Using CSS in Website Development: Can It Be Overdone?

When it comes to web design and development, impressive tricks are often showcased for their CSS prowess. Over the last few years, there has been a movement towards showing off CSS projects that leave web designers speechless; the goal of these projects is to show that nothing is impossible with CSS, but not all developers feel this way.

A recent project posted on GitHub involved a box that was seemingly aware of its compass directions. The entire project was coded on CSS, and it elicited many positive reactions from designers who thought it was very cool to show the power of CSS. As impressive and smooth as this project was, some developers pointed out that the same project would have been far easier to code on JavaScript or even Java. Some commenters even went as far as to say that they would have to say that the project was impossible and a huge waste of time.

There are times when CSS can be overdone. Sure, you can do CSS tricks for things like parallax backgrounds, but the effect on your site is going to be fairly low-impact, and your site is likely going to be faster without it. At a time when most browsers are running on powerful devices, you don't have to stick to CSS exclusively.

Another major benefit of CSS in the context of the compass box is that because of the browser’s support for different CSS properties you can create an illusion of depth as well as move that box along the page. In the demo, the box is hidden until the user clicks on it and the box comes to life. It is animated out of the box. For now, let’s focus on the compass and keep the moving box out of the equation.

This is the kind of project that community college students would have to develop as part of their Java programming classes. If you think about it, there is quite a lot you can do with Java and JavaScript that can also be replicated with CSS on the browser, but it would be overkill to do so in some instances. For more information click here https://codepen.io/ainalem/pen/zYwLJzG.