Is anyone thinking of participating in CSS Naked Day this year?
I think I may have participated many moons ago, but I haven’t since finding the small web/indie web. I see there was lots of activity in 2024.
The idea behind CSS Naked Day is to promote web standards. Plain and simple. This includes proper use of HTML, semantic markup, a good hierarchy structure, and of course, a good old play on words.
On April 9, simply remove all CSS from your website, stripping it entirely of its design.
I’ve recently rebuilt my website in a rather scorched earth attempt to address a PHP timezone issue that kept knocking all my sites offline ( I moved to an entirely different server too )
I was in the middle of making an all-singing-all-dancing macOS desktop inspired layout that I was excited about, but I was getting fatigued from working on it for so long. I’ve gone in completely the opposite direction now with an Amstrad-inspired interface that uses much simpler layouts and is predominantly text-based.
It seems like a good opportunity to check if I’ve done a good job with my semantic HTML and gives me something to work towards as I keep setting things up
Hey, me too! Though I started over because I really don’t like static site gens and also jumping providers…
Also, do you know if in-line css counts? I have a few pieces of that across my sites and it would be trickier to remove than just moving the shared css file
Yeah, I think the spirit is to disable all styles for the day.
However, like any challenge/initiative, imho what participation looks like is ultimately up to the individual. Only you can decide how much of the specifics of the call to action you want to adhere to:
You may choose to turn off some styles, all of them, and for the full 50 hour period or only for some of it. You might choose to write down your thoughts about the experience and its challenges too.
At the very least, I think the fact you’re even considering taking part means you’re already paying attention to something it would be all to easy to forget about, and that’s awesome.
The ultimate goal is to raise awareness of the importance of web semantics and encourage their use. If you make an improvement to your website that’s even 1% towards those aims, i’d call that a worthwhile contribution
I was already trying to make my current site as basic as possible (no position absolute, avoiding as much js as possible, not using ::before for anything but what its intended for) so its pretty easy to just rename the css and have a functional site
I take pride in the fact that my site is perfectly viewable via CLI browsers like w3m and lynx. While there are some inline styles here and there, I already try not to rely on external stylesheets and the chrome of the site uses <center> tags, so I’ll definitely be participating.
Love the idea of the CSS Naked Day - in fact last year I went so far as to both automate it every year and make it a theme option (← clicking that will select the “no CSS” theme via a cookie) to force myself to stick with a HTML structure when adding features & content which renders fine without any styling.
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