On Visions and Style

I've been designing webpages for a while. Much of that time I've used CSS, short for Cascading Style Sheets—the set of tools created specifically for layout. They're pretty simple, really, and the rules (for the most part) make sense. And the things you can do with the full set are breathtaking.

I've used several of the uniquely CSS tricks here. The ability to make the whole site look almost completely different with the click of a mouse: that's stylesheets. Images set to the side of flexible-width pages, buttons without using images, a lot of the spacing on the page... and a wonderful little trick that makes it look like I'm floating a pane of movable, translucent glass over an unmoving background image.

But, many of you say, I don't see that little translucent pane thing. And if you're using the almost universal web browser, no, you won't. Of the better-known browsers, only Mozilla, Netscape 6+, and (I assume) Opera 7 can do it, as can Apple's Safari. Internet Explorer, which is used by 90% of the people out there, cannot do this trick, nor many others. This is because (say it with me) Microsoft could give a flying fsck about standards.

Many people have complained about buggy software from M$. What's worse, however, is a philosophy of theirs that most home users never run into: standards only count if they set them. It was most evident with the Java fiasco, which was settled, uneasily, when Sun sued them for creating what amounted to a new protocol and calling it the same as Sun's Java. With CSS, however, Microsoft has slapped on a veneer of standards-compliance and gone on to do their own thing, while either ignoring the rest of the standards or (worse) redefining them so they work differently.

Ever wondered why web designers make such big bucks? This is why. Write a page according to standards and Mozilla and Netscape render it perfectly, or almost so. Put it on IE and it turns into a train wreck. Finding a happy medium takes hours or days of testing and many handfuls of hair pulled out of the scalp. With my site, most things work on Internet Explorer.... except one of the coolest effects available. If it were a minority browser, I wouldn't worry, but over 90% of my traffic uses some kind of IE.

I wish I could recommend an alternative, but there is no clear choice. Mozilla used to be a favorite, and still is -- on non-Windows systems. Last I looked, the Windows release was a little buggy, and all the developers used Linux, thus paying less attention to Windows. The situation may have improved over the months, and I know the browser has been considerably more reliable than the other parts; I would say give the browser a try, but stick to your own email client (or better yet, pick up Eudora).

Netscape is basically Mozilla but several releases behind, so it doesn't have all the features and fixes. Opera lost my vote when I learned that their (otherwise extremely well-written) browser was not only missing the same feature that started this rant, but that they knew about it since 4.0.... and it was taking them until 7.0 to get around to fixing it. It isn't rocket science, guys. Add to that the fact that their bug-reporting system asks you to submit only unreported bugs, but won't list the ones they've already received (they keep the bug list a secret).... and I lost much of my respect very quickly.

So I'm sorry that most of you won't get to see the full splendor of stylesheets in action, but we all get to blame our favorite evil empire for that. I hope you enjoy the rest of the site, at any rate.

--A