A couple of definitions, if you are unclear:
1:
Positiveness in assertion of opinion especially when unwarranted or arrogant.
2:
The tendency to lay down principles as undeniably true, without consideration of evidence or the opinions of others.
3:
… it is applied to some strong belief that the ones adhering to it are not willing to rationally discuss.
Hardly a day goes by I don’t see a dogmatic statement about the web. I was collecting them for a while, but I won’t share them as there is no sense in shaming anyone. I’m as guilty as anyone.
The dogmatic part comes from the way an opinion is phrased. I feel like people do it sometimes just for emphasis. To sound bold and proud, via brevity.
Never use more than 2 fonts on a page, they say.
Stop using jQuery, we’re scolded.
Never style with ID’s, I’ve extolled.
Web fonts aren’t worth it, the tweet reads.
Websites should never have more than one column at any width, it’s declared.
The cascade is evil, or so we’re told.
Those are softies, relatively speaking. The fun ones start with “Say it with me:” or have non-ironic 👏🏽 emojis 👏🏽 between 👏🏽 each 👏🏽 word.
Who cares? You might think. It’s just people spouting off opinions. Everybodys got ’em. That’s what the world is these days. In the end people sort things out for themselves.
I’m not so sure. I see ideas that start as dogmatic claims spread. I’ve heard people regurgitate a dogmatic statement years after I’ve felt like the industry had moved on. When you happen to agree with them, they feel good. They feel powerful. They feel like something you want to get behind and spread yourself. They don’t have that wishy-washy “it depends” feeling that doesn’t provide hard and fast answers.
After seeing a string of dogma the other day, I created these for some self-catharsis:
I’m sure I’ll never do anything with them for real. But now I can imagine myself peeling off one of them and sticking it on my screen whenever needed. It beats starting a Twitter argument, that’s for sure.
What is to be done? Two steps.
First, make peace with the fact that the world (and the web) is a huge place with incredible diversity, in every sense of that word. Everyone’s situation is different than yours. You can’t know everything. There is endless gray area.
Second, it’s possible to re-work a dogmatic statement into something more productive. For example:
ID’s come with an extremely high specificity value and, in my experience, limit opportunities to override styling and lead to awkward specificity and selector battles. Here’s an example I came across recently…
We’ve spent more hours chasing CSS bugs this year than we’re comfortable with. After tracking them down, they are often rooted in styles bleeding into areas they person who wrote them never meant them to. In this light, we’re experimenting with encapsulating our styles with…
The web at large is suffering from poor performance. Web sites are getting heavier and slower faster than networks can speed up to handle it. Our own site follows the trend. In an effort to tighten our belt and reverse that trend, we’re adhering to a new performance budget. We determined that web fonts weren’t nearly as crucial to the site as other things, so we’re…
It’s certainly wordier to avoid dogma when you’re trying to make a point. But it’s more honest. It’s more clear. It’s showing empathy for people out there doing things different. It makes it easier for others to empathize with you.
I tend to ignore comments from people think they know better and slate you for asking a question. I will however, sometimes, let someone know there is no such thing as a stupid question, just stupid answers. I completly agree with your bagdes you made.. and I say it all the time.. ‘you may never know unless you ask’. Some of these wannabe gurus often forget they were once asking the exact same questions, and I bet they got some of the same ‘dogmastic’ answers too, and probably didnt like it. My prognosis, some people are plain and simple a**-h*les who don’t think they need to explain the answer with any more than something like ‘don’t do that, its not right!’… would be nice if they took the time to tell what is not right about it.
I know that you could do with those badges, and it probably wont take long at all to set up.. stick a custom checkbox field in the comments in the back-end, add a little code in the comments page for the front end, so when you tick the box on a comment on the back end, the image shows on the front end…. Feck it, I might do something similar myself on next theme I put together lol.
I do a lot of scripting on sites with multiple plugins. They ought to be cool and use classes nicely so they don’t clash but honestly they mostly don’t. Sticking an id into the one the client wants changing and targeting exactly the one you (or they rather) want and styling it might be considered bad form but when they’re paying by the hour you can bet your bottom dollar it’s what the client wants you to do.
Yes, if I was designing a site from scratch with full control, I probably wouldn’t. In practise I often get a request “can you make this bit different after I’ve installed this and broken that” rather than the luxury of a complete site design.
This is good advice in general, applicable to all aspects of one’s life.
Yeah but you see, your productive examples don’t fit in a single tweet, so they are at a competitive disadvantage. Also the human brain prefers simplicity over complexity/nuance, which certainly isn’t helping.
Chris, yours is really a good point. Incidentally it’s dogmatic itself :-)
(In rethorical terms, of course!)
Web developers are literally the most sensitive, defensive group of developers I’ve ever been a part of. /dogmatic-statement
Consider it a blessing you know the difference, there are others not so fortunate.
You’ve hit the nail in the head. That has and still is one of the reasons that prevents me from being more active in the web community and getting more involved in some open source projects.
No one wants to be chastised for styling an ID when it was the best solution for the client and the budget you were working with at the moment.
I tend to stay away from anyone practising dogmatism, and sadly, everytime I’ve felt inclined to engaged, some totalitarian or arrogant comment put me off.
I think we are ultimately hurting the community and preventing progress if we let people set hard laws instead of just promoting “good practices” in this industry where innovation has come from subverting the rules.
And I strongly agree with Jason, it applies to all aspects of life.
Thank you for the badges!
Chris… dogma usually fits in 144 characters – political correctness
neverrarely does.Thank you for sharing useful information.
“You can’t learn anything if you never question anything.”
I love this! But conversely I might also add: you can’t get anything done if you always question everything.
Sometimes you have to move forward with guesses and assumptions with the knowledge that you might be wrong but you can go back and change things later.
Well said, Chris.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned after 20 years of working in web technology, it’s that the only constant is change.
Developers want desperately to have some sort of structure and order. Yet, what drives our industry is change. That kind of flies in the face of what has made the web unique… it’s always been somewhat of the Wild West, never being fully reigned in.
One developer’s “best practice” working on a huge projects may not necessarily translate into your smaller ones, where scale and the cascade, for example, won’t make as much difference. And one person’s CMS or programming language is another developer’s hell.
The only thing that matters is if it’s working for you, and more importantly, the users on the website, don’t throw it out for something else.
Don’t be afraid to improve and change, but do it for the right reasons, not because you “have” to.
The only dogmatic statement I have is test your website, early and often, with actual users. Steve Krug, who wrote a couple books on usability, is fond of saying, “does this [whatever] work in this instance?” It’s easy to point the finger at hamburger menus or web fonts, but the only way to know for sure is to test that particular page and make up your own conclusions.
The problem is also that the community is not short of sycophants who are always ready to fuel people’s ego.
Like you, I’ve saved a list of tweets that demonstrates this tendency—here is an example among many.
Just wanted to say that I’ve loved your role as a voice of reason in a field that has become increasingly louder, smugger, and more self-congratulatory over the past few years. Prominent front-end devs seem to have taken the outraged tone from political conversations (where outrage is necessary and worthwhile) and applied it to their pet opinions and blanket statements about the “right” way to do things, and it’s exhausting and unproductive. Thanks for continuing to follow a middle path here on CSS Tricks!
Nice. An excellent viewpoint and your post embodies the spirit of what you’re saying. Taking part in discussions these days feels increasingly pointless as people are swayed by dogmatic statements possibly because they appear backed by spades of confidence. There seems to be a lack of telerance for really considering both sides of any given argument as that appears less committed perhaps and certainly don’t admit to any personal flaws as any argument can be dismissed based on your baldness or preference for sci-fi. Perhaps I’m at fault for caring about what others think? Wait, forget I said that!
For my part I think dogmatism isn’t the result of wanting or needing to be brief but rather brevity is the result of dogmatism – after all I need only to tell you this fact, that it’s right and that only fools disagree. But your idea about it being due to the need for brevity exemplifies tolerance in itself and generous amounts of restraint. I refer back to your post and am reminded – the truth is probably somewhere between these two viewpoints and a little off to the side.
Solid and timely post, and in a way we’re indeed all guilty. I think there’s a desire for simple answers in an area that doesn’t offer any. Complexity, it depends, and I’m not sure are not comfortable truths, yet they often are the truth.
I don’t totally agree. I think as long as you remain aware that every absolutist statement has exceptions, there’s nothing wrong with making them or listening to them. Sometimes there’s inherent power in the simplicity of such limitations, and while an individual’s special case may warrant treading outside of them, it can often be useful to start off treating them as absolute rules, until (unless) you hit a wall that forces you to do otherwise.
Lovely bit of old-fashioned comment piece. Enjoyed this, love the badges.