Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide

Chapter 2. Selectors and Structure

The life of a web designer can be pretty rough at times. How many times have you slaved over a new design, guided it through 17 committees and 4 major revisions, and finally come up with something that everyone seems to like, when a vice-presidential voice suddenly says, “I’m concerned about the shade of green we’re using for our headings. Could we see some versions of the site using a few lighter shades, and maybe a couple of darker shades as well?”

Well, now you’re faced with the necessity of scheduling another meeting so you can go back to your computer and produce new versions of the design, replacing all of your <FONT COLOR="green"> tags with new ones that have different shades of green. Meanwhile, all the other administrators have started to think of their own ways to nitpick the design to death. Maybe the headings should be dark blue instead of green, or perhaps the sidebar’s background is the wrong color, or maybe the company logo ought to be used for list-item bullets instead of those little black dots that everyone else uses.

So, at the next design meeting, after everyone’s agreed that such-and-so shade of green is a good one, all these new revision ideas start popping up, and all the administrators are nodding gravely and saying, why yes, maybe we should see a design which uses shades of red, not green. The downward spiral has begun.

Even if you’re lucky enough to work in a place where you don’t have to tolerate such nonsense, you probably ...