CSS Wisdom from Goofus and Gallant

By Chris Coyier On

I found some old Highlights magazines and these Goofus and Gallant characters sure had some prescient wisdom to share.

Goofus sneezes his overly specific selectors and !important rules all over the codebase. Gallant carefully follows the low specificity naming conventions of the project and cleans up after his messes.

Goofus blasts his opinions around like fact and makes open conversation difficult. Gallant helps lead discussions with his peers about the possibilities, advantages, and disadvantages of different choices.
Goofus needs a higher z-index value for his widget so he selfishly makes it 9999999999. Gallant makes a reduced test case of has problem and shows his co-workers.
Goofus “fixes” the design bug by adding an inline style. Gallant figures out where the design pattern went wrong so he can address the root cause.