Comments on: The Cascadian Order of the Strict Conformance

The Cascadian Order of the Strict Conformance

brownpau — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 09:07:38 -0800

CSS Trappist Monastery. Like the Zen Garden, but without any images (other than the "chosen twelve").

By: lemonfridge

lemonfridge — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 09:13:26 -0800

The CSS Zen Garden...but less good?

By: slimepuppy

slimepuppy — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 09:19:01 -0800

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

By: Plutor

Plutor — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 09:19:41 -0800

Like the Zen Garden, but ~~without any images (other than the "chosen twelve")~~ eye-stabbingly hideous.

By: Meagan

Meagan — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 09:20:57 -0800

I'll stick with Zen Garden, thanks.

By: effwerd

effwerd — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 09:21:43 -0800

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.

By: Plutor

Plutor — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 09:24:24 -0800

Also, The Garden validates. The Monastery does not (because of a typo in the really weird double-deep div style).

By: delmoi

delmoi — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 09:31:42 -0800

I like the gif-style blending on this picture: which makes it look like crap on any non-white background.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 09:32:22 -0800

actualy this one is OK. The other two are pretty bad (especialy 'catacombs'. WTF?)

By: caution live frogs

caution live frogs — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 09:38:01 -0800

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?

By: caution live frogs

caution live frogs — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 09:40:52 -0800

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.

By: freebird

freebird — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 09:43:14 -0800

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!

By: darkstar

darkstar — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 11:00:07 -0800

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.

By: freebird

freebird — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 13:15:12 -0800

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.

By: nixerman

nixerman — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 13:22:37 -0800

I'm pretty sure the whole site is a joke. Likely an intentional one.

By: msjen

msjen — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 14:15:28 -0800

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...

By: msjen

msjen — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 14:16:29 -0800

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

By: Joeforking

Joeforking — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 14:19:14 -0800

CSS Monks are mammals....

By: brundlefly

brundlefly — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 14:37:37 -0800

I just submitted a design.

By: freebird

freebird — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 14:49:25 -0800

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*

By: funambulist

funambulist — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 14:52:40 -0800

don't listen to freebird, he's clearly involved in the prank. I especially like the text in the aposthasy version.

By: freebird

freebird — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 15:03:34 -0800

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.

By: palinode

palinode — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 16:23:46 -0800

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

By: brundlefly

brundlefly — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 18:07:31 -0800

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.

By: ikalliom

ikalliom — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 02:00:38 -0800

Ok that's cool and all. Where's the beer?

By: darkstar

darkstar — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 03:19:43 -0800

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...

By: freebird

freebird — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 09:22:38 -0800

I see two new ones up, both a bit more interesting in my untrained opinion. Is one of them yours brundlefly?

By: brundlefly

brundlefly — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 09:27:16 -0800

Yep. Mine is Godard.

By: brownpau

brownpau — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 10:47:46 -0800

And "Laudate" is mine.

By: freebird

freebird — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 11:54:44 -0800

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"!