CODEX

Why Presentational Classes for HTML/CSS Are Ignorant Garbage

The majority of people are “visually oriented”. They like to think about how things look before most other concerns. When it comes to web development this is a hard “habit” to break oneself of, but it’s an essential one given that HTML is for more than just perfectly sighted users. It’s why bass-ackward nonsense like artists under the DELUSION they’re “designers” pushing pixels around in Photoshop are able to sucker nubes and rubes alike, flipping the bird at UX and accessibility in their ignorance of anything other than art. This same “appearance first” rubbish trickles down all over the entire development process, and nowhere is this more destructive and harmful than in the HTML itself.

As I said in my previous article “Semantic Markup Probably Doesn’t Mean What You Think!” HTML is for saying what things are — semantically, grammatically, or structurally — and not what they look like. This is so that all users and all devices can have access to the content in as useful a manner as possible.

We got away from that during the late ‘90’s browser wars when Microshaft and Nyetscape went to war trying to outdo each-other with bling-bling, and as developers who gave a flying purple fish about accessibility clamored to make their websites as glitzy as possible. Hence why broken…