The Cascadian Order of the Strict Conformance
February 13, 2006 9:07 AM   Subscribe

CSS Trappist Monastery. Like the Zen Garden, but without any images (other than the "chosen twelve").
posted by brownpau (29 comments total)
 
The CSS Zen Garden...but less good?
posted by lemonfridge at 9:13 AM on February 13, 2006


Catacombs is amazing.

On firefox it's a resounding success of the infamous "guess where the links are!" CSS design.

Lemonfridge nailed it.
posted by slimepuppy at 9:19 AM on February 13, 2006


Like the Zen Garden, but without any images (other than the "chosen twelve") eye-stabbingly hideous.
posted by Plutor at 9:19 AM on February 13, 2006


I'll stick with Zen Garden, thanks.
posted by Meagan at 9:20 AM on February 13, 2006


Plutor nailed it.

On firefox it's a resounding success of the infamous "guess where the links are!" CSS design.

On Safari, too. But hey, at least we can see the chosen 12.
posted by effwerd at 9:21 AM on February 13, 2006


Also, The Garden validates. The Monastery does not (because of a typo in the really weird double-deep div style).
posted by Plutor at 9:24 AM on February 13, 2006


I like the gif-style blending on this picture:



which makes it look like crap on any non-white background.
posted by delmoi at 9:31 AM on February 13, 2006


actualy this one is OK. The other two are pretty bad (especialy 'catacombs'. WTF?)
posted by delmoi at 9:32 AM on February 13, 2006


I'm a little amazed that the best anyone can think to do with these images is use them as bullet points. No background tiling of a header or div, even. What makes this site worth visiting?
posted by caution live frogs at 9:38 AM on February 13, 2006


delmoi writes "actualy this one is OK."

Actually that one takes up less than half of my monitor and is painfully tiny for me to read. Far as I'm concerned, fixed width content in a "what css can do for me" = meh. You could at least throw a display: table on the wrapper and center it in the screen.
posted by caution live frogs at 9:40 AM on February 13, 2006


Most of the current designs aren't great, but I like the idea of a "pure" CSS version of the zen garden. The CSS Zen Garden re-awakened my interest in CSS and was one of the first places I realized how cool it was and that it was finally useful after years of crap workarounds. But the (very beautiful) work there tends to the graphics heavy, and I think a pure CSS version is a great idea for learning and the challenge.

If you can do better pure CSS, submit it! The poor guy probably has his hands full running the site - it *depends* on you doing better. It's discouraging all the comments so far are just whining about the initial few designs, rather than the idea. Well, complaining about the images is pretty valid - blech.

I'll be going back to it to see what people come up with - though I fully expect the best ones to not use any of the "12 Chosen Images". Show us what you got, MetaFilter!
posted by freebird at 9:43 AM on February 13, 2006


Actually, I thought the Catacombs design MEANT to be kind of a "search-in-the-dark". In that sense, it seemed like a very clever conceptual design...in the spirit of stumbling on things in the catacombs. Perhaps not very practical, but very creative.

But I realize now that I was probably projecting a bit more artistic creativity into the design than was actually there...

Still, some of those on Zen Garden are incredibly beautiful, but seem to rely (as has been said) heavily on extremely nice graphics.
posted by darkstar at 11:00 AM on February 13, 2006


I thought 'catacombs' was kind of a joke/pun too, darkstar. I also thought the one that dynamically rewrote the content into commie propaganda was funny too.
posted by freebird at 1:15 PM on February 13, 2006


I'm pretty sure the whole site is a joke. Likely an intentional one.
posted by nixerman at 1:22 PM on February 13, 2006


It made me laugh, good and hard. The site seems to be taking the piss out of folks who take CSS purity too seriously.

Hark! I may be uttering blasphemy... runs for safety...
posted by msjen at 2:15 PM on February 13, 2006


Further question... Is the CSS Monastery located in the Cascade Mountains?

;o)
posted by msjen at 2:16 PM on February 13, 2006


CSS Monks are mammals....
posted by Joeforking at 2:19 PM on February 13, 2006


I just submitted a design.
posted by brundlefly at 2:37 PM on February 13, 2006


Color me trolled, but I think the site is in earnest - with a sense of humor. Why is it so silly to see what can be done without using images? Half of what's so great about CSS IMHO is that you can do cool and beautiful things without using image hackery.

*anxiously refreshes to see when brundlefly's submission shows up*
posted by freebird at 2:49 PM on February 13, 2006


don't listen to freebird, he's clearly involved in the prank.

I especially like the text in the aposthasy version.
posted by funambulist at 2:52 PM on February 13, 2006


Yah funambulist, I liked the text and I didn't realize you could do so much content modification with CSS!

er, I mean, Prank? What prank? This site is The Most Important Website in the History of the World. It will fix the internet, usher in Web 2.5, and cause Macs running Firefox to be able to make a good cup of Strong Coffee.
posted by freebird at 3:03 PM on February 13, 2006


I scrolled past the post and I thought it said "CSI Trappist Monastery". Imagine my disappointment.
posted by palinode at 4:23 PM on February 13, 2006


freebird: Haven't heard anything from the guy yet. My stylesheet also looks pretty incoherent in IE... According to the site, that's not a deal-breaker, but... Yeah. It looks really bad in IE. Like just about everything does.
posted by brundlefly at 6:07 PM on February 13, 2006


Ok that's cool and all. Where's the beer?
posted by ikalliom at 2:00 AM on February 14, 2006


I scrolled past the post and I thought it said "CSI Trappist Monastery". Imagine my disappointment.

posted by palinode



Thank God I'm not the only one...
posted by darkstar at 3:19 AM on February 14, 2006


I see two new ones up, both a bit more interesting in my untrained opinion. Is one of them yours brundlefly?
posted by freebird at 9:22 AM on February 14, 2006


Yep. Mine is Godard.
posted by brundlefly at 9:27 AM on February 14, 2006


And "Laudate" is mine.
posted by brownpau at 10:47 AM on February 14, 2006


Cool! I totally want to try making one, but haven't had time. It's fun to think up names though. "Bogomil", perhaps? "Inquisition"? "Sadistic Catechistic"!
posted by freebird at 11:54 AM on February 14, 2006


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