Disclaimer: the domain names of the companies in this article have been changed to protect the innocent. The domain names used weren’t taken at the time of this writing but might be now. Visit them at your own risk.

A current project has us doing quite a bit of 3rd party service integration and we noticed a pattern among the service providers. None of them seem to offer the ability to use a remote CSS file to change the presentation of their markup.

Noozletr.com

Take, for example, an email newsletter service. We’ll call them Noozletr.com. They have a really easy to use and slick system that includes a remote sign-up page that you can link to from your site. Now, the simple solution would be to allow the client to specify a URL to a remote CSS file (on the actual client’s site) to use to style the sign-up page. That way we could simply embed the sign-up page in our site using an IFrame, match the styles to the site in the linked CSS file and be done with it.

We don’t really care that much what their HTML looks like, as long as it’s relatively semantic and we can style it to meet our client’s needs, it’s not our problem. Instead of offering this very easy solution Noozletr.com has gone to the trouble of creating a fairly complex Web Service API. Granted this API allows you to do some pretty fancy stuff…stuff we don’t need.

Now, instead of taking a couple of minutes using the CSS+IFrame approach, we have to spend hours implementing and debugging the complex Web Service version.

It should also be mentioned there is a setup fee for Noozletr.com to “turn on” the Web Service API for you. Our client is paying for the service already and they let you style the heck out of the actual newsletter, all we want to do is style the sign-up form. Should that really cost more?

Ogglez.net

An enormous search engine company — let’s call them Ogglez.net — does virtually the same thing with their cooperative search service. Instead of just letting you use your own CSS file they let you change the hex colors of some (like 6) of the elements on the page.

Now, we understand they have some branding they wish to retain on the results pages that you could potentially hide with CSS, that’s fine. Our problem is that the only alternative is to pay (yearly and somewhat dearly) for the ability to get raw XML results of searches. Again, having access to raw XML feeds would allow you to do all kinds of fancy stuff…that we don’t need.

It would be nice if they would offer the simple CSS-based solution along with the fancy-pants XML hocus-pocus. We’d still pay for it because we want our client’s sites to retain some kind of consistency in their design and presentation. We just want options. The simpler the better.

The Rest

We have plenty of other examples but they all boil down to the same thing: just let us use our own CSS. It seems so silly and simple. Are we all just dear in the headlights of the Web 2.0 party van? Most of these service providers could probably implement this in a matter of minutes.

We understand that using CSS in this manner might seem rather pedestrian in the shiny, reflective Web 2.0 world we live in and it just doesn’t sound as cool as marketing some kind of all-singing, all-dancing, whiz-bang, AJAX blasting Web Service. By all means, go crazy with your customization options but please, please offer a simple low-tech solution that gets the job done. You don’t have to market it, just tell us about it…secretly if you wish.

The idea doesn’t have to stop at CSS files either. Javascript files would be very useful as well. The combination of external CSS and Javascript would be an extremely flexible and simple solution to a myriad of needs.

This is all kind of like ordering a very simple birthday cake but instead of using a trusty frosting bag the baker builds a complex Rube Goldberg like apparatus controlled by programmable robots that he then makes you use to decorate your cake. Oh, and you’ll pay for the opportunity — no problem — because it’s so much cooler.

To the service providers already offering these kinds of solutions: thank you very, very much (call me).

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 5th, 2007 at 2:15 am and is filed under Technology, Design, Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.