With css scripting languages becoming a core part of the build set up I'm amazed how many people still use 100 / 1000 / 10000 / 999 style z-index values.
I'm guessing most people don't particularly care about z ordering. All they want is something that says "this should be on top of everything else". Or more rarely "this should be underneath everything else".
Aside from the extremes they are happy with the natural order, I think.
Amazing job you did there. That's oddly interesting to measure a data we use without common convention, it really draws out the human tendency of picking up a number.
I would have liked to see the first graph in number order instead of rank. Being in rank order doesn't tell me much. Later is the graph with all numbers in number order, but I think that first graph with just the top 50 would be far more interesting in number order.
Has anyone tried calling the phone number used for a z-index in this chart? Seems like a very specific number to be used that many times. It would be amazing if the css was #ForAGoodTimeCall { z-index: 2147483647 }
I’m impressed by the author’s crawling of 112 million webpages, but I can’t help but wonder if it’s really necessary. Surely the same distribution could be found with a smaller sample?
This was fascinating, thanks. Made me think about why I used 99 as my max -- I think it's because back in the SNES days, all the RPGs used 99 as a limit.
This is why I care so much about grammar. Author wrote "1242 times the number 9" but meant "the number 9 1242 times". A very minor difference, just the order of the words, but such a change in meaning!
Note: The following statements are for sake of argument and I realize that they are likely not practical.
I think is a result of the fact that styling is outside the domain of front-end software engineering. I don't mean this literally; clearly it is part of the job description. What I mean is that as a software engineer my primary skillset is in programming and CSS generally has very little to do with programming.
This is true semantically (CSS lacks good support for variables, functions, conditionals, etc.). However, it is also true in terms of of how designs are generally structured. For example, layout tends to be "I want exactly this spacing at this breakpoint and this spacing at this other breakpoint" instead of "I want the spacing to scale according to this equation of screen size".
> At rank 39, we have 8675309, which I personally didn’t recognize as being particularly noteworthy. However, with over half a million collected uses, it clearly is meaningful to many.
Is this value there due to some stock value in some well used piece of software such as a cookie notice plugin for Wordpress?
I had not realised this was a '42' grade special number before and I wonder how it is so popular in CSS.
Thank you. So it is Pinterest and their CSS that ends up on every website. I bet nobody else is using that special number and that the song is not as well known as some would have you believe!
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[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 61.4 ms ] threadhttps://gist.github.com/davidweatherall/dfc469b7a4451b169ae5... Is my go to sass function for creating a simple to use z-index map.
Aside from the extremes they are happy with the natural order, I think.
"Final Fantasy? The Enduring Influence of JRPGs on Web Development Practices."
> Perhaps you will succeed where I failed, and find a way to include in a chart the largest z-index value I found, namely 10^1242-1.
> Yes, that’s 1242 times the number 9.
Come on, I know maths are no longer needed to be a developer, but this is ridiculous.
I think is a result of the fact that styling is outside the domain of front-end software engineering. I don't mean this literally; clearly it is part of the job description. What I mean is that as a software engineer my primary skillset is in programming and CSS generally has very little to do with programming.
This is true semantically (CSS lacks good support for variables, functions, conditionals, etc.). However, it is also true in terms of of how designs are generally structured. For example, layout tends to be "I want exactly this spacing at this breakpoint and this spacing at this other breakpoint" instead of "I want the spacing to scale according to this equation of screen size".
Is this value there due to some stock value in some well used piece of software such as a cookie notice plugin for Wordpress?
I had not realised this was a '42' grade special number before and I wonder how it is so popular in CSS.
e: wiki
42: H2G2: The answer to life, the universe, and everything
...
9999. Ahhhh....Just right.