How much time do PHP/Python/Ruby *programmers* spend on CSS?

Not sure about you guys, but I detest working in CSS. Not that it is a bad language/markup, don't get me wrong. I just hate spending hours figuring out how to get 5 pixels to show on every browser, and getting fonts to look like a PSD counterp开发者_StackOverflow中文版art.

So a question (or two) for programmers out there. How much time (%) do you spend on web markup? Do you tend to do this type of tweaking, or do your designers?

This is very subjective, and I would close ... but i'd like to hear other answers.

When working on a web-app, without the luxury of a designer ... I probably spend about 10% of my time on the CSS, with a KISS attitude. If I wanted, I could spend hours getting the design perfect, but that should be done after the coding.

What I tend to do is ensure 100% separation of the design. Sometimes, using a JSON/XML based API to contain the entire business logic, and the 'usable site' just backs onto that internally with authorization. This way, the web app/site is just a client of a private API. Then, hours can be spent on design later providing the API remains consistent. It also helps with the asyc UI components to wrap everything in an API you can expose to the client.

I like doing design as much as the coding, I just find the return on time invested is smaller when fiddling with CSS, so put it off for that reason. I do however think that the UX and design is the most important part of a website or app.

In my workplace we've found that most developers' education and experience is on back-end code. While most can do basic HTML, few are skilled enough to solve/build complex layout problems. Solving cross-browser issues is usually out of their area of expertise.

We've moved our focus to one person in a team of 10 doing the HTML/CSS and handing that as a template for the developers. There are then often some tweaks as the project matures.

I'm a Java web programmer, and at our shop (with 5 programmers) we have a designer that does virtually all of our CSS.

I spend about 80% of my development time on frontend code. Out of that CSS and JS work is hard to separate but I'd approximate that CSS (or LESS) coding would be about a third.

Though I'm mostly a one-man show (apart from infrequent design work).

If you think of programming as an activity as opposed to a role, then no time should be spent doing CSS whilst programming.

Preferably, your CSS should be created up-front and a style-guide/reference manual/templates produced showing the HTML to generate to get each visual element (then you can go ahead and code).

It's the style-guide you need to go and test in all your supported browsers, not your application. Any errors ought to be replicated and fixed in your style-guide. And if your style-guide is a single-page local HTML document, it's very easy to test it in multiple browsers.

hmm...interesting question...

For me, I'm not a designer per se, but in the applications I've done, I have learned a lot of CSS, and not just because I want a better visual desing but because some things have to be placed correctly or function in some visual way that makes better usability.

I would love to NOT spend sometimes that much time in CSS and such...but unfortunately there are DAYS in which I spend a whole afternoon trying to solve a little visual problem ( this is because of IE /FF / Chrome/ opera/ safari ) differences, usually the one that gives more problems as we all know is IE...but sadly ...as we all know too, it's the one that's typically used by the normal user...so...I SPEND A LOT OF TIME, trying to get things to work the way I need in just one CSS sheet and without trying to make the exceptions for every browser...I know that's faster, but for quality purposes...as far as I know, there's usually a nice way to put everything in just 1 css sheet and work for at least IE6+ and FF3.6+ ..usually what works in FF follows for the others ....

So...how much time?....mmm...I don't have a specific percentage....but it is a loooot of time, you can't just escape working with visual objects just at one programming language level...at least for web apps, I find it has been a very good thing as a programmer to know my way around CSS ( +javascript +html +php) usually they all play in the same field, sooo, the better you understand each, the easier it is to solve the problems you find...or the more complex stuff you wanna create...but you have to sit and read and try and read and so and so....

But of course, there are a lot of programmers which do not touch a lot of css, mmmm...and there's people that isn't so interested in the design part, so you gotta care for it too, you gotta care for the visual parts..., it's very fun to learn the CSS, it's not that difficult really..but seen it is soo unperfect because of the browsers can be frustrating =S...

But again!..as programmers...in my case, we have people in the "design" department...but as far as I've known for a lot of designers...their career wasn't programming logic and such, so usually they don't get their hands so dirty in the programming area...even if it is just as simple as CSS...so that's why you as a programmer have to learn it too and spend some good time to get the results you need....