I’m Getting Naked

It’s already summertime and most people are stripping down to their trunks and bikinis to get wet with friends or their families on the beach or on a pool. Me? I’m here stuck inside my room stripping … and this is not an April Fool’s joke … stripping my website buck naked off of its stylesheets. *tee-hee* Well, anyway, I’ve done this before and I’m doing it again. Last year was good, and I hope this time is better. Dustin Diaz is finally proving the annual in Annual CSS Naked Day.[1]

To anyone who isn’t familiar, CSS Naked Day was made to promote standards. During the 1990s, HTML has grown to become a more presentational language than what it was really meant to be. With browser implementations varying from each other,[2] and the bulk of maintenance work that HTML has become to present aesthetics, proposals were made to have a presentational language that later became what is now CSS. CSS has already replaced every presentational bit of HTML 3.2 and has even added more, and with the advent of better support to the standard since late last year, it is really worth advocating for better and wider Web designer adoption.

The reason for stripping CSS off for a day has been acknowledged by the creator of CSS himself, Håkon Wium Liesaving HTML from becoming a presentational language. I’ve seen many sites that produce good aesthetics, but the perceived quality just stops there. As I turn off the styles on my browser,[3] the layout remains the same, but now with garbled images and incomprehensible text. And they say they’re standardistas.[4]

I hope everyone who have read this participates in the upcoming second year of the celebration of semantic markup. It’s very nice to see that two, Shari and Mr. J, out of currently four links from the official page that are talking about the event are of Filipino blogs. If you think your site doesn’t qualify to having semantic markup, you still have four days to this year’s deadline. Registration is now open [and automated] at the Official CSS Naked Day site.

Oh, and for those WordPress users that are too lazy to edit themes, I’ve made a plugin that strips every piece of stylesheet in your pages without a single tweak on your templates—configurable to follow the recommended 48-hour period or just your local 24-hour April 5.

Footnotes:

  1. ^ I really do not know why they call the first time, annual, already.
  2. ^ As a result of the first browser war.
  3. ^ The way everyone, humans and bots alike, are to understand the page.
  4. ^ I would have told them privately that all but one of the sites in their gallery wasn’t compliant, but it seems that their feedback link isn’t operational. So, just consider this as feedback. Oh, I do hope the site submissions be screened better as it would be a good starting point for showcasing great Pinoy designs.

Comments

15 responses to “I’m Getting Naked”

  1. i got naked kanina, and the other day. i wonder if my site would get naked as well?

    oy may textlinkads ka na pala! haha ๐Ÿ˜€ pera pera pera. yay!

  2. Go, get your site naked as well! o_O

    Yeah, unfortunately, no one dares to buy adspace here anymore. T_T

  3. My site, to say the least, is not up to “standards” yet. Maybe next year, or if I get my act together in 4 days (highly unlikely). D*mn, you’re like Shari, nakokonsensya akong gumawa ng decenteng site. ๐Ÿ™‚

  4. Sorry ’bout that, Ann. But, hey, if it wasn’t for Web standards and accessibility, I wouldn’t have known Shari in the first place. Hope to see your site naked soon! Well, next year if you really can’t get your act together in the remaining three days before this year’s event. ๐Ÿ˜‰

  5. hi. thanks for the feedback on CSSPinoy. Right now we’re still on beta phase so we’re still fixing the feedback form. Sorry about that. We’ll double check the submitted sites for compliance and yeah we’re in for CSS Naked Day.

  6. Well, that’s very good to know. ๐Ÿ™‚

  7. I wonder what my site would look like without CSS. o_O

    I visited CSSPinoy last 29th, I think, but I didn’t look at it much coz I was too busy. I just noticed that Avalonstar is there. :p

  8. Thanks for visiting my blog and leaving a comment! Cool blog you have here! I also like your blog layout/theme. Good job! ๐Ÿ˜€

  9. @Shari:

    It looks … well … white. I assume you’re using Firefox, so preview your naked <body> using View » Page Style » No Style on the menu bar.

    @Jaypee:

    Thank you, too!

  10. i’m getting naked as well..

  11. […] Watching: Fresh Price Of Bel Air*EDIT 4/2/07 @ 9:28pm* April 5th is CSS: Get Naked Day. Mark your calenders. I’m surely taking part. It’ll be fun. Click Here For More Info. […]

  12. Happy CSS Naked Day! Thanks for the plugin as well. I’m using it already.

  13. @Lindsey:

    Happy CSS Naked Day, too! [And to everyone as well]

    I hope you didn’t run into some trouble using my plugin. It still has some issues to date. Thank you for using it anyway!

  14. james kingsted Avatar
    james kingsted

    It’s wonderful that people like you really push the internet along. soon will have CSS 2.0 with people like you around. I lend my spiritual support! and I will just get naked!

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