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CSS Naked Day on April 9th, 2008

CSS Naked Day on April 9th, 2008

computer set up on desk; CSS naked day blog

Are you going naked this April 9th? Not you, but your blog, that is. I’m talking about Dustin Diaz’ CSS Naked Day, which started in April of 2006.

A couple of days ago, I had this very embarrassing experience. I was at a conference explaining to students the different aspects of pro blogging when I showed them my site. It was devoid of any styling. I realized later on that I had left my CSS Naked Day WordPress plugin running, and it was already April 5th.

However, this year, CSS Naked Day has been moved to April 9th, to ensure the best exposure. No pun intended.

What is behind CSS Naked Day?

A lot of you may be wondering–what’s the point behind Naked Day? Well, basically it’s a way of celebrating Web standards. Remember the good ol’ days when sites were formatted with tables and font tags? And remember those days when just a simple change of formatting would require you to hunt for dozens (or even hundreds) of tags on dozens of pages? And I won’t even mention the tacky styles that used to be popular, such as flashing text and marquees.

Aren’t you glad the Web looks better today? Or does it?

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>.

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Additionally, CSS Naked Day gives you a chance to highlight the accessibility of your blog. The best designs out there are those that appear sensible even to viewers using alternative devices that may not necessarily be able to read stylesheets. These may include older smartphones, PDAs, text-based browsers (like Lynx). And of course, text-to-speech readers that visually-impaired users benefit from well-structured sites.

Lastly

So before your stylesheet lays out your site, how does it look underneath? How does it look naked? Is it sexy? Is it bloated? Or is it in so much disarray that you’re embarrassed to show it to the world in the nude?

Again, CSS Naked Day is on April 9th this year. If you’re using WordPress, there are various plugins available such as this one by Aja Lapus. Plugins and scripts for other CMSes and platforms are also available.

View Comments (14)
  • Many do this, honoring web designers around the world. I’ve done it since it began and Angelo took the wind out of my sails as I was going to announce here tomorrow. :D

    It’s a favorite holiday of mine since it honors those who make our sites pretty and functional, and also recognizes the standards for web construction and accessibility, showing off how our sites work under the hood.

  • Sorry, Lorelle. I didn’t know you were posting about it this year. I believe you wrote about it last year here, and that’s where I got the inspiration to strip (my site) naked starting April of 2007.

  • @J. Angelo Racoma:

    I’m not into the competition, I’m just thrilled that you are helping to spread the word on this interesting and unusual method of promoting web design. Now I have to come up with something else for Blog Herald! :( Kidding.

    Last year, the Blog Herald didn’t go naked, even though it was discussed. Will it go naked this year?

  • It’s great to see the word being spread and wonderful that web standards is getting more and more exposure, if you will excuse the pun.

    I hope the Blog Herald does go naked! I really want to see its naked <body> ;)

  • I’m glad to see the return of CSS Naked Day. It didn’t look like Dustin had updated his site when April 5th was looming and I thought CSSND had gone the way of the dodo.

    My blog will definitely be going naked on Wednesday, and this will be my 3rd year participating. I think I pulled the CSS out of my Simple Machines Forum last year for CSSND. Not pretty.

  • Hey guys,
    Glad to see you’ve posted an entry on it! Your support is awesome :)

    Indeed I was a bit late on the announcement, but it’s still turning out great. I’m hoping we’ll get just as many as last year.

  • obviously someone that designs their site with a heavy weight towards CSS is going to have a moldy layout when they take away the CSS. CSS is a tool that has it’s current function, one which is dynamic in changing, but still just a tool. But there are other tools as well. I mean, we don’t have a “let’s stop talking in english day so everyone realizes how important english is over other languages”. There is more than one way to design something just as there is more than one language. But if you want to torture your users for a day, go for it.

  • @cyphunk:

    I see you are making the rounds. So again, I ask, what tools are there besides HTML-related architecture and CSS for web design? Javascript? AJAX? Flash? Flash is not web standard and AJAX is trying but still has some development to go. Javascript has always been problematic, but still, I’d love to know what the other choices are and why this bothers you so much to honor web designers – no matter what tools they use?

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