7 Questions with Chris Coyier of CSS Tricks
Today we start on a tradition of industry interviews called “7 Questions”. In this ongoing series we will bring you short interviews with bloggers and industry leaders on what they see as trends worth following.
We start our series with Chris Coyier of CSS Tricks, who is someone we have grown to follow closely and respect for his tutorials and solid knowledge. Here now are 7 questions with Chris Coyier of CSS Tricks:
Q1: What got you blogging, and how do you see your blog as a: community service, hobby or a money making venture.
All of the above. I enjoy it, it helps the community, and it makes money. No reason it can’t be all of the above! Most of the success I’ve had in this field can be traced back to CSS-Tricks. I’m proud of that. I’d say indirectly the site led to my current job at Wufoo, which is fantastic. I haven’t talked a whole log about the “what it takes” to build a successful blog, but I’m trying to at this years SXSW.
Q2:Where do you see bloogging going in the future in general, and your blog in particular?
I think blogging is here to stay. Especially the idea of hosting your own website and having a blog be a part of it. Things like Twitter and Tumblr are super hot right now, but you need to realize that all that content you are creating is living on their servers, not yours. There are tools out there for exporting that data back to your own world, but if you are doing that why not just use your own world to begin with. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a Twitter-oholic, but it’s just for fun and I don’t let it “replace” blogging. Building out your own content on your own domain on your own server has way better long term equity for you.
Q3:What would you consider to be the best tools for blogging? any recent discoveries?
Well I wrote a book on WordPress so obviously I’m a bit partial to that. But the truth is my WordPress obsession is mostly based on that fact that I already know it the best, like it, and find very little limitation to it. It makes me instantly productive. Whereas if I decided to go Joomla I’d have a bit learning curve in front of me. But I don’t really care. People can build great sites on Joomla obviously and more power to them.
Q4:How was your transitions form tables to CSS and Divs?
I never really did the tables thing. I’m new enough to the web design world that CSS design was the in thing already. I can understand people’s plight though that suffered through that. In some ways I can see how table-based design is more logical. Of course if you are stilling doing that I think that’s a bit ridiculous. It’s hardly even a debate which is better.
Q5:Where do you think CSS is headed to, and how does HTML5 fit into this?
I think it’s interesting that there is really no alternative to CSS. There are languages which kind of abstract it a bit further but that’s about it. If you want to style a div, you gotta write CSS and that’s all there is to it. Both CSS and HTML have been pushing forward at full steam lately, browser vendors have been on board, and it’s a great time to be involved with it all.
Q6:When it comes to forms and CSS, what do you consider as tricks with high cool-factor?
There is tons of cool stuff you can do with forms lately. Most of it is actually related to HTML5 though. There are attributes like placeholder which allow you to put text into fields that instantly disappears when the field is clicked into, like little hints. This has always been possible with JavaScript but it’s now trivially easy with HTML5. Stay tuned to the blog over at Wufoo. We’ve been doing a lot of HTML5 forms research and will be releasing that soon.
Q7: Looking out into the future, do you think Web Designer is a dyeing art or would it survive WordPress and alike?
Somebody has to design the templates right? But really, think about the word “template.” It doesn’t mean “finished product,” it means a guide, a starting point to assist in making a final product. Even with templates a designer still needs to be involved to make a real website happen. Maybe there is a proliferation of template-based designs, but I’d say that any really great website design didn’t start with one. So there will always be a market for designers because there will always be a market for great designs.
2 Responsesto “7 Questions with Chris Coyier of CSS Tricks”
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Great interview. I’m glad someone has defined “template” properly. Sites are all starting to look the same again (we’re all at fault), and I blame this on templates. A template is not a finished product. Hire a designer and create something original.
Amazing post! I initially found your blog a sometimes a week ago, and I subscribed for a RSS feed the very same day. I have several cool ideas for a lot of upcoming posts you might write. I¡¯ll send you a message shortly. Keep up the great work.