Slashdot Mirror

I use this often.
http://www.oswd.org/
http://www.mezzoblue.com/zengarden/alldesigns/
or
http://www.csszengarden.com/

The CSS Zen Garden is a great place to get some ideas. No book will teach you creativity, you can learn some general rules or tips and tricks but good design ultimately comes down to experience. The best advice, in my opinion, is to keep it simple and clean. Most visitors will appreciate a clean, easy to navigate site more than fancy flash graphics or a Photoshop jungle.

"For girls who have grown up with technology, there is no significant gender gap in internet usage," said eMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson. "The rise of activities that are particularly appealing to young females, such as social networking, will result in even greater usage."

This reminds me of my 12 year old neice who sites on MSN for hours at a time jibba-jabbin to her friends, whilst her brother would rather watch Hockey on TV.

This is good news for those people who've recently been ranting about there not being enough women in web design, and trying to work out the reasons why. With more women now online than men, the balance will hopefully be redressed (when that generation gets off MSN and wants to do something useful with their lives).

Apart from the fact that you're grossly wrong about fixing bugs (They've fixed a ton of them, including the Guilotene bug which you claim isn't fixed, which was fixed back in beta 1 http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2005/07/28/ie7_c ss_upda/ ), the issue with fixing the css parsing bugs is that yes, they are bugs and should be fixed. Need to target IE specifically? Use conditional comments.

This is really only going to be a problem with people that were using strict doctypes and hacks and may have one of the few remaining issues bug issues, which aren't very many. The fact that IE7 has worked flawlessly on every CSS site with hacks i've used it on says a lot.

Because anyone that has worked heavily with browser based UIs knows that they have the same issues they have always had.

The following (which you are probably aware of, but others may not be) are good references on CSS/HTML/XHTML etc. which I came across whilst trying to work out why my standards compliant pages were so badly broken in IE6 -- it absolutely amazed me how much of the websites about CSS etc. are devoted to IE bugs and workarounds.

• PIE
• ALA
• (support pages for) the CSS Zen Garden

Cheers,
Mark

• Peekaboo bug
• Guillotine bug
• Duplicate Character bug
• Border Chaos
• No Scroll bug
• 3 Pixel Text Jog
• Magic Creeping Text bug
• Bottom Margin bug on Hover
• Losing the ability to highlight text under the top border
• IE/Win Line-height bug
• Double Float Margin Bug

• Peekaboo bug
• Guillotine bug
• Duplicate Character bug
• Border Chaos
• No Scroll bug
• 3 Pixel Text Jog
• Magic Creeping Text bug
• Bottom Margin bug on Hover
• Losing the ability to highlight text under the top border
• IE/Win Line-height bug
• Double Float Margin Bug

If you read further, you'll see that they encourage people to release their designs under the creative commons.

To be completely clear, the CSS is under a creative commons license, but not the entire designs. It's fine for somebody to copy an oswd.org design completely, but not to do the same with a CSS Zen Garden design. People have done that in the past, and it has resulted in designers removing their designs from the CSS Zen Garden.

Don't copy CSS Zen Garden designs. The images aren't open-source, you can't redistribute them freely, they are covered by copyright. Read the FAQ:

You may not use any of the graphics (image files: GIF, JPG, and PNG) on the Zen Garden elsewhere without the original designer's written permission. There are no exceptions to this. The Garden is about learning from other people's work, but not using it uncompensated.

Yes, because grass and soybeans are purple. In addition a square
kilometer is pretty damn large, let alone 8x8 km. In many places
cutting is done in patchwork for one reason or another.

http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2005/04/07/googl e_maps_/
http://perljam.net/google-satellite-maps/id/1201/B razil/Rondonia//Deforestation_in_Brazil/

There are others but feel free to do your own due diligence.

For anyone interested in reading about Avalon versus Quartz and developer reaction to it, here are a few thought-provoking links:

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee/forums/a/t pc/f/48409524/m/182000835731
http://blogs.msdn.com/dancre/archive/2004/03/25/96 131.aspx
http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2005/04/14/avalo nxaml_f/

Dave Shea published the list of what's fixed and what's not a few days ago...

All self-respecting MS bashers are composing screeds against the mediocrity of Internet Explorer version 7, based on reviews.

Disclaimer: mine's already written, that's why I'm here.

Would you mind posting your examples on a web site so that others may check whether successive versions of IE and other browsers comply with those W3C standards?

Sure, Firefox may not pass the acid test, but look at Look how IE6 renders, err, butchers it. It looks like the smiley face has been blown to bits. And then look at how it is supposed to render. Firefox seems to be much closer to me...

You get PNG support, but most of the rest of the CSS fixes aren't there. You can read up on the details here

From Dave Shea: IE7 CSS Updates
From Joe Clark IE7 The saga begins
And finally Molly Holzschlag, speaking on behalf of WaSP: That's why it's called beta

Yes, it is obviously a fanboy generated screed. I would like to see a real review of the browser by real web content developers who know about real UI design and what areas current browsers need improvement on. Wait there are a few reactions:

A reaction by Molly Holzschlag of thewebstandards.org, a reviewby Dave Shea of (CSS Zen Garden fame), or a review/reaction list on well known designer Shaun Inmans blog. But leave it to slashdot to link to some MS fanboy just to get a rise out of the flamthrower league.

Try to mimic the behavior of valign="bottom" on a td tag using CSS with a container of variable height. To the best of my knowledge, it can't be done without tables (or by cheating and applying a display: table-cell style rule to the container, which is not supported by IE) or using a Javascript hack. Complex grid-like layouts, where your content doesn't fit into a nice 3 column layout with a header and footer--basically anything where you've got to have things align with each other vertically--require tables to work. Tables will also 'give' when the content would normally overflow a fixed-width div. Granted, most sites don't need it, but that doesn't mean that tables for layout can't be an acceptable solution under some situations. See also http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2004/05/15/table s_oh_th/index.php For the record, I advocate using CSS over Layout Tables whenever possible, but I'm not dogmatic about it either.

renders sites better than Firefox

Why is every single band website you visit these days completely dependent on Flash? Can bands not hire competent web designers as a rule or something?

I have started to develop a reflex action when I see a page load up where the entire centre is obviously a Flash object of just closing the tab. It's almost automatic now. I have to really want to see a site to put up with Flash these days.

Don't get me wrong, there are places where Flash is handy (webtoons), but not for cranking out these baroque, unnavigatable monstrosities that have my system load sitting at 50% just so the guy can have animated buttons and cool looking scrollies. I have (rarely) seen some wonderful examples of artistic and creative Flash work, but it's somehow never contributed to the useability of the site. You want cool effects, learn CSS and DHTML, don't just braindump your creation into whatever Macromedia product facilitates these things. (If you want to see what is possible using only CSS, look here [using a browser that's not IE, of course]) And if you find that you can't do something using functionality built into web standards, that means (95% of the time) that what you are trying to do is going to be very annoying for people visiting you site, so don't do it.

This is exactly what you'll see in IE7's CSS support.

- It will have "full CSS2" support according to marketing, fixing some of the most obvious and well-known failures in IE's CSS implementation.

- Like IE6, it will actually break some things that used to work, and there will still be a lot of things that don't quite work right, and specific circumstances (such as :hover won't work right on floated elements with position:relative, or whatever.)

- The press and Microsoft marketing will celebrate IE7's standards compliance and declare victory over Firefox.

- Normal users will download Firefox less because they don't care about standards, they just care about tabs and other features.

- The guys over at A List Apart and mezzoblue will cry out in pain at another set of CSS bugs they need to work around to get things to work right.

Late reply and further off topic. Anyhow, that is a great page.

Two other good CSS sites are http://www.positioniseverything.net/ and http://www.csszengarden.com/.

P.I.E. has a list of IE CSS bugs and plenty of workarounds, mostly using other IE bugs to hide CSS rules from other browsers.

CSS Zen Garden's highlight is the main page. Hundreds of others have created different stylesheets for it which completely change the appearance. The special effects set has some very impressive effects accomplished with pure CSS.

The bad thing about the CSS Zen Garden is it's depressing. Few people designing sites professionally for a company are able to really use CSS, only using the pitiful amount it supports correctly. It's depressing because the web could be so much better if only IE would go away.

No [Slashdot isn't a blog]. A blog is where one person makes journal entries, and other people read it. Slashdot is a news discussion site. That's a lot different in content and format than a blog. Blogs are all about one person, Slashdot is about a the geek world around us.

I guess that's maybe subjective; byolinux has already suggested that there are blogs with multiple posters, and I'd add that Slashdot was nominated for - and won - an award in the most recent "bloggies". I can - maybe - see a difference between one (or more) posters posting articles, and others reading said articles, but factor in replying to articles and I'm blowed if I can see a difference between Slashdot and Mezzoblue: they're both news, just one has one poster and a narrow focus, t'other has multiple posters and a wider focus. Neither are especially about one person or multiple people; they both carry geek articles.

You have raised some interesting thoughts which I haven't given much consideration in the past, the idea of the Content Type. Serving up a content type of xhtml+xml for XHTML documents makes sense from a technical point of view, but as you pointed out leads to some very undesirable effects in the browser (as does the declaration atop the page).

I appreciate this conversation and the opinions you've shared, I am learning that not everyone is a supporter of the W3C and their current direction (this is new to me). I am thinking I've had a jaded view through the last year or two because I'm a daily visitor to sites such as Mezzo Blue, Stop Design, A List Apart, etc...

I'd equate it to listening to Air America Radio exclusively or using Fox News as your news source, you become a little out-of-touch with what's really going on.

http://www.mezzoblue.com/zengarden/alldesigns/spec ialeffects/

please click through a couple of those sites in a browser that is not IE (i know for sure they all work in firefox)

• CSS Wiki! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Centering advice! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Centering advice! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Fix crappy MSIE support! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• tips, tricks and good practice techniques! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Box model Illustrated! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• links collection! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• links collection! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• links collection! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Tutorials, Demos, and Hacks! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Best Practices! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Best Practices Crib Sheet! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Best Practices! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Holly Hack! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• 3 pixel hack! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Firefox webdev plugin! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Mozilla CSS editor! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Debugging Advice! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Page Building Process! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• selectutorial! - + - this is extra copy so this would post

Lists

• listamatic 2 (nested lists)! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• listamatic! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• listutorial! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Piped List! - + - this is extra copy so this would post

Floats

• floatutorial! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• float-theory! - + - this is extra copy so this would post

Filtering

• Explorer! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• safari filtering! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• filters! - + - this is extra copy so this would post

Type Issues

Yes, and when you drop slashdot down below a certain threshold, it condenses the content to an unreadable width and puts in an unsightly scrollbar. C'mon. Give me a break. Graceful degradation doesn't mean "expect a desktop browser to view a page at 200px wide." Just about every Windows computer since 1998 has used at least 800x600. Most are much larger. Have you heard? They make 17" monitors now too.

And what about WebTV and cell phones and text browsers, etc. etc. etc.? Where's your table layout? Do your table-based pages scale to under 600 pixels wide gracefully? What about phones that can only show four lines at a time? How well can you navigate your page with lynx? What about printable versions? What do you do with your table-based layouts then? Make whole separate pages? With CSS, it's just another stylesheet. No need for substantial rewrites of logic that made your XHTML for each view nor for site graphic redesigns.

The point of CSS is that you can make a different stylesheet tailored to each client. You'll note that on CSS Zen Garden, all of the different examples are the exact same markup underneath. EXACTLY THE SAME. Some of them even resize below 700 pixels wide. Wow! It's like they separated the content from the layout.

Also check out Mezzoblue, made by the same guy who started the CSS Zen Garden. Go ahead, resize it down below 700 pixels wide. Hmmm... Still looks okay.

And with regard to the DOM, I misunderstood before. I see what is meant now. And... well... DOM affects the default order and layering of things. Even that's not set in stone if you set the position and/or z-index.

Take a look at the rest of the designs on CSS Zen Garden. Look at the sites linked from Mezzoblue. Check out Meyerweb. Welcome to the 21st century. We're waiting on you.

• glish
• Eric Meyer's CSS/edge
• Owen Brigg's Little Boxes
• Blue Robot's The Layout Reservoir
• CSS Zen Garden
• MezzoBlue

The logic of the site layout though, loads the ads first, then the site, so we appeared to be down.

In today's world (with CSS) the order of things in the layout is one thing, and the order of elements in the actual HTML is wholly another thing. You (meaning any webdesigner who reads this, not parent) should put the stuff into the markup in order of importance.

Here's a good site with CSS resources, and here's an example of what can be done with CSS.

Why would you ever be hired with that attitude? The fact is, all the IE moaning is a BIG MYTH.

While I agree with you that one has to make pages work with IE; allow me to say that you are talking out of your ass.

My sites always have the proper DOCTYPE, they have to in order to validate (I validate all pages prior to posting). Sometimes _having_ a doctype makes IE show new bugs.

Frankly, unless you're building some fancy site with the absolute latest CSS and Javascript features, IE will render your page *just fine*.

Your sites are obviously _very_ basic with minimal design. The moment you pass into medium complexity you start running into problems. I don't use any Javascript.

Yet, why exactly do you need to be using 32-bit images on your page? It's quite easy (and beneficial for download speeds) to get by with 8-bit images.

We need 32 bit images in order to have variable alpha. If you don't have variable alpha, then you can't have any image without including the background it's going to be over.

Including the background in your image completely negates the advantage of declaring colors in the CSS. Normally I could change the background of my site by changing one line, now I have to change all images as well.

There's other reasons why you might want a variable alpha, say to have transparent graphics or windows (the navigation on the left). Which are not heavy as the image is just 2 x 2 pixels and weighs in at a hundred bytes or so. In fact there are tons of creative uses that people haven't even thought of.

and tell me why they play such an integral part of your development process that you cannot find a way around them.

You're missing the point entirely. The idea is to allow the designer do her thing (so I can get a beautiful unique website) and then translate that to CSS, compromising wherever needed; not just half-assedly add some design to a text document.

However, when one tries to do anything remotely interesting, Explorer completely dies on you.

The best solution I found so far is using IE conditionals and serving IE a different and sometimes strange CSS file. In the end I usually figure it out reasonably, but it takes ridiculous amounts of effort and the site is never as good as it's Safari/ Mozilla /Opera counterpart.

If you want an example you can look at my current site (I linked it above too), I've only starting the IE fixing, you can see the ugly IE file with filters: and other weird junk so that PNGs show up with alpha: here. So far it's taking a serious effort and even when finished won't look as well anyway. Look at it under both IE and then Firefox.

Quite funny :)

I noticed that Blogger has done a complete redesign using standards (backed by many of the Big Names in the buzzing site-design industry, including my favourite)

I remember A List Apart did an 'Extreme Makeover' on our beloved frontpage, wondering wether we'll ever get to see it happen! (must be a hell-uv-a job...)

There are cases where an unattributed or can be used, such as when abstracting with child selectors, but yes, you're indeed correct in saying that <em> and other such semantic elements mean much more than generic tags.

(I think we're talking in different languages, because as a designer I was thinking of red as an error color for admin purposes only, which would never make it onto the body of the public page itself.) :D

Comprehensive, informal, and somewhat long-winded roadmap for anyone who has heard about web standards, thinks they might want web standards, but doesn't know where to start.

<h1>

I would call the "pixellated" retro look exemplified by k10k boxy. That look seems to be very in in web design right now. I see a lot of sites using the combination of straight lines and tiny text (example 1, example 2).

It's easy to see why the boxy look has become so popular: it's simple to build an attractive, professional-looking site in this style using free or default templates. HTML and CSS naturally lend themselves to boxy interfaces. Building a site that uses a lot of curved shapes in its design is harder and can look like crap if you don't know what you're doing.

this hack really does show the power of IE...ie6 was released 2+ years ago. Most of these css3 features weren't even finalised as w3c guidelines when ie6 was released.

I call BS on that. Even features which IE did implement, it couldn't get right. For example, IE's implementation of getElementById is extremely flawed. It also doesn't support lots of things, like the CSS Width property, properly. (IE treats width as min-width, and doesn't provide real width support.)

This isn't a testament to IE's scalability, hackability, or another ability you might come up with. It's just another reason why it's a piss-poor browser. We need additional code to make IE properly understand standards; that's atrocious.

Also, if you want to see how IE stacks up against a browser like Firefox, I have made a quick comparison between the two. Its a little old now, and it was using Firebird 0.7 (not Firefox), but it's still a valid comparison. IE 6 chokes horribly on CSS, plain & simple.

Mezzoblue has a post that pretty much answers this question perfectly. Dave Shea outlines which pre-installed and downloadable browsers your website should be supporting.

Build and test your CSS in the most advanced browser available before testing in others, not after. If you build a site testing in a broken browser, your code begins relying on the broken rendering of that browser. When it comes time to test in a more standards-compliant browser, you will be frustrated when that browser renders it improperly. Instead, start from perfection and then hack for the less able browsers. Your code will be more standards-compliant from the start, and you won't have to hack as much to support other browsers. Today, this means Mozilla, Safari, or Opera.

(From the CSS Crib Sheet)

You see, if you design for IE flaws and the market shifts, you'll have designed yourself into a corner.

You're also hindering the adoption of alternative browsers because "it only works in IE."

Also, IE-only sites tend to be inaccessible, and inaccessible sites may have nasty consequences, like ADA lawsuits.

It takes only marginally more effort to create a cross platform site.

Designing with Web Standards is an excellent book on cross platform design.

And for those not convinced of CSS's inherent flexibility, there's the CSS Zen Garden. Cross platform, any browser. (Yes, even Lynx.)

The fact of the matter is that you will need to do browser workarounds, even if you only design for IE. The IE 5 box model is wrong and there are a lot of people using that browser. So just get the standard right and then go back and compensate for broken browsers.

And yes, I know that I'm not stnading on very solid ground with the way SongBuddy looks in IE. I'm more interested in getting the features going than in supporting a browser I haven't used in quite some time.

Dave Shea at the 'zengarden talked about the browser upgrade campaign and its successes and failings - basically it came across as negative. Dave suggests MOSe - Mozilla, Opera, Safari enhancements - to highlight the strengths of modern, standards-compliant browsers, and I'd tend to agree.

Still, the idea of building sites that tell people they're using a 2nd-rate product when better, free products are available does appeal...;)

I like how the top design, tranquille, on the list shows a picture of a torii gate, a symbol of shintoism (not Zen Buddhism).

There is a project called CSSZenGarden. It's a collection of different stylesheets which modify the same content according to contributor's tastes and design abilities. There are few dozens of examples, and amongst them there is the Slashdot interface, albeit not a perfect copy as shows in the article.

You can view all the available CSS designs here. Same content, different stylesheet. Just shows off all the wonderful things that's possible with CSS standards-based page creation.

"HTML is dead." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Go to MezzoBlue and participate in some discussion. The site owner, Dave Shea, just did the Mozilla website redesign (note the new Bugzilla logo he did - much better) - if you get on alright there you might be able to help out and get your designs some worldwide exposure :)

I do admire the css Zen Garden, and also David Shea's other online design work. But not so much for the pretty graphics (nice, but not of extreme interest to an artistically challenged dweeb like me) as the way it promotes usable and accessible web content. Most web pages put a priority on presentation over content. Being a technical writer, I have exactly the opposite priority. Shea is doing a good job of promoting web design techniques that let you have it both ways.

Hehe, Slashdot's not really a shining example of web accessibility, but it's a good place to ask for help none-the-less.

The first stops for help (as someone's no doubt pointed out already) should be:

Section 508

Mark Pilgrim's excellent "Dive Into Accessibility"

The W3C's web accessibility guide

The UK Disabled Rights Commission website, paying particular attention to the superb Interactive Demos (e.g. Inaccessible Website Demo).

Buy these books:

Constructing Accessible Websites

Building Accessible Websites

Oh, and a copy of Zeldman's Designing With Web Standards for good measure.

Write your pages using validating HTML or XHTML, and style the pages using CSS.

Validate your webpages using the W3C Validator and your CSS using the W3C CSS Validator. Use Watchfire's Bobby to validate your pages, and aim for AAA rating (also note that Bobby has some helpful hints when it does find errors).

Other excellent resources (in no particular order):

http://www.webstandards.org/
http://www.w3.org/WAI/References/QuickTips/
http://www.mezzoblue.com/
http://www.meyerweb.com/
http://www.simplebits.com/
http://www.whatdoiknow.org/
http://www.stopdesign.com/

And therein lies my whole problem with this. Accessibility compliant pages are damn ugly. Almost uniformly.

That's not true at all.

And so what we end up doing is take a visual medium and break it for those with different needs.

Accessible websites don't have to be ugly. What makes you think that they do?