sort of gig. I’ve spent more than a decade learning my trade, expanding my knowledge of web technologies, and constantly pushing myself to produce ever-better work. I’ve also spent hundreds of hours sharing my knowledge with others, whilst similarly lapping up every bit of peer knowledge or handy tips I could.
Before that – like so many others in this industry – I put years of study into graphic design, print, animation, and product design. I also drilled myself in the principles of clean, reusable code and solid, accessible information design.
So weeks passed, and my anticipation for #CSSoff grew. Perhaps to my folly, I didn’t think to research the work of those involved in organising the competition, nor the expansive list of judges, nor those who would be supplying the design.
Instead, I focussed on the process itself—on identifying the skills I anticipated I would be expected to bring to bear, in order to impress the judges and prove I have what it takes. I convinced myself I stood a good chance of winning.
Then, late on Thursday this week, the email so many had been waiting for; the #CSSoff design we were expected to code was finally available and I could – at last! – get started.
And, oh, what a design…
My immediate reaction was one of disbelief: Is this really it? Is this what the web’s best interface developers are supposed to demonstrate their skills with?
A quick run through each “page” and it quickly becomes apparent just how little there is to any of it. The interface design is what I would describe as “extremely light,” with barely two dozen words of meaningful content coupled with (presumably) navigation devices that, on the second “page” at least, approach Mystery Meat levels of meaninglessness to the user.
It also contains, without exageration, the single worst form design I’ve been expected to mark up and style.
If I were handed this to do as part of my day job, I’d point blank refuse. I’d also rinse the person responsible for the design. There’s almost no user value in the layout, nor the interface elements within it. Worse, the colour scheme is outright offensive, and would appear to deliberately fly in the face of the accessibility and usability advice experts have been struggling to drill into us for years.
I still can’t get over the total dearth of meaningful content, though. To me, what we’ve basically got are four “slides” effectively; high-contrast, low-content, attention-demanding expanses of necessarily-filled space, with nothing much of interest beyond the superficial in any of them.
So, in effect, this isn’t even a web development challenge any more. It’s a PowerPoint one.
The most disheartening thing of all is that, because there’s just so little content to actually work with, I see it as near-impossible to differentiate yourself in any significant way from the competition. You’ve been given so little choice in how you might tackle each element, other than the most obvious, that it’s bound to result in dozens of near-identical markup-and-CSS submissions.
Which means that what this supposed demonstration of interface skill will likely boil down to is how many empty bells & whistles you, as the developer, put in the way of getting from one screen to the next. After a couple of hours of cutting out images and marking up what little text and interface there is, the only way you’ll differentiate yourself from the herd is exactly how many JavaScript transitions your user sees as she moves from one page/screen(/slide) to the next.
Is that really what web design and quality interface development is about nowadays? In an industry beset with mercurial standards, ever-changing technology, and the inevitable stakeholder who suddenly wants “an app like experience” to justify his new iPad, to me #CSSoff engenders some of the worst everyday web development problems, and wants to reward you significantly if you indulge them.
And that’s why I’m not wasting my time entering #CSSoff.
