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I know this question has been asked several times. But the answers seem to vary: some say its important for search engines, others say the SEO improvement is negligible. Can anyone please explain to me if it is worth the time to validate html, from an SEO perspective?
In other words, if a company with an existing site were to hire an SEO expert to optimize his/her site, would it be worth the extra money to have the expert make the code validate (assuming there are many errors currently)?
Update: I just came across this video on Youtube discussing why google.com does not validate. It mentions the Google does not give any sort of "boost" to sites with valid markup. While this makes sense, based on the responses I guess its still a good idea to validate code in case of severe errors...
SEO is all about which keywords to target, how to layout a website, some basic rules to follow when writing, and that sort of thing. In the end quality inbound links from other web sites is what matters most for a good rank.
Website validation is overrated. It's well meaning, but overrated for SEO. You may have an audience that is visually impaired or regulations that you must validate, but this doesn't do much of anything for inbound links. Most HTML I write validates anyway, but I don't go out of my way to make it so.
Pretty much every browser has a "quirks" mode to deal with all the old html code out there. The most basic form of HTML is well understood by search engines.
If you're paying for SEO you want ways to better target keywords and that sort of thing. You may find SEO Fast Start worth a look, it's a free download (google it) and will give an overview of what a good SEO process looks like.
There are several reasons to make your website W3C valid.
Better chances for good rendering in different browsers.
Decrease dependency on error correction of browsers.
You could give a speed boost to your websites.
A small group of users values good coding. Especially if your target audience are webmasters and scripters.
I read a long while ago that bad code can kill off your site and this was the example given:
Lets say your first paragraph is written for the search engines but you have made this simple mistake -
<p This is the text from my first paragraph and I have written it for search engines while keeping it still readable to humans and good to read</p>
Notice I have accidentally not closed the start tag for the <p>
According to the article i read, the search engines will not be able to read the content as it is supposed to be and will be interpreted as being part of the tag and therefore ignored. this is obviously a really bad thing. So with this in mind, this very basic mistake can be fixed by validating the html.
Simple yet it just goes to show what a little time and validation can do for a page.
But not only this
Backlinks
regular update
is also important
Validate? Not so much. But broken html, such as an unclosed table would definitely some damage, albeit minor.
The game is still about inbound links. Time spent building inbound one-way links is far more valuable than validation.
Also take some time to analyze your navigation paths - keep links concrete, don't nest pages too deep, and always ensure you have no broken links.
You can never be 100% sure. But ... if you assume the search engines parse valid HTML better than invalid HTML, doesn't it make sense that you should try for valid HTML? Despite the other benefits that would provide, if you're relying on a 3rd party (the search engine world) to provide revenue to your company I would want to make their job as easy and accurate as possible.
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How, many PSD 2 HTML companies claim to provide Templates in 8 Hours?
How they make it possible?
Do they use special software or techniques?
Is it really a possible to provide XHTML Strict, Semantically correct, Cross Browser compatible (even in IE6 and Opera, as some claims), W3C valid XHTML and CSS, properly commented, well optimized HTML and CSS Markup in 8 hours. even for not much complicated design.?
For about half of the last 10 years, I worked for a design company. Among other things, I probably did upwards of 400 projects like this. Totally custom designs drawn up in Illustrator, they'd hand the file off to me and expect a template back in no more than five business days.
When I first started, I was probably spending as much as a work week getting everything sliced up, doing all the markup, and chasing down CSS bugs (not only was I inexperienced, we still had IE 5 Win AND Mac to deal with, and even Netscape now and again). But after a dozen or two projects, I was doing most templates inside of two days.
After a hundred projects, most templates were done inside of an eight hour workday. Some easy ones under four. Usually pretty much hand coded from scratch, outside of a very small bit of boilerplate CSS & HTML.
Periodically, no matter how good I got, I'd get a pretty unusual design, or hit an unanticipated problem with the layout (usually in IE 6) and have to spend hours figuring it out, occasionally even totally recoding, so unless I were offering something with constraints on design, I'd be hesitant to guarantee that kind of turnaround. But the idea that skilled labor can generally pull this off (certainly on average) into the business model is something I wouldn't hesitate to bet on.
With enhanced tools (which others have speculated these shops have), it might even be faster.
How they make it possible?
Do they use special software or techniques?
I don't know how everybody is doing it, but from my experience, they use both software that reads the PSD format and both a "correct" formatting of the PSD file (i.e. the right technique).
So basically that software expects a "valid" PSD and produces the required templates without further manual tweaking.
The whole idea is to enhance the PSD with metadata: - proper naming, proper cutting, proper properties (based on the conventions required by the specific software). After these are done manually, it's quite easy for a software to use that metadata and generate the required templates.
Is it really a possible to provide XHTML Strict, Semantically correct, Cross Browser compatible
Yes. The generation step of the software(that is using itself templates for generation), can output correct results.
even in IE6 and Opera, as some claims
No. It can include some known hacks but not 100 correct for IE.
W3C valid XHTML and CSS,
Yes. Remember - this is generated code, so it can respect to standards much easier since there's not manual intervention.
properly commented
Nope. It has only automatically generated comments - they are not very useful.
well optimized HTML and CSS Markup in 8 hours
As good as it can be automatically optimized.
It doesn't take 8 hours:
if the PSD is produced by the same company that will generate those templates, than it will be already annotated with the required metadata.
if the PSD is a well known stock PSD, than there might be already metadata at hand for it, so it's just a matter of quick copy and paste.
if the PSD is a customer PSD, than there's a little more work (~30 min) for a skilled developer to add the required metadata to the layers.
with the annotated PSD, it's just a matter of seconds to feed the software with it, and have the output.
usually the software has a few parameters, so a few template variants are generated, than fed to a software to compare how it looks on various browsers. This step also takes a few minutes.
So all in one, for worst case scenarios it takes ~40 minutes per template, but usually it's much much faster. Companies take the 8 hour margin to be sure that they can deliver even under heavy load.
i'd say they have a really good snippet library and they use a 'template + plugin' approach.
for example, you'd have snippets/plugins for a drop-down menu, contact form, image slider, pagination controls, image replacement etc that worked perfectly well in all major browsers and even IE6.
So if the design is not complex, all you need to do is plug in the various elements into your template and alter some CSS, which should not take more than 8 hours.
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I'm an IPhone developer who wants to change to Drupal developement.
I have already read some books, coded some samples and stuff like that.
I feel like my level in Drupal is not that bad now but I have no experience, how can I find a job? How can I show off my level in an interview?
* Coding a module? And posting it on Drupal.org?
* Coding a template? And posting it on Drupal.org?
* Coding a sample website? And posting on a website?
* Other ideas? I'm open to everything...
Martin Magkian
Best thing you can possibly have happen in a job interview is you to be an author or contributer of a library your potential employer loves.
After that, having code available to show you know what you are talking about, even if you don't have the professional experience.
After that, just the ability to speak passionately about it, and demonstrate a breadth of knowledge.
All of those things (except maybe the last) are as good or better then professional experience. Another thing to keep in mind is that if you don't have the bullet points on your resume, you really need to make up for it in your cover letter. Show the above things, but take the time to research the company, and write a customized cover letter for each application.
Drupal is known for its capabilies, but also for its steep learning curve.
This is why I believe the right way to get into the Drupal world is by demoing your capabilities.
Think about a certain content you want to work on, and build a demo site around it, including all of the different aspects of it.
Try not to write code, but to find the existing modules that fit to your needs, and to implement them properly. From my experience I know that in most cases you will get 80% of the features ready, but will need to handle the rest of the 20% yourself.
Those 20% are the hard stuff - you will need to debug code you didn't write, find yourself between all of those hooks, and solve the bugs properly.
A solved bug, combinning features from several existing modules, is a great achievement, much bigger then just writing some new module out of some code examples.
Same goes to themeing - select a well-known theme, and make it yourself ! Use advanced themeing modules like Skinr and don't just play with CSS files.
These are the main things, as far as I see them.
Good Luck !
Shushu
All of the above.
If you want to be a well known themer - build you own theme, host on drupal.org, tweet about it, offer help to others, support your issue queue, etc. If it's a nice theme, you should get a decent spotlight from that.
Outside of that, if you want to be a well known developer, you might jump on in with an existing module rather than build your own. There's thousands of modules out there all doing just about every task imaginable. It would take some imagination to come up with your own.
If you are a good developer, and are willing to learn drupal, a great idea would be to get in on existing projects. Most module developers would welcome help from others to keep things moving along. Big projects like Views, Context, Features, etc, would love to have you combing through their issue queues.
I've seen these scenarios several times before: guy helps with issue queue, guy gets named co-maintainer + gets mention on company blog, guy gets job there or with another company.
Issue queues are the perfect place to show your wares. best of luck!
Terry
Your username on Drupal.org, your reputation in the community (see certifiedtorock) will help.
Many good drupal jobs (I was looking about 4 months ago), ask for your drupal.org username before interview. They can track from this, your modules, themes and patches you have written for core or for other modules.
Having a portfolio of other site you have worked on will help. Even if they are hobby sites you have set up yorself it at least shows that you can do something.
You need to let your competence and your personality shine though. Hint having a username like user119333 with no link to a further profile may not help.
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What should be the top 10 CSS and HTML questions to ask an interviewee? To test his level of knowledge if interviewee mentioned 2 yrs. experience in XHTML and CSS.
Edit:
how we can know interviewee's cross browser layout making capability? My question is only related to xhtml css coding not about design ability
What is the CSS box model?
What is the difference between quirks mode, standards mode and almost standards mode?
Tell me about hasLayout.
What would be the most appropriate markup for: a navigation menu; a picture gallery; a blog post. (Why? Can you think of some alternatives? Might be good to draw these up on a whiteboard or something)
What's the difference between <p class="main_header">Foo</p> and <h1 class="main_header">Foo</h1>?
Why is this a bad idea?: <span class="red">Bar</span>
Describe how to set opacity and how will it appear in Gecko, WebKit and IE.
How can you set few properties on to textboxes as default?
A design calls for png files with alpha transparency, what issues might you encounter?
Some of these are the same as zoul's questions except from a slightly different angle - I was aiming for questions that would lead to a bit of a discussion.
Why is it a good idea to split HTML and CSS?
What is the difference between inline and block elements?
What is a doctype good for?
What is the difference between classes and ids?
What is the difference between margin and padding?
These should be more than plenty to see how much candidate knows about browsers, standards and the reasoning behind HTML and CSS. Maybe you could throw in some floats, positioning and similar stuff if you want to test detailed CSS knowledge.
Update: The point is the kind of answer you are going to get, of course. If you ask about margin and padding and you get a clean drawing of box content, added padding, border line and margin, possibly collapsing against another box, you know the guy knows what he is talking about. Same goes for all the other questions.
No amount of questions in a short interview would establish a person's skill level. And there is the question of innovative qualities of a person which may not reveal itself in an interview. Some people may be introverted and shy or suffer from interview jitters others may be smooth talkers with little substance. There is also the challenge of asking objective questions not opinions.
If I show up for an audition to join a symphonic orchestra and tell them I have been playing the violin for 20 years they will not ask me about the construction of the bridge or the best material for bow strings. They give me a music score and ask me to play.
I suggest creating a simple web page that requires the techniques mentioned in the answers above, showing it to the candidate and asking the candidate to re-produce it in 30 minutes using the notepad. This will sort out the experienced from the novice.
Apart from HTML/CSS/JS specific or problem-solving questions, I would also ask what sort of tools she/he is using to get a task done. It often gives good insights about 'how' someone works and gives good/relaxed room for discussion. Good developers always have good and sharp tools.
I've taken a number of tests over the past couple of years and in all honesty there are really no questions one can ask to judge how great someone is at coding in HTML and/or CSS.
First, if the interviewee claims to have written web pages over the past couple of years ask for a couple of examples. If possible get him/her to email you them, print them out and get the user to explain and critique everything about them. Completely tear through everything regarding their previous work and get them to explain everything they can about it.
Once this is done, the user should be given a small task involving the development of a web page. Give them a networked computer and clear the history, then give them a couple of web pages to be built over the space of n minutes. Tell them to document what they decide to do and what resources they'll be using and just let them get on with it. After a while check their references and look at the outcome. The user will never be able to perform their best work in such a short time but you'll be able to see how efficient they are by the quality of their work.
Once this is done, give them a broken web page and give them a small amount of time to fix it to the point of it being standards-compliant. This should be an easy task to perform for most given good use of their tools.
It's obviously not an exact science, but a range of these methods have always found suitable candidates for many companies and it seems that a lot of Web Design places rarely ask questions nowadays and will move onto simple practical exercises to ensure that the interviewee can do what is asked of them.
What do you see as the main differences between html and xhtml?
Are there benefits to using one over the other?
Technical
Ask the person to make a simple page with a header, a two column layout, and a footer with each column having a different background color extending to the footer. Get them to flip the columns around on completion.
A couple of questions that are tricky.
How do absolutes affect the flow?
How do floats affect the flow?
(they don't)
What are two practical difference between a relative and static?
Determine their interest in CSS and HTML with 'What is the semantic web and why is it important?' People should be able to speak with enthusiasm about bring information to the blind for example. People who really work in HTML and CSS and know their stuff tend to be quite passionate about how information is there for all.
IMO, Cross browser issues are becoming less important now as more people are using modern browsers that obey standards.
Ask about their interest in design. A good sense of design concepts tends to be important when working in a team - a programmer with a sense of design can communicate why such a design may not work well within a website and can explain better some of the limitations.
Ask: what do you think of flash :-)
Below are 40 questions you can ask a person specifically from HTML 5 perspective.
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/702051/important-HTML-Interview-questions-with-answe
What is the relationship between SGML,HTML , XML and HTML ?
In HTML 5 we do not need DTD why?
If I do not put will HTML 5 work?
Which browsers support HTML 5?
How is the page structure of HTML 5 different from HTML 4 or previous HTML?
What is datalist in HTML 5 ?
What are the different new form element types in HTML 5?
What is output element in HTML 5?
What is SVG?
Can we see a simple example of SVG using HTML 5?
What is canvas in HTML 5?
So how can we draw a simple line on Canvas?
What is the difference between Canvas and SVG graphics?
How to draw rectangle using Canvas and SVG using HTML 5 ?
What are selectors in CSS?
How can you apply CSS style using ID value?
What is the use of column layout in CSS?
Can you explain CSS box model?
Can you explain some text effects in CSS 3?
What are web workers and why do we need them ?
What are the restrictions of Web Worker thread ?
So how do we create a worker thread in JavaScript?
How to terminate a web worker
Why do we need HTML 5 server-sent events?
What is local storage concept in HTML 5?
How can we add and remove data from local storage?
What is the lifetime of local storage?
What is the difference between local storage and cookies?
What is session storage and how can you create one?
What is difference between session storage and local storage?
What is WebSQL?
Is WebSQL a part of HTML 5 specification?
So how can we use WebSQL ?
What is application cache in HTML5?
So how do we implement application cache in HTML 5 ?
So how do we refresh the application cache of the browser?
What is fallback in Application cache?
What is network in application cache ?
What are different ways to apply styles to a Web page?
What is grouping in CSS?
What is the Contextual Selector?
What are the limitations in the use of CSS?
like the above there are 50+ awesome questions that are available here through
which any CSS related interview can get cracked. Top CSS interview
questions and answers
This also help to clear the concept of CSS.
Some good questions to ask are:
Describe how to set opacity.
What is the box model in CSS?
How do you add a CSS to a HTML?
Describe the difference between a class and an element.
What is the Doctype for?
Odd no one mentioned this yet...
Since the person claims to have two years of experience, they should have something to show for it - so ask to see recent works. Even if some of their work was internal or protected by NDA or such, if they are any good, they ought to have something they've done just to try out new things or such.
I believe real examples would be the best gauge for actual skill in this case. People can easily learn various details about HTML and CSS, but being able to apply them is a totally different matter. It should also demonstrate their ability to write cross-browser compatible code (Just open their examples in IE, FF, Opera, Safari/Chrome)
Do you know how to clear floats?
Write a simple nested list.
Ask them to make a simple layout (header, 2 col, footer) and include table data. See if they go div crazy, table crazy, or stick to what's correct.
What's the difference between a class and an element?
When they make a layout, look closely at what they name their classes. If they are layout-specific ("left-column", "bottom-section", "red-box") and not structure-specific ("column", "header", "footer", "navigation"), they're doing it wrong.
If the answer to 1. is "by using clearing divs", hit them across the face with a bat before you send them out the door.
The fancy button question seen here is the best question I've seen. It covers a range of topics without making it a written test. It's much more valuable to have them implement something like this on a whiteboard or paper to avoid getting bogged down in MDN-searchable details. Even if they don't come up with a perfect solution, you will find out how intelligently they can speak on a range of topics.
Remember, you want someone who can think and come up with creative and effective solutions. Not someone who has memorized the MDN.
About HTML5 and its features .
method of adding CSS to HTML.
New Features of CSS3.
Browser Compatibility of CSS3.
Different type of selector in CSS.
Different between class and id selector .
Different type of measuring unit in CSS
HTML5 form and different type of input type option.
HTML check box,select,radio ,button tags and its use.
Styling the simple page
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Concerning pages that build a web application:
Lately, I have found myself creating web pages that are simpler than the ones I used to. Before, I would try to jam as much functionality into a single page as I could to prevent from having lots of pages.
I am starting to realize that this was just making things way more complex, convoluted, and confusing than it had to be. Why not have more pages? I think the reason that I was doing this was because I didn't want the user to have to browse to other pages; just to have all the functionality they needed on a single page.
Well, these good intentions turned into an overly confusing interface for the user and very unmanageable source code. I am a new developer and I am trying to be very reflective of what I am doing so that I can improve. If it makes a difference, I am developing in ASP.net (though these are probably considerations for any platform).
My questions are:
Am I overthinking these things?
Has anyone else found themselves doing this?
Where is the happy medium?
There is no expert who can give you a rule that works in all places at all times. I have been known in my industry for years for "easy" interfaces and we've won significant amounts of business for it (as well as 5 "Best in Class" awards). I have also had people within my company and outside of it tell me - for years - that they like my work but wish that I would "jazz it up" with more graphics and such. What always amazes me is how little connection people see between the two.
So...a few rules of thumb:
A page should do one main thing.
A page may well have multiple links related to the main thing
Menuing and link layout should be consistent across pages
Simpler is better than more complex
Pages should be visually appealing and inviting
Rule 4 is more important than rule 5.
For example, my product provides an interface that lets people define classes and events to be displayed in a calendar. I could have one page that lets you Review, Add, Update, Delete and Edit the classes. Indeed, in some simpler areas, I've used the gridview to let people manage everything in a grid. However, classes have too much information to do this and still follow the rules above.
So,
The main idea is: "Here is a list of classes for this location"
The links are "Add New" shown above and to the right of the grid, Change and Delete are links within each row. This is consistent across the app.
Menuing for the system as a whole is always across the right/top. Nothing else appears on the class/event page except for standard elements common to all pages (a logo, a header, a footer).
The grid is nicely styled but there are no spurious graphics (4,5,6)
A few last things about UIs and graphic design.
First, develop your own vision and be consistent across pages and apps.
Second, do not be afraid of simplicity.
Next, when soliciting advice from others keep in mind that you do not want their advice - you want their impressions: you want to understand the way they perceive the interface. Advice is sometimes good but, more often than not, actually harmful. In my experience, everyone thinks that they are a UI expert.
When you do your hallway (or formal) useability testing you should discount almost all advice to the effect that "you should make that stand out more." As you'll see, it will quickly become "and that," "and that," "and the other." If you follow this advice, you'll end up with a mess due to Brittingham's first rule of design: If everything is important than nothing is. (There you go: when explaining why you can't make someone stand out more, just tell them that "it violates Brittingham's first rule of design!")
Hope this helps!
You hit the nail on the head. Use the KISS principle. (Keep It Simple Stupid)
I've done this in the past as well and not only does it make for a hideous UI, but confusing as to what operations you can do on the page due to having too much functionality. I've often found in testing that I did not have enough checks to see if the user could perform a certain operation based on the state of the data.
It's easy enough in ASP.Net to write several pages that do simple tasks and then link them together with Response.Redirect or Server.Transfer. Now all I try to achieve on any given page is what the design specs say. So if my page is just a search page, that's all I give. If the user wants to see the details of an item that was returned in the search, then I send them to an itemDetails.aspx page.
You've broken a wall that most software developers have, the one that was blocking your view on usability before. A lot of developers don't really think about it and try to make it easier for them by stuffing functionality in one window, web page or whatever.
The thing is once you start designing software from the user's point of view, i.e. making it easier, several things start to become clear. One is the issue of code maintenance, that code is easily more managable to work on if you don't stuff everything in one giant class or whatever travesty you've been doing. The other is usability itself, that you start to think how the user is actually using your application through the graphical interface. Third is avoiding requirements or scope creep where you stop developing functionality that the user doesn't need.
We as users want simplicity partly because we don't want to spend most of our time muddling through a bad UI when we can get our work done faster with a simple and slick UI. That makes it for us software developers the right thing to do, to think through your design on all levels... that and specs always lie.
Definitely agree: most attempts at writing pages/forms that do too much have resulted in
bugs and rewrites. Problems occur with keeping all parts valid/synchronized,
excess managing of users' expectations ("I've entered a bill number here and clicked "find person" there but it gives an error message. Why?") when the two are logically separate. These questions cannot arise if only the valid options are visible,
Formatting/layout issues: In ASP.NET pages, trying to layout independent User Controls turns out to be a nightmare ("But we really want all the buttons vertically aligned!" in separate user controls. Good luck with that.)
I'd consider webpages with more than one functionality only if the target audience consists of domain experts, i.e. people that need lots of functionality on one page for better productivity (think data-entry or financial software with lots of variables).
Even then, most of the time, it's possible separate pages into single units.
No
Yes - me
I found the happy medium was to use Masterpages, and using it in a way that was familiar to IFrames. That I could have a lots of functionality combined well together. There is a more interesting way of doing this with WPF/Silverlight called Prism
The amount of functionality on a page is usually not determined by you but by your customer. If the customer demands a single page to update some VeryComplexObject, you're likely to end up with an aspx page that has a significant number of lines. Main reason is that you simply have a lot of event handlers for all actions on the page.
Whether that page is complex is entirely up to you. You should always attempt to make your code-behind file as simple and clean as possible. Some suggestions in that direction:
Move all business code to another application layer.
Use ObjectDataSource for providing data to data-bound controls such as ListView, GridView, Repeater, ... Delegating loading of data to a dedicated object prevents a lot of overhead in your aspx.cs file.
Another suggestion is to use user controls to implement portions of your page. You would usually only do this when you can reuse the user control, but it can also be of great help reducing page complexity (both of your code-behind file as well as your aspx).
Sometimes I think we are all guilty of forgetting just who it is that we develop our applications for. It isn't always easy as a developer to be able to take a step back and have a look at your application as a user might do so. This is why big companies employee hundreds of people to do this for them and they don't always get it right.
Usability is a massive subject but it is defiantly something that all developers need to keep in mind. It has taken me a long time to learn this but when tackling any development task I always try to think about how my users are going to interact with what I am writing. This will make a difference to all levels of your development.
I would suggest reading Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug. This book won't take you an age to read and it puts across some fantastic ideas that can help you to develop applications that are much easier to use and understand.
I always find that once I have thought about the user experience the decisions about what my web pages are going to do and how they are going to interact are much easier to make.
Maybe you should ask the people who are using your site. Or better yet, just watch people use your site. I think that would tell you if your site is designed well, or if you need to change it.
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I like the simplistic look and design of some of the Microsoft blogs. Alas, I can't join the Microsoft dev party and create my own development blog on the blogs.msdn.com page because I don't work at Microsoft, and I already have my own wordpress blog.
I was looking to have my blog styled to one of the default looking themes shown here: http://blogs.msdn.com/jmeier/default.aspx
Could Microsoft take legal action against me if I used a stylesheet from their page? If I made my page 'based' off their stylesheet, e.g. written from the ground up, would that be copyright infringement?
Could Microsoft take legal action against me if I used a stylesheet from their page?
Absolutely, since you infringed their copyright. On the other hand, it's debatable whether the stylesheet alone constitues a sufficient threshold of originality to justify legal actions1. At the least, taking without asking is often considered rude. ;-)
1) No. It certainly doesn't. A sophisticated design however will.
Yes, you can get in legal trouble for copying a site's stylesheet since it's typically a copyright violation. Worse, you could get publicly bashed on blogs like youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com, making such blog posts about you high-ranked Google results for your name, thus tarnishing your reputation irreversibly.
Don't do it, it's not worth the risks.
You could. You probably wont.
Most importantly: Why bother? CSS is pretty simple, it's essentially positioning a bunch of boxes around, and colouring them..
Just look at their CSS files and layout, and reimplement it yourself.. It'll probably end up easier than reworking their CSS to work with your site (unless you completely copy their site, including the CSS, HTML and layout images), plus you'll learn a lot about CSS while you do it.
AFAIK, and IANAL, and all those other useful acronyms....
Under UK law, I believe you can get away with this kind of thing as long as there are at least 6 demonstrable and obvious differences between the copied article and the copy. Since I'm not a lawyer, I'm not going to go into what constitutes a demonstrable and obvious difference, but I would imagine a colour change would count as one...
You would obviously have to check the laws of your region before taking this advice.
Of course you will, Microsoft China was in a similar situation back when their Juku Blogging Service was found out to be a rip-off of Plurk, and yes, line by line code copying.
Microsoft responded with: “Microsoft takes intellectual property seriously, and we are currently investigating these allegations. It may take some time due to the time zone differences with Beijing.” when they were asked about it.
Here's a link to that article I was referring to.
I think Microsoft uses one of the templates that come out of the box with community server. But even if they didn't, I haven't heard of a case of someone having a cease and desist based on leveraging someone else's css.
Technically, they could. It is a violation of their copyright. If they exercised this right, however, it would likely be a PR disaster.
I think you're probably safe if you use it.
This would be a horrible idea, but you couldn't get into any trouble if you simply linked to their css.
You could also link to a copy of their css that was located somewhere else that is not associated with your website ;o)
Just some thoughts ...