CSSquirrel A look at web development and web design by Kyle Weems

Although it does not start for several more days, the madhouse that is SXSW has already begun to dominate my Twitter feed. Allegedly five days of compelling presentations about the industry, it often seems more like the event is something like a fraternity kegger with some talks about HTML5 thrown into the mix.

Regardless of the truth of the matter, I won’t be attending. Well, in the flesh. But considering there will be so many iPhones clustered in Austin that some form of AT&T implosion will occur, I’m expecting Twitter, Flickr and the blogosphere to be bursting with updates about the event. So much so that I could likely masquerade as an attendee with related tweets to the effect of “Jeffrey Zeldman is so dreamy in person!” and “Wow, Croft really rocked that song at Cog’aoke!”

However, the truth is, I’ll be likely trying to preserve my sanity and filter the madness out. Today’s comic is an exploration of an extreme strategy to do this, featuring Dave Shea as a fellow escapee. I can only wish I had such an awesome device, but instead I’ll have to consider methods like Dave’s suggestion of temporarily modifying my Twitter follow list.

If you are attending SXSW, then in the words of Abraham Lincoln: Party On, Dudes. But don’t mind me as I hide in a bunker until it’s safe to come out and head to An Event Apart: Seattle.

Today’s comic features a hat. It’s not your ordinary chapeau, but rather the sort of stately headpiece that could keep an entirely family warm at night or help you sneak into Soviet-era Russia. Even if I didn’t have a web design-related topic to discuss (and I assure you, I do), the gravity of this hat would be enough to ensure that your visit to my site today was not a waste.

Joining the hat in today’s strip is Dave Shea and Jeff Croft. These fine gentlemen appear with the squirrel to help present to you a visual gag that points to one simple, inescapable truth: CSS gradients will break your brain.

I’m trying to get up to speed on CSS3, a goal which falls in the same category of absurdity as tasting every variety of curry in India; there’s simply too many modules piling up in that spec. At this point I suspect that CSS3 will not reach a finished state prior to the web being replaced by the psionic slave networks that our future robot overlords will use to broadcast their diabolical commands to the human race.

Nonetheless, I am digging out the fruits of the cutting edge of our darling cascading style sheets, especially the previously Webkit-only features that have been newly adopted by the recently released Firefox 3.6. One area I focused on this past Thursday was CSS Gradients. After all, how hard an a gradient be?

How hard indeed.

I present Exhibit A: my tweet less than five minutes after opening Mozilla’s tutorial on the topic. It starts out easy enough, then they start talking about things like color-stops, linear vs. radial gradients, starting points and angles, etc. It gets worse when you learn that Webkit and Mozilla each approach gradients differently, continuing the spaghetti western tradition of dueling methodologies.

In short order, my tweet was answered by Dave, then Jeff, each adding to my diagnosis: CSS gradients are a pain.

I’m currently working on a tutorial on the topic, something that hopefully explains it in a more digestible format than what I’ve seen thus far. Until then, the only way I can provide you comfort is to inform you that the hat in today’s strip is based in reality. Here is a picture of Dave in the hat.

If you did not spit your tea/milk/soda/liquor/pepto onto your computer screen just now, you have no sense of humor. I almost died of laughter when I saw that picture. Its existence was like a special jewel reminding me that dreams come true.

For the sake of equal treatment, I’ll share with you what I found a few minutes later while getting a reference picture of Jeff to touch up his character’s appearance. I stumbled upon this. Yeah… it speaks for itself. I’m not sure when I can fit that into a comic, but I’m certainly going to try.

If neither photo cracked your head, than I recommend checking out CSS gradients. If you’re feeling woozy, no worries. I’ll get back to you in a few days with some digestible tidbits on how to tackle them.

Edit (12/05/2009): I’ve created a vector version of this comic. If you’d like to see the old, hand-drawn version, it can be seen here.

Today’s comic is hand-drawn, and hastily at that, so please forgive the roughness. I’m breaking in a new Windows 7 machine at work, and have had zero free time at home thus far this week. However, I had to provide a comedic take on designers, ampersands, and their unending lust for one another.

If time permits, this will be re-cast in the forge of vector.

I took my inspiration for today’s frivolty from Dave Shea’s recent tweet on the topic, hence his presence in the comic. Dan Cederholm fits well as what we’ll call Exhibit A. His site’s very banner features an elaborate, carefully cared-for member of this strange, storied symbol. His actions in the comic tend towards the vulgar, but I’m pretty sure that if ampersands walked about, at least one designer would try to jump them in this fashion.

As for me, I find our little “&” friend to be a fun part of our typographic heritage. But I know so little about typography that I haven’t been infected by this particular syndrome (ampersandphilia?). I try my best to fit in amongst those who crave it, like a teetotaler carrying a cup of ginger ale when socializing with drunks, but sooner or later someone’s going to notice that my heart’s just not in it, at which point I’ll need to flee like Frankenstein’s monster ahead of the pitchfork crowd.

Now, bacon on the other hand…

Dean “Good Luck Pronouncing It” Hachamovitch (who stars in the old, old CSSquirrel comic Passion of the Dean) made a post on the IEBlog today giving us an early look at IE9 and the improvements it’ll contain. These improvements contain (but are not limited to) improved CSS3 support, better-looking fonts, hardware acceleration, better standards support and faster performance. Woo!

But some, like Dave “Maximus” Shea, aren’t impressed, as he makes clear here.

I get it. We’ve been hit in the face by Internet Explorer so many times that it’s impossible to think well of it. But the increasing speed at which they’ve started to bring out new versions, and the clear improvements of 8 over 7, have me convinced that what they’re doing is a good thing. Yes, there’s no mention of canvas support. Yes, some of these features were supported years ago elsewhere. But they’re trying hard to improve, and more importantly, they are improving.

So, I for one am glad to see this announcement. It makes me happy. Also, I secretly hope that if the version numbers keep going up on IE, certain stodgy corps will be shamed into updating past IE6.

Hey, a guy can hope. Right?

Sometimes I find myself participating in a discussion or a debate that sounds like a theoretical exercise involving recreational intoxicants. The unfortunate part of such topics is that not only are the participants sober, they’re also well-informed.

As we’re about to learn, being wise and making wise choices do not always go hand in hand.

Today’s comic imagines Jakob Nielsen and Bruce Schneier intentionally exposing themselves to danger in a gladiatorial arena (overlooked by a Caesar-esque Dave Shea) with the predictable results. Sadly, this scenario reflects reality (with a little editorial excess) in a way that shocks me.

Let’s lay out the recent events.

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