CSS Wisdom from Goofus and Gallant | CSS-Tricks

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.

Comments

Janet Atkinson

# November 9, 2015

Love it!

Rob

# November 9, 2015

These are awesome! Looks like the 2nd-to-last one needs a has/his switch, btw.

Dean Peterson

# November 9, 2015

The business love Goofus he’s a miracle worker. He get’s things done.

The business can’t understand why Gallant takes so much time to get simple things done.

Dean Peterson

Permalink to comment# November 9, 2015

To be read with mile sarcasm….
skube

Permalink to comment# November 9, 2015

This.
Nic Marson

Permalink to comment# November 11, 2015

Perfect response. Also, we need a set of images for JavaScript Wisdom next.
gary

Permalink to comment# November 12, 2015

Spot on!

Kyle Jenkins

# November 9, 2015

Forwarded to the whole dev team at Highlights… These are great!

Luis Betancourt

# November 9, 2015

hahah , that was funny.

gopalakrishnan

# November 9, 2015

Wow!!! A moral story for CSS syllabus. Cool

Damian Muszkiet

# November 11, 2015

Sweet ^.^

Robert Diaz

# November 11, 2015

This is the best!! Flexin’ the old css funny bone :)

Anselm Urban

# November 11, 2015

Haha :D love it!

Melissa

# November 11, 2015

This is amazing.

Aslam

# November 15, 2015

I have to change the way i code :)

Steve C.

# November 25, 2015

I attempt at all times to be Gallant… but when timeframes, budgets, and frustration over a site that has already been butchered by others plays into the picture…. well, sometimes I find myself becoming Goofus. Grit my teeth and say, “Ugh!!! Forget this… inline style and and an !important reference and I’m done!”

Usually, though, it’s only after the time, budget, demands, QA cow has already been let out of the barn.

Anyone else see this happen?

This comment thread is closed. If you have important information to share, please contact us.