My Thoughts on CSS Naked Day

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I've received numerous questions about this over the past two days so I might as well address it. As you probably know, this Wednesday was CSS Naked Day. CSS Naked Day's "official" website says the following about why you should do this:

The idea behind this event is to promote Web Standards. Plain and simple. This includes proper use of (x)html, semantic markup, a good hierarchy structure, and of course, a good 'ol play on words. It's time to show off your <body>.

While the idea is creative, I wasn't compelled to "expose" my website's <body>. I think the best way to appreciate XHTML, semantic markup, and Web Standards is to just do it. Truth be told, none of my readers want to come to my website and see an unstyled XHTML document. I'm sure advertisers would be thrilled with it too.

It's a really cool idea but it just wasn't practical for my blog.

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Discussion

  1. I have to agree with you – all it serves to do is alienate and confuse anyone visting your site who is unaware of the idea (which would be roughly everyone).

  2. Every day is CSS Naked Day in a way. Anyone could just turn off styles with the Web Developer extension. Now to work on something similar for humans… ;)

  3. @Eric: Agreed and AGREED!

  4. dvdrtrgn

    Forget about the advertisers for one day. Give your readers more credit. @Phil may be confused by pure content but your average tech reader wouldn’t. @Eric is right we know how to turn off styles, but that just begs the question: Is your content be well formed enough to exist without css?

  5. We `Developers` know how to turn off css but the adverage user wouldn’t know how too/or want too. So I disagree that ‘Anyone’ could do this. ‘Anyone with the knowledge’ could.

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