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Carl Camera

CSS "Naked" Day

If you didn't visit on CSS Naked Day, I've saved a screenshot of what this site looked like without styling.

Today, several hundred sites are removing "styling" from their web sites as a way of promoting quality internet design and in support of web standards.

So we're taking our styles off -- going naked for a day, so to speak. Why would we do this? It's to demonstrate some principles of professional website design that most internet visitors never see or realize exist:

  1. Same as yesterday. Sites participating in this event have not changed at all. The content and underlying HTML is the same as it was yesterday. Only the styling has been removed — what we’re calling naked.

  2. Fully functioning and navigable. If you are able to read and navigate through these websites without styling today, then our point is made and our goal is accomplished. Websites should be readable and navigable without styling.

  3. Support for blind visitors. What you see today on the unstyled sites is similar to what a blind person on the internet would encounter through his or her browser — and the words read aloud in the order they appear.

  4. Accessible to all. By using web standards and proper HTML markup, participating sites are promoting accessibility to everyone, not just those who see the styled page, not just some people using certain browsers or a particular third-party application. We believe the internet is about inclusion not exclusion.

  5. Same as tomorrow. Return to participating sites again tomorrow. Note how much better they look with styling — but now with an appreciation that they look good naked as well, and continue to be accessible to a wide range of internet visitors.

For a list of other naked sites -- on display today only -- visit the Official CSS Naked Day site and, uhmm, please pass the sunscreen.

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