css Zen Garden

The Beauty of CSS Design

A CZG Domain Landing.

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somebody @ 3.22.181.81
(2024-04-20 05:41:04)

The Road to Enlightenment

The CSS Zen Garden (CZG).

Circa 2003, CSS adoption with seriousness was still sparse. Web development enlightenment has been achieved thanks to the tireless efforts of many such as the W3C, WaSP and the major browser creators.

The CSS Zen Garden (CZG) has played an important role in this development. Begin to see with clarity. Learn to use the (now in fact) time-honored techniques in new and invigorating fashion. Use "CZG Designs" or reload as the references to selecting from designs were hardcoded in images in some designs.

So What is This About?

This is the HTML portion of the CSS Zen Garden page adapted for display in a <<random style>> from the garden as the root page of one of my web domains. Copy remains same, only the .css file changes. Reload this page to confirm noting that infrequently complete rendering failures do occur.

CSS allows complete and total control over the style of a hypertext document. I have adapted this a number of times to my purposes and in this case am repurposing the navigation elements and generally moving to adapt the designs for active content as Ekendra Dass did for drupal with Skyroots (CZG 123). The next div explains navigation changes for the Domain Landings use.

Project: Domain Landings

"First Encounter/Select A Design" (lselect div) has various links to orient a new user, in my CZG adaptation the designs are randomly presented.

"Resources" (lresources div) CZG stuff plus current Public Market effort.

"Asides/Archives" (larchives div) carries a link to the DCP/MCP which is SAR (Single Authentication Realm) sensitve, the Web KEE for the wild and the MCP launch article for authenticated, links to the ACM, CZG book and the WP app support multisite.

Benefits

Original CZG text here particularly outdated from the current mature (2020) UI dominance of js and CSS. It encouraged participation in the CZG but Dave Shea long ago stopped accepting new submissions. I was a contract programmer in an HCI dept at IBM Research that had a compreshensive app lang based on style in the late 90s. Such a notion of style automation remains an active interest for me and anything I would do in this connection would probably end up in ability to style active content such as theming in C-六, redvant where CSS processors, such as SASS and LESS new since the CZG, may be used and in Smalltalk which is a moeity for GUI and cherished since my first use of it in '85.

Requirements

The CZG would like to see as much CSS1 as possible. CSS2 should be limited to widely-supported elements only. The css Zen Garden is about functional, practical CSS and not the latest bleeding-edge tricks viewable by 2% of the browsing public. The only real requirement we have is that your CSS validates.

I've retained the other ¶s in this div but replacing this one as it's especailly out of sync with the current period when the major browsers mostly work alike and there is substantial conformity and articulation of CSS functionality. The actual CZG is also last I checked not accepting new designs, and may be at some point archived so that the link in the next sentence, preserved from the original ¶ will break. View the Resources page for information on some of the fixes available. The final sentences here were mooted by various factors, explained above or from well known developments since '03.

The CZG asks that you submit original artwork. Please respect copyright laws. Please keep objectionable material to a minimum; tasteful nudity is acceptable, outright pornography will be rejected.

This is a learning exercise as well as a demonstration. You retain full copyright on your graphics (with limited exceptions, see submission guidelines), but Dave asks you release your CSS under a Creative Commons license identical to the one on this site so that others may learn from your work.

Finally, some authors have updated their designs since 2013, and I've tweaked a few but won't be otherwise changing the current collection.