User interface design needs to follow usability and efficiency guidelines

<Name of the student>

<Name of the subject>

25th August, 2013

User interface design needs to follow usability and efficiency guidelines which should target large user base. CSS contains rules which determine how controls and elements are being formatted on the web page. It is the most flexible language as it can be designed outside web page and then applied to it. Therefore a single HTML page can be directed to be presented in different ways, perhaps under different situations. For e.g., CSS can direct the webpage to format itself for a mobile screen or a large widescreen desktop. So instead of coding different HTML pages with its own unique designs and presentation formats, the CSS eliminates that need and instead contains all that information in a single or a few CSS files.

This saves a lot of time for the developers and also reduces the burden on the web server overall optimizing the website as the overall code is lighter which enables faster download times. Also there is a consistency in design, if the designer has to design each page individually for different situations, and then there might be some discrepancies. Such discrepancies are also eliminated as the designs are originating from a single source. Since these designs are centralized, it is also easier to maintain and update.

The book puts light on the fact that CSS can be executed across browsers i.e. both old and new. In addition to this, whenever a new version of CSS is introduced, it gives an easy-to-understand platform to developers. This is so because most of the components remain same and hence there is little learning curve. CSS is a set of rules. But this does not mean that they are difficult to construct or implement. CSS provides a simple rule construct which can be used even with little understanding of its components.

This let designers to focus on the desired presentation of content rather than on learning the tedious syntax and then implement it. CSS allows designers to define rules in any order i.e. it does not matter whether heading rule is defined after a paragraph rule. It is a huge benefit as designers need not to remember the order of tags used in the html. Web designers do not have put write rules in html file. They can very well define them in a separate file and then call the file in html. This feature of CSS adheres to separation of concern property of development world.