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Anyone else just HATE styling?

fuzzybabybunny

fuzzybabybunny

Moderator<br>Digital & Video Cameras
Moderator
After spending hours writing functions, planning how my data's going to be generated, figuring out how to get the right data to which parts of the view, I just really, really can't be bothered to do *styling* and choose colors and make things look good. All the CRUD actions have been done and are finally working. Now I need to make all the steps look good?

Guhhhhh....

Do most people here do some kind of tandem arrangement? Front end person paired with a back end person?
 
Heh, yes, I hate it. Mostly because a) I am not good at it; and b) getting CSS to do what you want is a profession in itself, and it's not mine.
 
It at least gets better when you don't have to deal with IE8 and below.

If you don't want to do a whole lot of styling, and you don't care if the site is "great". Might I suggest Bootstrap? http://getbootstrap.com/ It looks decent (even if your site looks like a clone of 1000 sites out there) and it allows you to tweak colors.
 
Cogman said:
It at least gets better when you don't have to deal with IE8 and below.

If you don't want to do a whole lot of styling, and you don't care if the site is "great". Might I suggest Bootstrap? http://getbootstrap.com/ It looks decent (even if your site looks like a clone of 1000 sites out there) and it allows you to tweak colors.
Click to expand...
Bootstrap's got some bugs. Accordians don't work right for instance.

Right now I'm using SemanticUI but it's still a pain in the ass, just in general.

And sometimes the grid doesn't work like you think it does and, just, grrr....
 
if you think css is broke and hard, then you're doing it wrong. it just means your fundamental design is flawed. if you're doing it right, the cascading part of it is what makes it great. you can add stuff and it will "just look right" if all things are done properly.

also, if you are using !important, you are also doing it wrong.

and what the OP is talking about doesn't sound like styling. that sounds like design. styling would be going from a mocked out design to the working product, not actually coming up with that design. that is what we have UX people for though, to make the user interface pretty, then we implement it.

as for bootstrap, you can make bootstrap sites look MUCH different than the typical bootstrap site with very minimal changes to the underlying bootstrap files.

and accordions work fine.

http://getbootstrap.com/javascript/#collapse
 
purbeast0 said:
if you think css is broke and hard, then you're doing it wrong. it just means your fundamental design is flawed. if you're doing it right, the cascading part of it is what makes it great. you can add stuff and it will "just look right" if all things are done properly.

also, if you are using !important, you are also doing it wrong.

and what the OP is talking about doesn't sound like styling. that sounds like design. styling would be going from a mocked out design to the working product, not actually coming up with that design. that is what we have UX people for though, to make the user interface pretty, then we implement it.

as for bootstrap, you can make bootstrap sites look MUCH different than the typical bootstrap site with very minimal changes to the underlying bootstrap files.

and accordions work fine.

http://getbootstrap.com/javascript/#collapse
Click to expand...
Kinda broke:

http://stackoverflow.com/q/24466260/2760030
 
And what is the best practice to have a user explicitely select only one option out of a group of four, wordy options? Definitely not a drop down menu. I can't give a default value either. Doing so would mean users (who are dumb) just keep the default value selected, even when it is blatantly wrong.
 
purbeast0 said:
dunno, maybe it is a bug.

the problem with radio buttons is that you can't have the user unselect one.
Click to expand...
The user needs to select one and only one option. Hence why I used radio buttons. BUT I'm in no way going to provide a default selection. I just can't.

The user needs to explicitly select one and only one option or else the rest of the form won't allow them to proceed.

What is another, better way to go about this other than having a radio button group not be selected by default?
 
fuzzybabybunny said:
The user needs to select one and only one option. Hence why I used radio buttons. BUT I'm in no way going to provide a default selection. I just can't.

The user needs to explicitly select one and only one option or else the rest of the form won't allow them to proceed.

What is another, better way to go about this other than having a radio button group not be selected by default?
Click to expand...

ah if it's required, then yeah you are probably okay. i was just talking more in general. having an empty radio button group just looks off to me.

if you are using radio buttons with accordions, where they can't read the full text associated with the radio button until the accordion panel expands, then i'd say that is a bad design itself. it's kind of hard to know what you are trying to do without telling us heh.
 
purbeast0 said:
ah if it's required, then yeah you are probably okay. i was just talking more in general. having an empty radio button group just looks off to me.

if you are using radio buttons with accordions, where they can't read the full text associated with the radio button until the accordion panel expands, then i'd say that is a bad design itself. it's kind of hard to know what you are trying to do without telling us heh.
Click to expand...
Other companies force the user to enter in the zip code of the property in order to continue with the form, but that would mean I would have to scrape together probably a hundred or more zip codes and assign pricing to each of them. I don't even know where to get the zip codes.

My way, by just having them select the city names, was easier for me to implement and should be easier for the customer to select as well. But this means the radio button needs to be unchecked by default.

EDIT: (styling is all screwed up)

http://hpp.meteor.com/prices
 
I hate having to design front end stuff. The best part about working in enterprise is we just make the BAs design all the screens.
 
fuzzybabybunny said:
Other companies force the user to enter in the zip code of the property in order to continue with the form, but that would mean I would have to scrape together probably a hundred or more zip codes and assign pricing to each of them. I don't even know where to get the zip codes.

My way, by just having them select the city names, was easier for me to implement and should be easier for the customer to select as well. But this means the radio button needs to be unchecked by default.

EDIT: (styling is all screwed up)

http://hpp.meteor.com/prices
Click to expand...

why can't they just enter their city in manually, instead of having to pick a radio button that has their city in the list? and then based on the city they enter, you can select the same option under the hood that the radio button is picking?

personally i think that is a bad design. the user has to read through potentially like 50 or so cities before they find theirs and make a selection.

EDIT:

me personally, i'd go the zipcode route. it's just much cleaner and something many people are used to. sure it will take more leg work on your end, but the overall product would be better IMO.
 
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The zipcode route is likely the best thing. There has to be an API out there that can convert it to relative location you base your pricing on.

If it doesn't have to be city specific, you could easily do it based on the zoning of the codes via some simple code. Then, just multiply your base price by the rate for each zone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ZIP_Code_zones.svg is a map of which codes go with which states.
 
I say this is true for UI design in general.

And now you know why programmers love making command-line utilities. 😀
 
Forgot what tool I used but this one program I used to help with programming used to style and color everything for me and was never an issue but I hated it when it tabbed over so far it made reading the code kinda hard.

But for hard core programmers all the styling also takes up space and increases the size of the executable.

Thats why many use third party programs once they have cleaned up their code and streamlined it as much as possible by hand and have it running error free to condense it,compact it as it gets converted into a binary file.

I remember back in the 1990's there was this shareware program that did just that and it was super super cool!
You could even run it on commercial software and make those titles run faster as well.

People started using it like crazy and word got around back to the companies that people were using it to shrink these programs that were copyrighted and the companies got so angry and their lawyers got involved and sent a cease and desist letter.

I tried it as well. I shrank many windows programs as well as photoshop and other things and OMG windows was slick as lightning! I think this was when windows 98 was still king.
 
fuzzybabybunny said:
Other companies force the user to enter in the zip code of the property in order to continue with the form, but that would mean I would have to scrape together probably a hundred or more zip codes and assign pricing to each of them. I don't even know where to get the zip codes.

My way, by just having them select the city names, was easier for me to implement and should be easier for the customer to select as well. But this means the radio button needs to be unchecked by default.

EDIT: (styling is all screwed up)

http://hpp.meteor.com/prices
Click to expand...
I thought your page was simply broken. That took 8 seconds in Firefox, on an i5-3470, to render. That is insane. Were I potential customer, I'd have closed the tab and moved on, either calling or trying the next guys.

Re: zip: don't. Zip codes don't match well enough to location to work alone. There's a reason you're typically asked both city and zip, and that's because zip(5) is not sufficient by itself to necessary get your city, and your city may have many nearby zips. Addresses are like names: much harder than they seem like they should be. Making sure the zip matches the city is not a bad idea, though.
 
inachu said:
Forgot what tool I used but this one program I used to help with programming used to style and color everything for me and was never an issue but I hated it when it tabbed over so far it made reading the code kinda hard.

But for hard core programmers all the styling also takes up space and increases the size of the executable.

Thats why many use third party programs once they have cleaned up their code and streamlined it as much as possible by hand and have it running error free to condense it,compact it as it gets converted into a binary file.

I remember back in the 1990's there was this shareware program that did just that and it was super super cool!
You could even run it on commercial software and make those titles run faster as well.

People started using it like crazy and word got around back to the companies that people were using it to shrink these programs that were copyrighted and the companies got so angry and their lawyers got involved and sent a cease and desist letter.

I tried it as well. I shrank many windows programs as well as photoshop and other things and OMG windows was slick as lightning! I think this was when windows 98 was still king.
Click to expand...

😕
 
Cerb said:
I thought your page was simply broken. That took 8 seconds in Firefox, on an i5-3470, to render. That is insane. Were I potential customer, I'd have closed the tab and moved on, either calling or trying the next guys.

Re: zip: don't. Zip codes don't match well enough to location to work alone. There's a reason you're typically asked both city and zip, and that's because zip(5) is not sufficient by itself to necessary get your city, and your city may have many nearby zips. Addresses are like names: much harder than they seem like they should be. Making sure the zip matches the city is not a bad idea, though.
Click to expand...

Zips may be a bad idea, if this is all in a small location.

However, those radio buttons, with their Charles Dickens novels, look awful. Can you break that down into some sort of zones, and possibly have a small [?] or something that brings up a modal with a list of the cities included. It just really makes the page look bad.
 
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