HTML & CSS: The Good Parts

CSS Zen and the Stylist’s Experience

As terms go, “CSS Zen” is something of a misnomer. The practice of Buddhism (of which Zen is one subbranch) emphasizes the interdependence of all things, especially living things, among many points of faith.

As applied to web development, the term is derived from a common English nickname for the Japanese karesansui rock gardens, which serve a dedicated aesthetic purpose: demonstrating tangible harmony and precision in spite of evolving surroundings and Nature’s unpredictability. The value of karesansui to Buddhist meditation (in the course of reflection or upkeep) leads to the moniker “Zen garden,” which inspired the name of Dave Shea’s immensely popular site, http://www.csszengarden.com.

The “CSS Zen Garden” seeks to demonstrate one important idea:

A single, well-built markup template can support a practically infinite range of design requirements, to a high degree of precision. When done well, such templates create the capacity that enables design to be altered while leaving markup untouched in all cases except significant changes to the structure of information published in a document or on a site.

Like karesansui, sites that exemplify CSS Zen are molded to their circumstances, particularly project objectives. Moreover, such sites allow their underlying markup templates to remain functionally static, analogous to the rock-stable arrangement of karesansui in the midst of seeming chaos.

The Functional Principles of CSS Zen

The habits ...