[Sigia-l] web site design vs RSS

[Ziya Oz]

Eric Scheid:

> Now, imagine they choose to see the CSS for each entry per the source CSS.
> Simple binary choice to turn on/off the CSS for each source, but seriously
> more difficult to implement: CSS for source #1 has "p {font-family:
> tahoma;}", CSS for source #2 has "p {font-family: courier;}", the page
> contains <p/> elements from both sources ... now the dev has to parse (and
> second guess broken syntax) and munge the CSS and the html such that the
> appropriate rules apply only to the appropriate entries.

It's too late for me to indulge in UI Dev 101, but...

If a portion of a web page or reader application has to render html in a
stylized way, styling instructions has to come from somewhere: a server or
in-line or the default from browser's or app's local cache. Just because
some CSS is not coming (separately) with the feed does NOT mean the feed is
not being presented via some sort of local style sheet.

I like my RSS pictures to not wrap with text on either side. Most reader app
default styles won't do that. So I add (into every <img> tag!) an ugly
[style="clear:both; float:center; display:block"] to amuse myself. Now I
just told most readers' rendering engines to overwrite their default style
to honor my request. There may be other such styling preferences I'd like to
integrate. Do I add them to the actual html of the feed AS I MUST NOW DO? Or
do I separate out such style instructions in a CSS file that can be
requested by the user so that if they want to see my material as I intended
it, it works and if they want to spite me, it still works, with their
default CSS.

That's just the way it is.

Now, your preposterous example above is predicated upon a feed being
malformed. If it's malformed, it's malformed regardless of whether it uses
the default CSS or not. It's a red herring and has nothing to do with
whether OPTIONAL style instructions can be attached to feeds. What can fail
with an external CSS can also fail with local CSS, which you don't seem to
grasp.


-- 
Ziya

It depends.
If it didn't, you'd be out of a job.