Sunday, 20th April 2008
During the latest redesign of my site I tried to do it through only editing the CSS while barely touching my markup, thinking it couldn’t be that hard - but it wasn’t as easy as I first had thought.
The biggest problem with my mission, I guess you could call it - was that creating a new design often gives you ideas for new features of the site.
I went for a wider layout, but the content didn’t scale well to the width, but I really liked everything I had already done - what to do? Already my plan to redesign using only by editing my CSS had failed.
There’s been a lot of talk of this before, and I couldn’t agree more with Jeff Croft:
… the idea that a redesign of anything more than the most basic of sites will not require changes to (X)HTML markup is simply a myth.
Personally I was happy about almost everything in my previous design, which ranged from the text spacing and size, the look of the forms and much more. By saying that I’d at least try to redesign only through my CSS i got a lot of things for free, no need to redo all of the small tweaks that I had already done to make everything as good as it could be.
This can of course also be achieved just by copy and pasting the old parts that you were happy with, but this is the first time that i have actually reused previous elements.
A pure CSS redesign is only possible if you don’t have any plans at all to add anything new to your site, but you can’t always prepare yourself for that which is why most of the time it just doesn’t work out.
What do you think about pure CSS redesigns, is it possible?
Ned Batchelder
No. :)
Adam
I’d say have a look at CSS Zen Garden and you will have your answer: http://www.csszengarden.com/
domce
Depends on the case, and your flexibility towards abandoning some aspects of your new design. :)
bhrgunatha
@Adam - csszengarden shows that you can redesign a single page using css only.
In practise redesigning a whole site usually involves changing much more - layout, page structure, navigational model, new features, rethinking site structure etc etc.
css can addresses only some of that.
Ludwig Pettersson
CSSZengarden is great, it proves that it’s of course possible - but does anyone actually redesign only through CSS?
Devinant
I believe it can be done with static pages, in other words, pages that do not have any dynamic content. And as far as I know, most of CSSZengarden is pretty static. Of course, the selection list (or “menu”) is dynamic, but yet again, it’s just a list.
I think you can modify CSS to achieve what you want. But, in the long run, you’ll ultimately have to change the markup. It’s just the way it is.
devjargon
Theoretically it is possible, but in practice its not. When you do a re-design its not just the look of the site, it also has to do with the visitors experience.