Why is CSS frustrating?

First up, the difficulty of CSS reminds me of the difficulty of book design... When designing a book we have to treat the InDesign file as a sort of best guess, it’s not until we print the dang thing that we begin to see all the problems...

So the best thing to remember when designing a book is the same as when designing a website: the screen is a lie.

What we’re seeing on screen and what the final product will become are two very different things. We need to constantly remind ourselves that there are invisible edge cases, problems that in this context, on this screen, are made utterly invisible to us.

“the screen is a lie”—I loved this phrase when I read it. Perhaps everything in this article will be apparent to anyone who’s been working on the web for years, but it’s definitely not apparent for people who haven’t (i.e. “stakeholders”). I’ve already found myself trying to distill the essence of this article into my introductory statements to stakeholders before presenting design mocks, like “ok, remember everyone, that what you’re going to see is actually a lie. It does not represent the final product, nor does it represent the finality of the product. There are problems and edge cases that are entirely invisible to us in these mocks. This is just a glimpse of a very particular, targeted solution.”

Oh, and I liked this snippet about the web being messy. Once you embrace the messiness, it’s no longer a pain point. In fact, it’s actually a strength you enjoy capitalizing on.

I think everyone hates CSS for forcing them to be empathetic but also because the web is so messy—despite that being the single best thing about it.