I recently sat down with Chris Coyier from css-tricks.com for a hard hitting investigative in your face user interface interview, unfortunately I don’t know how to write (I just press a bunch of keys on the keyboard and hope for the best) much less write stuff like that so I just winged it. Unlike the interview with Lil’ Wayne a few weeks ago, the following was actually real. We’re about to get really real folks, brace yourself.

More about Chris…

Chris Coyier is a web designer from Madison, WI currently living in Chicago, IL and working for Chatman Design. He also happens to run a web design community (css-tricks.com) that has an extensive collection of really awesome articles, forums, videos, downloads and snippets.

Jeff: Obviously uitrends.com covers a wide range of user interface trends (so I’m told), and a lot of the information presented on your website covers how to implement some of these trends. What are some of the key trends you have covered on your own website?

Chris: Using custom fonts is becoming a big thing recently. Fonts have always been a hot topic, since the core web fonts available for use are so limiting it really itches designers the wrong way. So there have always been image replacement techniques and fancier stuff like sIFR. But just recently we’ve seen popular browsers implementing CSS support for the @font-face rule, something that IE has supported for a long time. This allows for font files to be directly linked to in CSS and used in the browser, even if the user doesn’t have that font on their system. One problem with this is that any fonts you can do this with legally kinda suck. But now we have technologies like TypeKit coming around, which I covered briefly, which are using additional technology to allow you to use actually very nice fonts with @font-face. This is going to be big in the coming year I think.

Jeff: There has been a lot of talk and excitement in the web design community about CSS 3 and HTML 5. Are these real solutions to existing web design problems or just a bunch of overblown hype and wishful thinking, kind of like when I saw the movie Back to the Future II and got really amped up about hoverboards? What are your thoughts on these being implemented or even agreed upon by December 21st, 2012 (the “supposed” end of the Mayan calendar)? Any correlation or am I just grasping at straws here?

Chris: Oh it’s all very real. A lot of CSS3 stuff you can already use in a “progressive enhancement” kind of way to make designers cooler for browsers that support them but still be fine in browsers than don’t. The standard example is rounded corners, which you can implement with -moz and -webkit CSS attributes very easily. IE won’t get the rounded corners but of course that isn’t the end of the world. HTML5, for garden variety web designers like me, means a barrel full of new tags we can use to mark up web pages in far more semantic ways. For more hardcore developers, check out this HTML5 intro video that has some pretty mindblowing stuff you can do with HTML5 today.

Of course, I’d swear it all off forever if I could have a hoverboard.

Jeff: Web standards. Are they golden rules to be followed or do they just get in the way of cranking out some sweet non-compliant code? Why? Is this all part of a more semantic web with flying robots that interpret code and stuff?

Chris: Compliant code doesn’t limit you in any way. There aren’t things you can do with non-compliant code that are super cool, but put you in some kind of “bad kids” club. Non compliant code just means you screwed something up somewhere. You didn’t close a div, you used an attribute that doesn’t exist, you forgot to include an attribute that is required to make your code more helpful. Validation is just a tool to make sure you are on the right track. The real test is if your page works and looks right (i.e. doesn’t look broken, not necessarily exactly the same) across all browsers, and validation can help you get there.

Jeff: There are a lot of tools like content management systems (CMS) that allow people to create websites easily without a lot of knowledge about setting up, planning, organizing, designing, usability or even coding. Is this good or bad for web design? And, if you had to pick one CMS out of the 1.2 trillion available (last I checked) which would it be and why?

Chris: WordPress. I chose it 90% of the time. I feel like I can do just about anything with it. But, this choice is because I already feel very comfortable with it. I can crank out a WordPress powered site very quickly and I know that when changes and things come up with that site, I’ll have to power to get it done. Ultimately our work as web designers comes down to getting things done, so sometimes you have to make choices based on what you already know. Learning the ins and outs of 10 different CMSs just isn’t practical. If you are super comfortable in Joomla and can really get it done with that, more power to you. But I definitely feel like WordPress is a pretty amazing system.

Jeff: Is there anyone on Twitter that uitrends visitors should be following? You know, other than uitrends and Jeff Noble – that guy pretty much rules.

Chris: Well, other than Jeff Noble, you could always follow me. This account is pretty amazing. I think you should use Twitter however makes sense to you. Follow your friends, follow people you think will be interesting to you. Don’t follow some list of SEO experts you found on a list somewhere because you think you’ll get a bunch of hot SEO tips you can’t live without. That’s lame and boring and your twitter stream will turn into a bunch of nonsense. I suggest looking over at least the first page of a persons tweets pretty carefully before following and seeing if they look interesting before following, and then not being afraid to unfollow people if they turn out to not interest you. Twitter is only valuable if you get something out of it, and that you have to manage yourself.

Big thanks to Chris for the interview!!!