

The Queen’s stylesheets - marcolz
http://spiffingcss.com/

======
dsrguru
While the linguist in me is appalled by the author's joking (hopefully!)
prescriptivist notion that British English is equivalent to such a thing as
"correct English" (the American in me is also perturbed by such a claim), I'd
like to point out that the home page's phrase "amount of features" is
considered by such prescriptivists to be incorrect English. :) They would
insist on "number of features" :P

~~~
keithpeter
A brief note to the Author of the Page in question

" _...one must check whether one has PHP 5.2 (or newer) installed upon their
Internet server..._ "

Should this not be 'one's Internet server'?

" _Something our primitive stateside friends can understand_ "

What is this 'stateside' you speak of, Sir? Our Colonial Cousins may also
resent the adjective that has been applied.

I personally rather regret the automatic recitation of Arne's ditty when
visiting the page.

~~~
mathieuh
Prescriptivists would say it should be "one [..] upon his", but the author may
wish to avoid using gender specific pronouns and is thus using the singular
"their" instead.

~~~
keithpeter
I accept both points. I was reflecting on usage I have seen in late
Victorian/Edwardian sources. That seemed to fit with the style of the text
(although not the visual presentation of the page).

PS: 'Spiffing' is later and the Jeeves references in the HTML markup point to
1920s. Biggles. Biplanes.

------
itafroma
Not very many substitutions performed[1]:

    
    
        'colour'       => 'color',
        'grey'         => 'gray',
        '!please'      => '!important',
        'transparency' => 'opacity',
        'centre'       => 'center',
        'plump'        => 'bold',
        'photograph'   => 'image',
        'capitalise'   => 'capitalize'
    

Would've thought there'd be a ton of opportunities to pedantically correct
CSS's choice of words. !please instead of !important made me laugh, though.

[1]: Taken from <https://github.com/idiot/Spiffing/blob/master/spiffing.php>
(aside, please don't use this project as a good example of PHP code style).

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Some are incorrect. Transparency and opacity are opposites.

~~~
chestnut-tree
They are in the sense that 100% transparency = 0% opacity. But in the end,
aren't they both giving the same effect in CSS?

In Illustrator, for example, the interface has an opacity setting but the help
file refers to it as setting the transparency since that is essentially what
you're doing when you lower the opacity. (Personally, I prefer the word
transparency, it just seems clearer to me.)

~~~
delinka
"I prefer the word transparency, it just seems..."

I cannot decide to up vote or down vote your comment based solely upon this
statement. Therefore, take my lack of voting as a positive affirmation that I
have no strong feelings one way or the other.

------
clayrichardson
The sound. Oh my goodness, the sound. Why is there not a button to stop it?

I was listening to some music in the background with multiple tabs open, and I
didn't expect a project link from HN to autoplay music. Confusion ensues.

~~~
valgaze
<iframe
src="[http://www.youtube.com/embed/yHNfvJc99YY?fs=1&autoplay=1...](http://www.youtube.com/embed/yHNfvJc99YY?fs=1&autoplay=1&loop=1)
style="width: 400px; height: 400px; position: absolute; left: -999em; top:
-999em; visibility: hidden; -webkit-user-select: none; -webkit-user-drag:
none;" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

------
michaelmartin
Love it, reminds me of "If PHP Were British" (
<http://www.addedbytes.com/blog/if-php-were-british/> )

Wouldn't mind a few more substitutions in the language, but it seems like most
of the work went into making a really nice landing page. Great job there!
(Autoplay music forgivable on a joke at least)

------
ezequiel-garzon
It's amusing, although I'm lost with their proposal of "transparency" over
"opacity", since they are opposites and, as far as I know, used on both sides
of the Atlantic. Also obtaining the transparency would require applying the
transformation x -> 1-x to the opacity.

I feel I'm missing something with this example.

~~~
MattBearman
As a Brit I concur with you good sir. We use both words (transparency and
opacity) this side of the Atlantic.

And as you say, "transparency: 0.2;" would equal "opacity: 0.8;"

------
zachrose
Ok, this is only tangentially related, but does anyone know why it's
"background-repeat: no-repeat" instead of "none"? Or why it's "text-wrap:
none" but "white-space: nowrap" or "white-space: pre-wrap"?

~~~
hhaidar
It's because you're able to define all the background styling in one line:

background: #000 url(pic.png) no-repeat;

So having background-repeat: none; would conflict with background/background-
image: none;

------
Myrmornis
People seem to be taking this a tad seriously. It's a joke, right? (S)he's not
actually expecting anyone to change all their css to use some random PHP
script just so they can have British spelling and backwards
transparency/opacity semantics.

~~~
waterlion
Of course it's a joke. As a joke it's about as funny as "all Americans are fat
and uneducated" (i.e. not funny if it's not directed at you and offensive if
it is).

------
robertskmiles
As an Englishman I must say that it really does bother me when people attempt
to write or talk in the manner they imagine an English gentleman might. It
always feels quite stilted, particularly in the not-quite-correct usage of
unnecessarily antiquated vocabulary.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Some English gentlemen speak with what is quite stilted and not-quite-correct
usage of unnecessarily antiquated vocabulary though ...

Oh well, toodle-pip.

------
ommunist
I am going to put this into our development workflow. It totally made my day.
Thank you so much! I admit that background music is highly relevant. However,
using 'photograph' => 'image', is not good. I suggest 'picture' => 'image',
since it covers both illustrations and photographs.

------
greggman
I guess we also need ones for other languages

    
    
        透明度: 0.5;
        色: 紫;
    

which does bring up the point, are we being at all culturally insensitive by
making nearly all web standards English?

Or how about UsingCamelCase? Give than some languages don't have the concept
of UPPER/lower case.

Does Go require you to use "er" for interfaces as in Writer, Reader,
Serializer? That seems even worse given that it not just roman letters only
it's English only. I don't know other languages but I suspect the suffix 'er'
has no meaning in Spanish, Italian, French, and that being forced to added it
to classes written using those languages would really suck.

    
    
        type Escribirer interface  // !?!?

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
The thing about English use is, well, at least it is consistent. Everything
uses American English, so if you need to learn to program, there is only one
language to learn. Allowing other languages wouldn't solve much since English
would still be present in all the API methods and so on, so I think
consistency is better.

~~~
chad_oliver
"Everything uses American English"? Yeah, no. There's plenty of technical
stuff on the web that uses British English.

~~~
josephg
There's very little code on the internet that uses British English. I'm
Australian, and even when I write software that will only be used by other
Australians, I still use American English so I don't have to think about it.

Spelling in documentation is much less important.

------
malomalo
Your example is incorrect

"transparency: 1" != "opacity: 1"

We use transparency in the US. Transparency is how much light passes through
an object and Opacity is how much it blocks.

so:

"transparency: 1" == "opacity: 0"

~~~
hhaidar
Funny enough, the example is ambiguous since:

"transparency: 0.5" == "opacity: 0.5"

~~~
ryalfalpha
Yeah, when I caught that, I thought that it might just be semantic trolling!
(a terrible variant)

------
wyclif
Also known as _international English._ This point can't be stressed enough.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
What about _US (International) English_? :P

------
anonymouz
Don't miss the comments in the HTML.

~~~
marcamillion
Hilarious indeed.

------
afandian
As a Briton I find these kinds of things as offensive as I suppose Americans
must find international stereotypes of their country, people and education.

------
johns
This isn't complete until the shorthand box notation is changed from top,
right, bottom, left to top, left, bottom, right.

~~~
yen223
I may be mistaken, but I don't think British clocks run backwards...

------
masterstatesman
Smashing! Next order of business: i18n whereby .com becomes .co.us and .co.uk
becomes .com?

~~~
ommunist
That would be not politically correct. Instead .com-s have to be redirected to
co.uk and co.us respective to their geography, and in 3 years course, .com TLD
has to be abandoned in favour of equality rights. Long live the Queen.

------
SagelyGuru
This is not something that ought to require substitution. It is not beyond the
realms of technical possibility to make the parsers accept both "color" and
"colour" as correct. Similarly for other common substitution pairs.

------
FuzzyDunlop
It should change all the vendor prefixes too:

    
    
       border-radius-for-all
       border-radius-for-Webkit
       border-radius-for-Opera
       border-radius-for-Firefox
    

And maybe @summons instead of @import.

------
hhaidar
This would be awesome if I could use LESS and not open myself to a possible
LFI.

------
muan
If any Rubists want to play with it, I wrote a gem for it:
<https://github.com/muan/spiffing> :)

------
Hytosys
Autoplay music had me cracking up. How can you people actually criticize it of
all things for what is so clearly a joke?

------
tariqr
I am quite sure I'm not the only one that read the text with a brit accent in
my mind.

~~~
garethadams
No, I think a lot of us Brits do that too

------
niix
Music starts playing automatically, quickly closed window.

------
logical42
auto playing music on the web is a bit 90s no?

~~~
tripzilch
Indeed, it puzzles me why people still enable it in their browsers.

~~~
demetrius
It’s implemented not using the old-fashioned tags, but by embedding an
invisible Youtube video.

------
cstigler
Ew autoplay music. What is this, Geocities?

------
colmvp
The bowler tilts upon rollover. Nice touch.

~~~
martinshen
it turns on and off the music too!

~~~
muan
It links to the same page, so the music stop and start again....

------
withoutthis
Does transparency: 0.1; -> opacity: 0.9;

Because it should.

------
withoutthis
Autoplay music? Are you kidding me?

~~~
gerjomarty
No, one is having a jape with you.

------
emddudley
TURN OFF THE MUSIC DAMNIT

