Moan about stylesheets within Actinic

[Steve G Griggs]

100% in agreement Lee. But I feel it does need sorting out. Personally it's not a problem for me working with CSS, but I can quite understand the problems for those who don't have much knowledge of CSS.

[cbarling]

I don't think you will find anyone from Actinic who disagrees.

As has been hinted, it's simply a question of time and priorities.

With items like this, making a fundamental change and improvement can sometimes be fairly straightforward. The problem is upgrading everyone - there's often four times as much code needed to achieve that as to make the change in the first place.

Chris

[leehack]

The upgrade issues is a fair point and one most of us would not consider, i do think your woes in that area are exacerbated by the poor writing in the first place though. If this code is streamlined, it becomes easier to work with as there is much less of it for starters.

What i propose should not present as many issues as you may think though, after all a global.css for styles used across all themes is a must in whatever exercise you do. Couple that with a specific stylesheet per theme and people in essence will get what they always had, but now more specific, streamlined and much simpler to change after upgrade issues.

Your new checkout seems to have gone down very well by all accounts, the function of it is very good, the coding and the styling is plain shoddy in places though, breaking fundamental coding rules in a number of places, in other areas it's just not great, not streamlined or so much duplication.

Your applying of a background colour to checkout fields, colouring the main function buttons from the theme config and completely omitting the recently viewed css from upgraded sites, were just three of the problems with upgraded css in v10. So whatever time you are taking trying to solve upgrading issues, it's clearly failing on some very basic parts. (these were all brand new areas in v10)

I can accept some of the old historic css, i understand why, i cannot excuse the shoddy work on brand new areas though, that is unacceptable. Time vs reward is clearly key, spending too much time on this, when a lot of people will not even see or understand the change is not a good idea, but nor is having whoever writes this code, continuing to do so. It never has been good and if it carries on like it has, it never will be.

Can i as a customer expect you to have a CSS guru in your ranks, the answer is no in reality and this is clearly illustrated, it would be a wasted resource, you'd only get a guru by luck not by design. So what's the obvious answer? farm it out to someone who does know what they are doing, by involving the right person(s), you'll get much better code, sometimes you just have to accept that others can do things better than you, a jack of all trades is usually a master of none.

The perfect setup would be a good designer who has given up working for him(her)self and gone in-house with you guys, so tough to find if indeed ever possible though. Sadly, people are more likely to leave actinic and become designers, than the other way round, so just make the best of the situation and let others do it, just like you did with your new website.

You should have all of your html and css vetted by an external checker IMO (once it's been created), just because it seems to work ok with few problems on the surface, that does not mean you should just roll with it, you've clearly shown over past couple of years, how focused you are on quality, i think this area needs the same focus, it only needs fixing once, for the rest of the life of your software, that's a great return for in reality the time it would take to do.

[jont]

Your new checkout seems to have gone down very well by all accounts, the function of it is very good, the coding and the styling is plain shoddy in places though, breaking fundamental coding rules in a number of places, in other areas it's just not great, not streamlined or so much duplication.

Same goes with the v10 recent view set up. It is a great piece of code and very welcomes but the styling is appalling. The "x" to remove looks as if it has been created by Etch-A-Sketch.

On the great scheme of things it is probably not even on a list in a locked cabinet located in the basement but it is the face of Actinic and what users see on a day to day basis and 2 mins in PhotoShop would have paid dividends creating something which is much more beautiful.

In the land of "iApple" form over function rules the day for many unfortunately.

[leehack]

Yeah good point, many cases of lamb dressed as mutton, which is such a shame when 99% of the hard work has been done.

[jont]

Which is why I am happy to stay with Actinic as the final 1% can easily be achieved in a design package of choice.

[Steve G Griggs]

Isn't it the last little touches that make a great product into a professional looking one though?
I still think though that with Google placing more emphasis on page loading times this bloated CSS will become an issue for many Actinic site owners sooner rather than later.
I wouldn't put myself forward as a CSS "guru" or even expert, but I can see some big issues here that need to be sorted out.
I am more than happy to get down to work with the CSS, but how many on the forum have the knowledge to do so without assistance?