What do we do with HTML/CSS questions that are code-based but simple and focussed on layout or implementing a design?

Question

Here's a HTML/CSS question. It looks like exactly the sort of thing we traditionally shunt over to stackoverflow.com, and I voted to close for that reason. But I'm having second thoughts.

1. It seems more basic than most stackoverflow questions. Does stackoverflow still accept questions like this?
2. I know lots of designers who'd find it interesting, and it's got a pile of answers
3. It seems like a classic example of the kind of thing where a developer would groan that it's basic-level stuff, and a designer would struggle to figure it out (been there myself) because things like CSS positioning tend not be explained clearly.

Maybe this is the best place for questions that are essentially "I want to make X design but I can't figure out how to do Y in HTML/CSS"?

Then again, we don't want there to be multiple competing sites on the same network doing overlapping types of questions. And maybe it'd look off-puttingly out of place to most designers (the majority don't code).

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If we don't want questions like this, where should they go? Someone mentioned stackoverflow.com and someone else mentioned webmasters.SE.

I don't know which (if either) is most suitable. If we're going to forward questions like this on, we should know and be consistent about where we're sending them.

Answer 1

Since it's difficult (or at least inadequate) to discuss web layout and design without touching CSS, I can't say a CSS or HTML question would be wrong on gd.se so long as it related to design. That's the case with your example question, which I upvoted rather than closing.

Artificial topic demarcations are a bit of a pain point for me on SE in general, but GD, which encompasses so many disciplines, seems particularly prone to it. The recent typography.se proposal was an example, and this question exemplifies the unreal attitude that SE topics must always be utterly distinct and separate. The real world has never worked that way, and subjects grounded in the real world will never fit neatly into predefined boxes.

Thirty years ago, typesetting/typography was a separate discipline from design, just as color management (color separations, etc.) was. Both were done by other people than the designer -- people who usually worked for different and highly specialized companies. The web, when it came along, was utterly foreign to designers (and it showed...), and for a decade or so wasn't much on designers' radars.

Both of these conditions have changed. What used to be distinct disciplines are now required skills for a professional graphic designer. Not only that, but distinctions among the disciplines themselves are blurring: e.g., ePub, which is html/css and xml under the hood. Would Scitex codes or LaTeX markup be considered separate from design, when they both are design, inasmuch as you can't design using either without knowing the code?

Questions that pertain only to web coding (the Meyer reset, W3C standards compliance, etc.) and that don't involve specific design issues would not be on-topic here. That's about as far as I would commit.

Answer 2

I agree with Alan entirely. If the question is "Help me achieve X result with Y tool," we allow questions where "Y tool" is Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Fireworks, Quark, Inkscape, GIMP, and Publisher, and (while my skin crawls at the thought) we might even accept Word. So why not HTML/CSS? If it's not a code-specific question, I think we should allow it.