Håkon Responds to Questions About CSS and...

You submitted questions for Håkon Wium Lie on June 20. Today we have his answers, not only to the (+5 moderated) questions we sent him, but to a bunch of others he thought would also be interesting to answer.

 > Where... by bcat24
 >
 > Do you think the W3C development process is too slow? I know that
 > you guys want everything to be perfect, but it seems to take far
 > longer than necessary. CSS 3 shows promise and I wouldn't want it
 > to die a slow death in standardization.

No, I don't think W3C is too slow. W3C isn't the bottleneck, browsers are. The dominant browser on the web hasn't been updated for years, and it doesn't make sense for specifications to get too far ahead. Rather, the CSS Working Group in W3C has focused on specification maintenance and achieving interoperability between implementations. This work is not so glamorous and some people — even within W3C — would prefer if they concentrate on new specifications. However, I think the focus on interoperability (which has resulted in CSS 2.1) has been crucial to the success of CSS.

CSS3 is a set of specifications that are developed more or less independently of each other. The best way to push a specification forward is to implement it. In the past year, we've seen some encouraging CSS3 implementations come along. For example, Mozilla supports multi-column layouts, Opera supports media queries, Prince supports cross-references and Safari supports borders and backgrounds. A few years from now, I think a select group of CSS3 modules will be interoperably supported in all browsers.

 > Why is CSS such a good idea but a pain to use?
 > by rar
 >
 > CSS is clearly very useful for separating style from content. But
 > apparently people tend to have problems when using it for layouts.
 > Would you say this is because people have not yet understood how to
 > properly do layout in CSS, or is it CSS that is lacking in this
 > area? What can be done to improve the situation? --- Would the web
 > benefit from HTML and CSS being complemented with some kind of
 > "layout language"?

I think layout and style should be tackled by the same language and the two are intertwined. Trying to split the two is like splitting the HTML specification in two, one specification describing inline elements and the other describing block elements. It's not worth the effort.

I think CSS is capable of describing beautiful and scalable layouts. The CSS Zen Garden has been a eye-opening showcase of what is possible today. If MS IE had supported CSS tables, another set of layouts would have been possible. So, there is still lots of potential in the existing CSS specifications which should be the next milestone. Beyond that, the CSS Working Group has started work on a new CSS3 module for advanced layout. Feedback is welcome.

 > CSS Evolution!
 > by eieken
 >
 > Is the wave of webpages designed completely in CSS what you
 > intially intended when you came up with CSS? Do you see that
 > changing? Is that good or bad?

I saw a clear need for a web style sheet language when proposing CSS in 1994. I also wanted CSS to fully describe the presentation of a web pages -- not just add some styling. All in all, I think it has turned out quite well. It has taken longer than I expected, but the scale -- due to the growth of the web -- is more than anyone could imagine.

I used "I" too many times in the previous paragraph. It's important to realize that CSS is a community effort rather that one man's work. Bert Bos joined me early and we worked out the initial designs on a whiteboard during the summer of 1995. The www-style mailing lists and the W3C CSS Working Group have also been crucial in ensuring the success of CSS.

If you're interested in the history of web style sheets, you'll find plenty of material in my PhD thesis on the subject.

 > Two questions (cut to 1.5 by editor Roblimo)
 > by Dolda2000

 > If you were allowed (perhaps by court order, which wouldn't be
 > unthinkable) to force Microsoft to do one (1) change in Internet
 > Explorer, what would that be?

I would force them to support one (1) single web page before shipping IE7, namely Acid2. By using a tiny amount of resources to get Acid2 right, Microsoft can save web designers and users endless amounts of frustration in the future. It would also be an honorable thing to do. This is what Microsoft's W3C representative wrote in 1998:

Microsoft has a deep commitment to working with the W3C on HTML and CSS. We have the first commercial implementation of HTML4, we were the first vendor anywhere to implement even portions of CSS, and we have put a tremendous amount of energy into seeing CSS mature to Level 2. We are still committed to complete implementations of the Recommendations of the W3C in this area (CSS and HTML and the DOM).

May I have one (1) more change? Please? Then I would make IE7 support TrueType downloadable fonts. Microsoft's record in fonts isn't that bad. They made their core fonts available for anyone to use, and IE supports downloadable fonts. Unfortunately, only the proprietary EOT format is supported. A few lines of code would be sufficient to support zipped TrueType fonts as well, and this would unleash a new wave of typography on the web. (To protect yourself, make sure you use a browser where author style sheets can be turned off — Shift-G in Opera). > As a bonus question: What do you think of Slashdot's CSS? ;)

The new design looks great! The style sheets behind the scene are more complex than what the average web page needs. But, we wouldn't expect anything average from Slashdot, would we?

> 6)  Opera
 > by taskforce
 >
 > Opera 9.0 seems to offer a lot of decent additions to Opera's
 > standards pool. How satisfied are you personally with the work the
 > team has done on implementing standards, and is there anything in
 > there you feel is superflous and anything you would have preferred
 > to see which wasn't in there?

I'm very proud of the standards support in Opera 9. Acid2 is an obvious favorite of mine and seeing that smiley face makes me very happy.

Among the more experimental features is support for Audio in HTML5. Web applications can now make sounds in a sensible way! Combined with the canvas element, developers can create Flash-like content without resorting to a proprietary format.

Having support for Bittorrent is also great. From a technical point of view, it makes much sense. Also, it's a political statement of sorts.

During the development of Opera9. Geir Ivarsøy, who founded Opera with Jon von Tetzchner, died after fighting cancer for years. Geir did a spectacular initial CSS implementation in Opera, thus convincing me to join the company. In music, the 9th is legendary. Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner and Mahler all did 9 symphonies. Opera 9 was Geir's last symphony.

> Included styles, aliases
 > by Spy der Mann
 >
 > I always wanted to have "included" substyles or "aliases" in my
 > CSS definition, to save redundancy.
 >
 > (For includes)
 >
 >     .class1 { color:#ff0000; }
 >     .class2 { background-color:#ffffff; }
 >     .class3 { include:class1,class2;font-weight:bold; }
 >
 > (For aliases)
 >
 >     @alias color1 #ff0000;
 >     @alias color2 #ffffff;
 >     @alias default_image url('/img/image1.jpg');
 >
 >     .class1 { color:color1; }
 >     .class2 { background-image:default_image;background-color:co lor2; }
 >
 > This way we could change colors or images for a whole webpage
 > by editing a reduced number of lines.
 >
 > Had you considered any of these ideas in the past? If so,
 > why were they rejected?

Yes, aliases and constants have been considered. As David Wheeler noted, "Any problem in computer science can be solved with another layer of indirection."

CSS is already an indirection. Instead of putting properties and values directly on elements, it associates properties and values with selectors. What you (and others) are proposing is to add another layer of indirection. By doing so, one could possible write shorter, more manageable style sheets. However, there are also some downsides. It requires a new syntactic construct (@alias) and implementations must be able to remember a list of aliases. What if aliases are defined in one style sheet and referenced in another -- should that work? If so, what if the first style sheet isn't available?

For CSS1, the downsides of aliases were considered more significant than the benefits.

 > Definition of pixel
 > by Sara Chan
 >
 > The word pixel meant "picture element", but CSS redefined it
 >to mean something quite different (a particular subtended angle
 >of view [w3.org]). This causes confusion: CSS pixels are not pixels.
 >(Indeed, I have seen misinformed comments on Slashdot due to
 >that confusion.)
 >
 > My question is this: why call the subtended angle a "pixel", instead of
 >something else (e.g. "subangle")? If CSS wanted to use the subtended
 >angle for something, that is fine, but calling it a pixel seems to follow
 >the approach of Humpty Dumpty "When I use a word, it means just
 >what I choose it to mean".

In most cases, a CSS pixel will be equal to a device pixel. But, as you point out, the definition of a CSS pixel will sometimes be different. For example, on a laser printer, one CSS pixel can be equal to 3x3 device pixels to avoid printing illegibly small text and images. I don't recall anyone ever proposing another name for it. Subangle? Personally, I think most people would prefer the pragmatic "px" to the non-intuitive "sa".

> Vertical CSS Support
 > by infestedsenses
 >
 > As a developer who works with CSS every day, I find one
 > complication that continues to bother me in my daily work.
 > Support for CSS has always been good on the horizontal scope,
 > but vertical positioning has always been quite complicated.
 > Alone the procedure to affix a footer to the bottom of a screen
 > in dependance of the amount of content is unnecessarily difficult,
 > spawning hackish solutions such as "footerStickAlt"
 > [themaninblue.com]. Centering an object in the dead center of a
 > page also requires strange procedures such as this one [wpdfd.com],
 > which still aren't ideal (try making the viewport really small). The old
 > table method provided much easier methods for this. What are your
 > thoughts on this and do you see improvement following in future
 > CSS revisions?

Indeed, the CSS formatting model allows more control horizontally than vertically. This is due to (typically) having a known width, but an unknown height. As such, the height is harder to deal with.

However, CSS2 fixed positioning allows you to place content relative to the viewport (which is CSS-speak for window) instead of the document. For example, by setting position: fixed; bottom: 0 on an element, it will stick to the bottom. This works in Opera, Safari and Mozilla-based browsers. IE6 doesn't support it, however. It remains to be seen if IE7 will support it.

> About Microsoft...
 > by Chabil Ha'
 >
 > With MS's next browser release (IE 7), you mentioned in other
 > interviews that their decision to not supprt CSS2 was more a political
 > decision than a mechanical one. Aside from their obvious desire to
 > dominate the world, what politics do you think are in play that make
 > them not want to conform to the standard, and what do you think would
 > change that landscape so that they would have some initiative to
 > fully support it?

Great question. It's quite clear that Microsoft has the resources and talent to support CSS2 fully in IE and that plenty of people have reminded them why this is important. So, why don't they do it? The fundamental reason, I believe, is that standards don't benefit monopolists. Accepted, well-functioning, standards lower the barrier of entry to a market, and is therefore a threat to a monopolist.

From that perspective, it makes sense to leave CSS2 half-implemented. You can claim support (and many journalists will believe you), and you also ensure that no-one can use the unimplemented (or worse: buggily implemented) features of the standard. The only way to change the equation is to remind Microsoft how embarrassing it is to offer a sub-standard browser. And to use better browsers.

Another reason for not making a IE too good is that it will compete with Windows. A modern browser is an application platform; the combination of HTML, JavaScript, CSS and DOM allows developers to target the web instead of Windows, Linux, or Mac.

> From linvir
 > How long since you last used Linux?

I'm using it right now. Ubuntu on a IBM Thinkpad X41 is the environment I live in. Ubuntu rocks -- especially with Opera on top! (And Emacs right underneath.)

 > From Rob T Firefly (844560)
 > Why the curly brackets?

The initial CSS proposal didn't use them, instead relying on newlines to separate statements. TimBL didn't really like that and I therefore borrowed the curly braces from the C programming language. The syntax for comments came along as well. I think it works quite well.

 > why not XML?
 > by slashdot.org
 > Simple question (hopefully simple answer ;-)): why
 > did you not use XML?

The simple answer is that the development of CSS preceded XML by a year or so. However, if XML had been available, would we have used it? Probably not. And I suspect Brendan Eich of JavaScript fame would answer the same way on behalf of his language.

XML is a great syntax for structured data, but not suitable for all languages. Still, I think the SGML-based syntax for the FOSI style sheet language.

 > Padding
 > by Anonymous Coward

 > Why was the decision made to make padding apply outside
 > of the width of a 'box', rather than inside, which would seem
 > to make more sense?

It makes sense in some situations, but not in others. For example, when a child element is set to width: 100%, I don't think it should cover the padding of its parent. The box-sizing property in CSS3 addresses this issue. Ideally, the issue should have been addressed earlier, though.

> by nuzak

 > why not float:

 > DSSSL had this sort of thing solved before HTML even existed,
 > let alone CSS. But scheme is too scary and icky, and the W3C
 > believes in a principle of least power, so CSS has to be fully declarative,
 > static, and crippled until patched later.

You're wrong about DSSSL -- it didn't support floating text (as in having text wrap around images) at all. And the DSSSL specification only became publically available around 1996, years after HTML.

> by MagicM

 > How frustrating is it to write a specification knowing
 > that you're at the browser vendors' mercy?

That's part of the game. I don't think any specification has a birthright to be fully supported by all browsers. There should be healthy competition between different specifications. I believe simple, author-friendly specifications will prevail in this environment.

Microformats are another way of developing new formats. Instead of having to convince browser vendors to support your favorite specification, microformats add semantics to HTML through the CLASS attribute. And style it with CSS.

> New standards
 > by iamsure
 >
 > In your work at Opera, you have clearly paved a path that includes
 > going beyond the W3C standards. Whether it is WhatWG
 > implementations, or new functionality specific to Opera (2dgame),
 > you are pushing into new territory. Can you explain why W3C isn't
 > sufficient, and why efforts at Opera to expand beyond the standards
 > differ from Microsoft's embrace/extend model?

It's a fair question. The WhatWG was set up when it seemed as if W3C didn't care much about browsers anymore. That has definitely changed and work items from WhatWG are now channeled into W3C (e.g., XMLHttpRequest).

At Opera, we sometimes include experimental features before they have been standardized. When this happens they are labeled as such, but we still try to document them. For example, we support some Opera-only CSS properties for XML. If these features gain traction, we are happy to work with other organizations to standardize them. If they don't become popular, the features will most likely disappear.

 > Beyond HTML
 > by pr1000

 > How far can CSS be taken beyond the web page--that is,
 > have generalized or non-web specific features for such things
 > as page formatting or type setting? Do you plan/wish/hope to
 > take it farther than it currently is?

Yes, I think it's possible to take CSS further in several directions. I'm eager to see CSS being used in paper-based publishing and I joined the board of YesLogic — which makes the Prince XML to PDF converter — to make sure they added my favorite features. Bert and I used Prince to generate PDF from HTML and CSS sources for the third edition of our book. W3C just published a new Working Draft which describes features for printing, e.g., footnotes, cross-references, and even generated indexes.

For mobile units, I think Media Queries will be important. For example, they can express that large images should not be sent to mobile devices.

Another great opportunity for CSS is Web Applications. Just like documents, applications need to be styled and CSS is an intrinsic component of AJAX. The "AJAX" name sounds great, but allow me to propose a few alternate spellings that I find more accurate:

• AJACX: Asynchronous JavaScript, CSS and XMLHttpRequest
• ADJACS: Asynchronous DOM, JavaScript and CSS
• ADHJACS: Asynchronous DOM, HTML, JavaScript and CSS
• AJAHCS: Asynchronous JavaScript, HTML and CSS
• AJACS: Asynchronous JavaScript, HTML and CSS

Opera, Mozilla and Safari developers are collaborating in the WHAT WG and in W3C to make sure we have interoperable specifications for AJAX. I mean, ADHJACS.

 > by crush

 > Is the difficulty of producing a layout that consists of
 > three or more columns of equal height justification for
 > adding some new feature to the specification to make this easier?

I don't think so. CSS2 defines a table layout that can be used for this purpose. The problem is, and I'm repeating myself here, that the dominant browser doesn't support it. Adding yet more features to the specification wouldn't help.

 > How come, we um, lie?

Right. My name is, um, a bit troublesome to pronounce in English. But I'm a nice person who generally tells the truth. I often tell non-Norwegians that my first name is pronounced "howcome". That's close, but not quite. It does make for a great email address like howcome@opera.com, though.

So I may be a Lie, but I'm just a little white one :-)

Comments

Incredible read..

[GonzoTech]

.. one would have to ask, "What is CSS, and do we think it's involved in these discusions some how?"

Re:Incredible read..

[ebrusky]

I'd like to thank Håkon Wium Lie, the responses were a good read and one of the few I've read all the way through. I've been working with CSS for a while and have one main question for every other web programmer out there. When are we going to stop being limited by IE? When I design a webpage I make sure that it functions properly in Opera and FireFox. Then I open up IE, shut my eyes, and run screaming from the room(usually right into the closed door.) Simple effects and a basic CSS driven menu system leave IE page renders in ruins. I then have to spend more timing trying to get it to work in IE then I spent writing the entire page.(I guess if I was paid hourly this wouldn't be such a big problem.) What I would really like to see is a stand against MS:IE until they get their act together. Every single web programmer that reads this should stop supporting IE. Will that happen: probably not. But you could do one thing that might help the cause; add a script that ID's IE and then tell the user that they are missing out on functionallity because they are using a faulty/old web browser. You can then supply the user with a link to Opera, Firefox or Safari. From what I have seen, IE 7 is supposed to have better support for CSS but that does nothing for someone that is using anything older then XP. Since MS, in its unending desire to part us from our money, decided that they aren't going to allow anyone, that isn't using Win XP, to use the latest version of IE. If we can take advantage of this lack of support we may be able to get a much larger migration away from IE.

Re:Incredible read..

[stoborrobots]

Then I open up IE, shut my eyes, and run screaming from the room(usually right into the closed door.) Simple effects and a basic CSS driven menu system leave IE page renders in ruins. I then have to spend more timing trying to get it to work in IE then I spent writing the entire page.

Have you tried/considered using something like Dean Edwards's IE7 javascript library? It was designed to alleviate the scary situation you describe there... If you have tried it, what makes you not use it?

From the IE7 overview:

The lightweight script is a single-line inclusion in your HTML/XML document. No alteration of your original markup is necessary. Neither do you have to alter your CSS.

I'm blind

[gEvil (beta)]

Okay, it looks like I am certifiably blind. Time to go adjust some font sizes...

Re:I'm blind

[doti]

yep, the default font size for monospaced text in firefox is too small (12, while proportional font is 14, IIRC)

Re:I'm blind

[Anonymous Coward]

The fonts are much more readable with Opera...

Re:I'm blind

[Anonymous Coward]

yep, the default font size for monospaced text in firefox is too small (12, while proportional font is 14, IIRC)

One of the reasons IE is much better than FF!

Re:I'm blind

[hackstraw]

yep, the default font size for monospaced text in firefox is too small (12, while proportional font is 14, IIRC)

Flamebait and troll warning!

Maybe slashdot should have reported this story _before_ screwing up the site with their CSS overhaul.

Is it just me? Or are the default sans-serifed fonts difficult to read? Is it just me, or does the blockquoted text seem unimportant and again difficult to read because its a light grey color? Is it just me, or does the fixed font in this article look like crap? Is it just me, or does the previous standard of quoting the parent's post in italics make it impossible to read/difficult to tell its even in italics.

No, I'm not interested in downloading and dealing with firefox plus tons of extensions and hacks just to view one website. I don't know what the sans-serifed font is that they use, but its much more difficult to read than any other san-serifed font page I've read (see Wikipedia or CNN for example).

Its sad, but as it stands today, slashdot is one of the best things in my life, and I'm about to ban the site if it does not become easier to read soon. Kudos for fixing the WAYYYY to the right score, and the "read more" link, but all in all I really dislike the redesign. I liked it at first glance, but after a few minutes it just does not appeal to me anymore.

Hopefully the two or three people that read this before this post lands at -1 will get something to change....

Re:I'm blind

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's just you. Moron...

Re:I'm blind

[DrSkwid]

I set Minimum Font size : 16

It screws up a few sites (such as Digg) but on the whole, it makes the web much more readable.

Re:I'm blind

[sketerpot]

If you're using Firefox, try pressing Ctrl-+ to increase the font size in the current tab when you visit Slashdot. It's annoying, but it works for me.

Re:I'm blind

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with everything you said, except for the part about Slashdot being one of the best things in your life (wtf? :-))

Is there a way to read this site in the old style? I found it much easier to navigate and easier on the eyes.

Re:I'm blind

[Bogtha]

The default font size is fine. It's Slashdot's new style that did this. If it used the default font size, you'd be able to read it. Slashdot's stylesheets make <pre> elements 93% smaller than the parent element font size. And the parent element font size is already 82% smaller than your default font size. This means Slashdot's stylesheet is essentially saying: "You know that font size you have configured to be readable in your browser? Well I think this text should be 25% smaller than that."

Re:I'm blind

[drinkypoo]

It never ceases to amaze me that the slashdot managership will completely ignore the userbase. Everyone is complaining about the disrespectful font sizes, no one is speaking up in support of some idiotic fucking around with our fonts, yet they just leave the situation as-is eternally. Or so it seems. And then they probably wonder why so few people are willing to subscribe. I get to see dupes early? Whoop de shit! Give me something that actually benefits me...

Re:I'm blind

[The MAZZTer]

Actually it's 13 on my Firefox... I set it to 14 and it looks alot better. Thanks for the suggestion! :)

Re:I'm blind

[Arker]

Best I can see they *don't* specify a font for the monospaced stuff. Which is a GOOD thing. Damn tiresome with all these silly webpages insisting on using unreadable font/size combinations because some pretentious idiot thinks he's an artiste.

So if you're having problems reading that, the problem is in your browser, not the page. There should be a setting for default fonts. Yours is set too small. Change it.

Re:I'm blind

[Anonymous Coward]

... and it would take all of one minute to fix the problem, from downloading the live copy of the CSS to uploading the changed version.

Re:I'm blind

[Raenex]

I set Minimum Font size : 16

Me too. I use Mozilla, and read Slashdot using my own background colors & fonts with Javascript turned off. Works wonderfully (no Javascript kills the ads, too).

Actually, I'm quite pleased that Slashdot is fully functional with all the above changes.

I feel so torn.

[Rob T Firefly]

Should I be pleased that he answered my question and did so reasonably, or disappointed that that particular beloved gripe of mine now has a reasonable answer from Himself floating around?

Re:I feel so torn.

[Praedon]

Your question not only got featured, but it also came first as the shortest question, yet straight to the point. That in itself gives you victory!

Re:I feel so torn.

[Rob T Firefly]

To be fair, that's only because he lopped some grumbling off the end.

Re:I feel so torn.

[Billosaur]

To be fair, that's only because he lopped some grumbling off the end.

Maybe the grumbling didn't render properly...

Re:I feel so torn.

[Spy der Mann]

I agree with you. However something confused me in my particular question. He said aliases disadvantages seemed greater than their advantages in CSS1.

So this means that they weren't even considered in CSS2? Now we have @imports, i think that if whole styles conflicts are resolved with these, aliases could, too. Oh well. At least I'm glad he did answer.

Re:I feel so torn.

[Bogtha]

He said aliases disadvantages seemed greater than their advantages in CSS1.

So this means that they weren't even considered in CSS2?

No, I think it means most people realised through practical experience with CSS 1 that such things really weren't as necessary as you first imagine.

Now we have @imports, i think that if whole styles conflicts are resolved with these, aliases could, too.

@import has always been part of CSS, right from CSS 1. He was saying that things like @import make aliases more complex than you first think.

And yes, they probably could spend a bit of time and get aliases working nicely with @import etc. But that would raise the complexity of implementations for very little gain. I'm sure that if every other thing about CSS was perfect, they'd get around to aliases, but at the moment, there's much more important things for them to be working on, both the W3C that are writing the specs and the browser developers who are implementing them.

Re:I feel so torn.

[NickFitz]

.grumbling { display: none; }

Re:I feel so torn.

[stripe42]

I like the concept of includes. To achieve that, I have been using some server-side code (in a limited fashion) to generate my style sheets.

Re:I feel so torn.

[Praedon]

Ahh.. Ok, your smallest question has lost first place now. It currently holds second. : )

Re: I feel so torn.

[Dolda2000]

I read your question in the original submission article as well, and I still don't understand it (in fact, I was surprised that it was featured and answered). Why would you be so concerned with something so immaterial as the curly brackets? Maybe I'm stupid, but I just don't see the problem.

Re:I feel so torn.

[normal_guy]

Or: .grumbling { visibility: hidden; }

Re:I feel so torn.

[NickFitz]

Ah, but then the grumbling would still occupy space in the page, leaving white space to clue people in that the grumbling existed. By using display: none; the page is laid out as if the grumbling was removed from the document entirely, and nobody knows it's there unless they view the source, or use Lynx or Netscape 3 or something.

I'm off to get myself a life now ;-)

Formatting

[keyne9]

The formatting for the questions is absolutely horrid.

Re:Formatting

[Anonymous Coward]

that's CSS for ya. ;)

Re:Formatting

[linvir]

Horizontal scrollbar madness! Won't somebody please think of the 800x600 users?!

Re:Formatting

[rGauntlet]

It's funny to think that the CSS is hosed for the interview with the guy who "invented" it...

Guess the redesign didn't think of that..

Re:Formatting

[Ant P.]

Dunno about you, but I've had a horizontal scrollbar on the page itself for about a week.

Re:Formatting

[Sawmill]

LOL!

I like the cute embedded quotes you see on other sites. Eye candy, sure... Makes sense to the wondering eye, absolutely.. Difficult to implement, not so much.

New layout looks great guys, and the the CSS rendering of the layout screams on Firefox vs. the old based layout... But, there are some QC issues here and there, and the

entry is one of them..

Semantics and layout are BOTH our friend...

C

Ubuntu

[linvir]

> From linvir
> How long since you last used Linux?
I'm using it right now. Ubuntu on a IBM Thinkpad X41 is the environment I live in. Ubuntu rocks -- especially with Opera on top! (And Emacs right underneath.)

Does that mean that you really use Microsoft's corefonts? Even though Bitstream Vera is free and kicks mscorefont's ass?

Re:Ubuntu

[pneumatus]

The DejaVu fonts packages have superseeded Bitstream providing a much larger character set than the Gnome developed counterpart.

Re:Ubuntu

[omeg]

As graphic designer, I have to disagree with you on that. Verdana, to me, seems like a better web font than Bitstream Vera. Our favorite free font has just a few kerning issues; Verdana seems to be just a little more fine-tuned for screen display. Fonts on the web should adhere to a couple of design principles that make them more easier to read, such as using a high x-height (the height of the lowercase x letter, and thus the general height of all lowercase letters) and a large punch size (the amount of space in, for example, the middle of an o). Bitstream Vera has a few difficulties in punch size, too, simply using different sizes in different letters.

I'm certain that the DejaVu project will fix these small issues in time, however. In the meantime, I'll personally happily use Lucida Sans as my sans-serif web font rather than Verdana OR Bitstream Vera. :)

Re:Ubuntu

[bheer]

> Even though Bitstream Vera is free and kicks mscorefont's ass?

Care to back that up? Or is more reflexive OSS-boosting, like "Dia kicks Visio's ass!"?

Re:Ubuntu

[linvir]

Care to back that up? Or is more reflexive OSS-boosting, like "Dia kicks Visio's ass!"?

Wow, how original. Someone on Slashdot attempting to call someone else on software bias. I'm typing this reply with my nose, by the way, as the shock caused to me by your incredible insight caused my arms to fall off. This is in spite of you being half an hour late with this point, and beaten out by someone who actually had something interesting to say about the matter instead of grinding some axe about "reflexive OSS-boosting".

Anyways, it's just my subjective opinion. I find that fonts look worse in Windows than in Linux. If you want balance: the rendering of the rest of the interface seems much shinier in Windows. But I find the fonts ugly compared to bitstream (+ variants).

Re:Ubuntu

[DarkSarin]

Give me choice or give me something else!

I happen to like serif fonts. The serif provides just enough extra information to allow for slightly faster processing speed--until you drop down to rather small font sizes. Then you NEED to go to sans.

I also happen to like mono. Would please someone give me a decent mono serif font (just tell me the name, and whether or not it is free)?

FWIW, one of the biggest weaknesses in webdesign is user-font dependence. It should be easy to fix with CSS--allow specification of a font directory, and then have the browser auto download and install the font. The font would need to go through virus scan, of course, but the method would by default prevent any executable binary from being downloaded. THis could be done seamlessly and transparently, but I have to admit to some ignorance about what security holes this would open. Anyone care to address this?

Re:Ubuntu

[CRCulver]

Even though Bitstream Vera is free and kicks mscorefont's ass?

No, they don't kick MS Corefont's ass, because the Bitstream Fonts contain little more than the characters from the old ISO-8859 characters, while the MS fonts at least cover other Unicode blocks such as Latin Extended-A and Cyrillic. If you're doing web design where conceivably content can show up in non-Latin scripts (even if its just a single word in a sea of English text), then Bitstream Vera doesn't cut it.

One should avoid Bitstream Vera, but the answer isn't going back to MS Corefonts, it's using the DejaVu fonts. These are extensions of Vera that already support many international scripts, with all the goodness of Bitstream-designed typography in the Basic Latin and Latin Supplement blocks. It looks as if the DejaVu project might even succeed in making a free alternative to Arial Unicode MS (with mono and serif versions too).

Re:Ubuntu

[Bogtha]

Fonts on the web should adhere to a couple of design principles that make them more easier to read, such as using a high x-height

This is precisely the thing that makes Verdana such a lousy font for the web.

Don't get me wrong, I totally understand what you are saying about the x-height and how it makes text more readable, but the thing about the web is that you can't know that the reader is actually using that font. Sure, you can suggest Verdana, but if they don't have it on their system, or they prefer another font, the x-height you assume to be in use usually ends up being much smaller. This means that what is a perfectly readable font size for you, using Verdana, may end up being totally unreadable for somebody else, because even if the same font size is in use, the lowercase letters all appear much smaller.

Verdana is a nice font. I actually have it as my browser default. But when it comes to web designers specifying Verdana, it causes more trouble than it's worth. Maybe if they learnt to stay away from messing with the font size it would be okay, but there are precious few web designers who do that.

Re:Ubuntu

[Bogtha]

FWIW, one of the biggest weaknesses in webdesign is user-font dependence. It should be easy to fix with CSS

Yes, which is why downloadable fonts were added to CSS in 1998. But nobody bothered implementing it, so it was taken out again.

Re:Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty please do spend the time to report the small problems which keep you from using DejaVu on
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/enter_bug.cgi?product =DejaVu

As you wrote the DejaVu project will fix these small issues in time, but this time depends on informed people like graphic designers reporting what needs to be fixed exactly.

Re:Ubuntu

[TwilightSentry]

...that make them more easier to read...

Some of we peopleses does wishes which yous canning uses bestest grammerish withs theses nicerest fonteses.

Re:Ubuntu

[renoX]

>The serif provides just enough extra information to allow for slightly faster processing speed

That's a myth, you have the rights to prefer serif fonts, no need to propagate this myth which has been disproved since.

Re:Ubuntu

[pavon]

You might try looking up the default solaris console font, and seeing if there is a True Type version. I don't know the name, but I do recall that it was serif, and that many people preferred it over the linux console fonts.

Re:Ubuntu

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

That's a myth, you have the rights to prefer serif fonts, no need to propagate this myth which has been disproved since.

lIlIlIlIlIlIlIlIlIlIlIIllIlll

rnmrnmrnmrnmmrnrnmmrn

vvvvwvwvwvvvwvwvwwwvwv

Re:Ubuntu

[Yer Mom]

Luxi Mono? (also available at your local XFree86 mirror :)

Re:Ubuntu

[DarkSarin]

Thank you. Very elegant.

mnnmnmrnmrnmrnmrnmnrnmrnmrnmrnmrnrmnrmnrmn

vwvwvwvwvwvvwvwvwv
IlIlIlIlIlIlIlIlIl1

Re:Ubuntu

[exizldelfuego]

You're absolutely right -- one of the biggest weaknesses in web design is user-font dependence. But the situation is really quite a bit more complicated than simply throwing a font into a directory and linking to it. Now, once the issue was settled, that's exactly how it should work. Getting to that point is quite a bit more difficult though.

Most people get by with whatever is the default on their OS, never looking to see what else is out there. But lo and behold, if you did a little bit of looking, you'd find some exquisite examples of typeface design. You'd also find that they can cost a fair bit of money, generally in the $50-$100 range. And what do you get for that money, a 100KB file maybe? In a world where people regularly toss about pirated copy of movies in the GB range, what's to stop people from just emailing that typeface to everyone in their address list? Or better yet, post it on their website to make it available to the world at large?

How much work and effort goes into tweaking a typeface to get it just so? Does it take a week? A year? 25 years?

Here's a pretty good discussion on the nuances involved: Typeblography: Fonts on the Web

Re:Incredibl[y hard to] read..

[Len]

.. one would have to ask, "What is CSS, and do we think it's involved in these discusions some how?"

What I have to ask is, "Is CSS to blame for the tiny text in boxes with horizontal scrollbars?"

Strike that

[linvir]

What a load of crap that comment is. Of course you use corefonts. It's the de-facto standard, it's cross platform, and it's what most people use. You pretty much don't have any other choice.

ADHJACS

[Carewolf]

I just don't think that name has the same hype potential..

I like the man's thinking

[Two9A]

AJACS definitely seems to apply better than the AJAX that everyone calls it at the moment: when was the last time you saw XML being thrown over xmlhttprequest, as opposed to plain HTML/CSS?

I also definitely agree that it's the browser developers (particularly Microsoft) who are dragging their heels on CSS support. Heck, my copy of Firefox 1.5 fails Acid2 hard; fortunately, I know that work is being done there to gain compliance before too long.

As for printing with CSS, I'm a convert. The last document I wrote that wasn't HTML/CSS was my college final project report, about 2 years ago (that was in TeX); since then, everything I've done has been HTML, styled for screen and print. Heck, even my resume's HTML.

Re:I like the man's thinking

[jimktrains]

For a program I wrote (content managment), I sent XML over the XMLHttpRequest, I've never seen a reson to to jsut send data and have the JS parse it....

Re:I like the man's thinking

[XO]

I'd be surprised if you see ACID2 even come close to rendering in Firefox before 2.0.

Re:I like the man's thinking

[brickballs]

> when was the last time you saw XML being thrown over xmlhttprequest, as opposed to plain HTML/CSS?

last week at work; I'm on vacation this week. =)

Re:I like the man's thinking

[WedgeTalon]

Well, it does pass in a branch version. Not sure when it's going to be merged to trunk though.

For reference

Re:I like the man's thinking

[pVoid]

I've never sent anything but XML. Once you get a grip on how to parse it on client side, the server side being XML is so much more useful.

Re:I like the man's thinking

[sonamchauhan]

> Once you get a grip on how to parse it on client side...

Curious: what's your favored method for Client-side XML parsing? :-)

Is Javascript libraries, or high-version browsers + XSLT?

Re:I like the man's thinking

[pVoid]

Stuff like this:

var list = oRequest.responseXML.firstChild.getElementsByTagNa me( 'entry' );
//...
list[i].data
list[i].getAttribute('typ e')

I use this to return very 'tabular' XML data on pages. I have a super lightweight library that handles all Ajax calls to the server. The results page always sends either a <success> node filled with data, or an <error> filled with error information.

The main advantage is really debugging and readability. I can check the XML pages with browser and see if it's sending out the proper data. Other advantages including using existing XML software, like for example SQL Server's SELECT... FOR XML clause which dumps a query out in XML format, or using XMLDOM objects to format out data.

Re:I like the man's thinking

[Bogtha]

Er, you don't have to parse it. Every browser that supports XMLHttpRequest parses the XML automatically with native code, you don't have to do a thing.

Re:I like the man's thinking

[sonamchauhan]

Thanks - I've only passed back HTML so far, so your and the other poster's response was useful.

Bit of a non answer on the Vertical CSS front...

[cargoculture]

The ability to use position:fixed was not exactly what people were talking about.

Acid2

[Odin_Tiger]

Acid2 link from article is dead. You can find the test here.

Re:Acid2

[Billosaur]

Someone mod the parent up "Informative"; the link in the article was definitely not right.

And now having run the test in IE and Firefox, I can honestly say that while they both failed it, Firefox looked a hell of a lot more like the test image than IE did. I think he was right -- standards don't mean much to monopolists.

Re:Acid2

[IWannaBeAnAC]

Interesting, latest Konqueror in KDE 3.5 passes it! Impressive!

Re:Acid2

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera 9 does too, of course.

What about the other browsers that fail ACID2?

[MSFanBoi2]

Only IE was singled out (of course), but there are not many browsers that pass ACID2...

Yes, I'm aware Safari does and Opera 9, but Firefox sure the heck doesn't (not unless you wanna roll your own copy anyways)...

So the two biggest installs of browsers don't pass ACID2, but it's fine to only mention the fact that IE fails it. Especially when Microsoft said that IE 7's isn't tested to pass ACID2.

Re:What about the other browsers that fail ACID2?

[Dan Ost]

I believe it's been fixed in the Gecko main tree, but
no released version of Firefox has used it yet.

Does anyone know what version of Firefox is slated to
use the corrected Gecko?

Re:What about the other browsers that fail ACID2?

[Red Alastor]

3.0 unfortunately. Firefox 2.0 will still use Gecko 1.8

Re:What about the other browsers that fail ACID2?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the difference between FF and IE failing the ACID2 test is the degree of failure. I, for instance, created a web page that validated CSS+XHTML 1.0 Strict and it was zero effort to make it look the same in Opera, FireFox and Safari. IE, on the other hand, could not even do it. I had to give up on IE and leave the visitor a note to upgrade to IE7. Obviously this wasn't a commercial site where no money was lost if IE users were turned down. This is what Microsoft does, it creates a division in an open forum of the Internet because it just doesn't want to play or be friends with the other kids unless they give them some candy. And, sadly, many of MS users think that it's okay and support that behavior.

Re:What about the other browsers that fail ACID2?

[mabhatter654]

ACID2 isn't really as important as properly rendering in the first place.. All ACID2 test for is proper handling of improper or edgy code... It doesn't show what good code written to spec is supposed to look like. What's really needed are testing pages that implement one feature at a time for all the browsers to test against. Then add complex pages that include lots of "Real world" interactions to test what it should actually look like.

The other thing I'd suggest would be Micro-specs... I caught that in another post and I've had a similar idea. Why don't they work with browser makers to "chop up" the specs into point releases that focus on just a few features at a time? The idea of massive specs was cute in theory, but they are just too complex to implement all at once. For instance to get more people up to CSS 2.1, why not create CSS 1.5 that has all the commonly implemented things in it.. then we could at least use that and know everybody had it. The granddaddy of all messed up specs is SVG. That spec needs to be chopped down terribly. It includes tons of stuff nobody really needs and everybody who implements it is at different stages on different features.... Using any 1 implementation is cool.. but for cross-browser work it's terrible. Chop it down to a smaller spec, like opera is going for the mobile implementation because it's so much smaller. then add the extra features like sockets and video and such back in later.

Re:What about the other browsers that fail ACID2?

[Quixotic]

the difference being that Microsoft said ACID2 is not a goal they'll strive towards, whereas for Firefox, ACID2 is a planned milestone.

Re:What about the other browsers that fail ACID2?

[Zak3056]

Only IE was singled out (of course), but there are not many browsers that pass ACID2...

Come on, he was responding to the question "If you could make Microsoft do something to IE, what would it be?" That hardly seems an appropriate place to mention other browsers, don't you think?

Re:What about the other browsers that fail ACID2?

[GlassHeart]

ACID2 isn't really as important as properly rendering in the first place.. All ACID2 test for is proper handling of improper or edgy code... It doesn't show what good code written to spec is supposed to look like. What's really needed are testing pages that implement one feature at a time for all the browsers to test against.

...which is why we have the W3C test suite. Your underestimation of Acid2 is also typical of somebody who has never worked on a browser. One of the worst (it's difficult, tedious, and you feel like a moron doing it) parts of the job is to find out and mimic what IE does with bad markup, because the real world is full of such, so if IE passes Acid2 there will be that much less for everybody else to do. Note also that while it's obviously easy for IE to do whatever it does with a piece of bad markup, trying to remain compatible on a browser with a different parser or renderer may not be easy at all.

Why don't they work with browser makers to "chop up" the specs into point releases that focus on just a few features at a time?

Because truly competing browser vendors do not synchronize their development schedules. They pick the features that they think their customers will want most, and implement those first. Eventually, you hope they'll all arrive at CSS 2.1 someday, but they'll get there through different paths.

Also, each browser is likely to have unique architectural weaknesses that makes it very hard to implement a portion of the spec. While the vendors all know that a substantial rewrite is inevitable, they're not going to do that kind of fix until they're ready to.

Re:What about the other browsers that fail ACID2?

[Bogtha]

All ACID2 test for is proper handling of improper or edgy code... It doesn't show what good code written to spec is supposed to look like.

Please do not spread this myth. It is simply not true. If you had actually read the Acid2 technical guide instead of relying on Slashdot hearsay, you would know this. From a previous comment of mine:

Have you actually bothered to read the Acid2 page? Because I hear this repeated all the time, and it's downright misleading.

There is a checklist of about a dozen things the Acid2 page tests. Incorrect code is just one of them. It is necessary to include incorrect code in a test like this. How else are you going to check whether a browser follows the CSS error handling rules?

It's incorrect code, sure, but it's incorrect code that has a defined rendering according to the CSS specifications. It's not something a compliant browser would trip up on. There is a correct way to parse the incorrect code, and the Acid2 page tests to see if a browser parses it correctly - among many other things it tests for.

Where are you guys getting this idea that the Acid2 test is all about error handling? It's a very small part of the test, but plenty of Slashdotters seem convinced that the test revolves around broken code and nothing else. Was there a weekly meeting I missed wher eyou all got this myth drilled into your heads?

Re:What about the other browsers that fail ACID2?

[porneL]

No standarised/interoperable error handling is what haunts HTML. That's the real-world problem that Acid2 is trying to solve.

CSS2.1 is the "1.5" you're talking about. RTFA! It removes/changes all features of CSS2 that weren't interoperable in current browsers.

CSS is modular and can be implemented smaller chunks thanks to back- and forward-compatible error handling (it's not perfect though, but better error handling is considered doomed because of vendors dishonesty/sloppiness)

You mean chopping SVG like in SVG Tiny W3C Recommendation? Duh...

Re:What about the other browsers that fail ACID2?

[AnyoneEB]

After clicking a few of the CSS3 links in the article, it looks like CSS3 is broken up into modules, which may depend on other modules. I guess then a browser could claim to fully support CSS3 module X even if it does not support all of CSS3.

Names.

[Poromenos1]

The "AJAX" name sounds great, but allow me to propose a few alternate spellings that I find more accurate: AJACX: Asynchronous JavaScript, CSS and XMLHttpRequest ADJACS: Asynchronous DOM, JavaScript and CSS ADHJACS: Asynchronous DOM, HTML, JavaScript and CSS AJAHCS: Asynchronous JavaScript, HTML and CSS AJACS: Asynchronous JavaScript, HTML and CSS "GNU/AJAX"? :P

Let's try again.

[Poromenos1]

> The "AJAX" name sounds great, but allow me to propose a few alternate spellings that I find more accurate:
> AJACX: Asynchronous JavaScript, CSS and XMLHttpRequest
> ADJACS: Asynchronous DOM, JavaScript and CSS
> ADHJACS: Asynchronous DOM, HTML, JavaScript and CSS
> AJAHCS: Asynchronous JavaScript, HTML and CSS
> AJACS: Asynchronous JavaScript, HTML and CSS

"GNU/AJAX"? :P

Re:Let's try again.

[bwintx]

"GNU/AJAX"? :P

With lavender and lemon extracts, no less.

Great job!

[bcat24]

Thanks for taking the time to answer my question. The article was definitely an interesting read. Good job, Håkon.

PS: Why don't you put up a sound clip of how you pronounce your name?

Re:Great job!

[Anonymous Coward]

Since he advocates ubuntu, maybe they can throw it in as an easter egg, kinda like how the ol' redhat used the Linus soundbyte ("Hi, my name is Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux as Linux" I think it was) to test if your sound works. :)

I know he's sincere in that most of the issues have been addressed in CSS2 or CSS3 and it's the browsers' fault for not implementing it yet...but it does sound a lot like the ol' "It's fixed in CVS" thing, doesn't it?

Re:Great job!

[laffer1]

Good idea, but it won't help much. Linus did it with Linux and I still here people say "LieNIX" instead of "Linux". I had difficulty pronoucing his name when I got the first edition of CSS: Design for the Web. (great book) Around my friends i just started calling it the Bert and Ernie book. Looking back its not the nicest reference, but it sure did reflect how i felt about the backwards z-index numbering in opera 4. I stopped supporting opera explicitly then and to this day never use it.

Emacs Virtual Machine

[pavon]

I'm using it right now. Ubuntu on a IBM Thinkpad X41 is the environment I live in. Ubuntu rocks -- especially with Opera on top! (And Emacs right underneath.)

So you are running Opera on top of Ubuntu and Ubuntu on top of Emacs? That's my kind of Emacs user!

Re:Emacs Virtual Machine

[bcat24]

I know what you mean. Emacs would be a great operating system if I could only find the text editor.

Re:Emacs Virtual Machine

[Anonymous Coward]

Better yet, that's my kind of threesome!

Verticality

[Billosaur]

Indeed, the CSS formatting model allows more control horizontally than vertically. This is due to (typically) having a known width, but an unknown height. As such, the height is harder to deal with.

However, CSS2 fixed positioning allows you to place content relative to the viewport (which is CSS-speak for window) instead of the document. For example, by setting position: fixed; bottom: 0 on an element, it will stick to the bottom. This works in Opera, Safari and Mozilla-based browsers. IE6 doesn't support it, however. It remains to be seen if IE7 will support it.

That's an interesting point, given the profusion of video monitor sizes and their associated resolutions (800X600, 1024X768, etc.), and the variety of browsers and the explosion of toolbars now available. How do you define "height" in a browser? There's certainly a fixed viewing area based on all the above factors, but it's so varied from user to user that it makes it hard to come up with a good idea of how big something should be on the page. You can use relative sizes, but that only works if the content is scalable; fixed sizes are good for a range of resolutions, but as resolution increases it tends to make things become squashed vertically.

It's the bane of web development -- how scalable do you make your content? Do you care that much about old browsers and how things render? How many people out there are realistically still using IE4 and Netscape 4?

Re:Verticality

[miyako]

What I generally do when I'm developing a site is this:
When I first start development, I generally keep everything in plain text with no graphics and no style sheet. Once I'm done with the initial development, I'll go through and add in the CSS and get the layout looking good, but I keep a copy of the old plaintext look. I test to make sure that my design works with the latest browsers. Then I go back and test to see what older browsers display the page properly. If I get to a browser that doesn't render the page properly, then I add it to a list of "unsupported browsers". When someone visits the main page using an unsupported browser, they will get a screen along the lines of "This page may not render properly with your current browser. You can view a plaintext version of the page here, or you can try to continue with the main page here. If you want to be sure to see the page the way it was intended, then please consider upgrading to a newer browser". I usually include a link to the firefox page as well.
The real problem that I have is with IE6. I realize that for most people, if they are still using IE then they simply aren't going to use anything else and will probably just go to a different page instead of downloading a browser just to use my page. On the other hand it's usually more trouble to get things looking right in IE6 than to get things looking right in even old versions of Firefox and Opera.
I have no idea how IE7 handles things, since as far as I know there is no way to run it under Wine. (Luckily?) It will be another several years before it has enough market share to really make a difference.

Re:Verticality

[infestedsenses]

On the other hand it's usually more trouble to get things looking right in IE6 than to get things looking right in even old versions of Firefox and Opera.

True, styling for IE6 is a pain. However, since reading "On Having Layout" I've been having a noticeably easier time. It's a bit longer but it's definately worth the read. I've been able to cut down on crazy browser hacks significantly since learning about the height: 1% trick.

Oh, and getting IE 5.5 compatibility is basically just styling for IE6 with a few added box model hacks, so I usually spend the extra 5 minutes it takes at the end to get it done. Makes your major customer -- whose corporate IT infrastructure still specifies IE5.5 as a standard -- happy, too. Yes, they still exist.

Re:Verticality

[CAIMLAS]

Personally, I just format my pages to be able to run at 8x6 (on the low end) and ideally at 1024x768. This seems to be what most people do. Generally speaking, any design that looks decent at 1024x768 is going to at least work at a higher resolution, if not look decent. I tend to just use relative size variables (to the window size) as opposed to absolute, and it's "good enough" for me. It seems to me to be what most CSS designs do, and from my impression of things, it's going to be good enough for 90% of web browsers (as I imagine very few people consistently use a resolution over, say, 1280x1024, as 17" and sometimes 19" monitors are now the norm).

But then, I'm not much of a web developer; mostly just an IT student with a muse.

Re: Plan B

[Zaphod2016]

No worries. I am sure you will figure out a way to attack his answer in the coming months.

OT: I for one am happy to sign a "CSS tables NOW in IE6/7" petition.

Shades of RMS!

[Anonymous Coward]

The "AJAX" name sounds great, but allow me to propose a few alternate spellings that I find more accurate:

I sincerely hope he was kidding about this - if not, it sounds like a Stallmanesque attempt at renaming something that already has a name.

Jesus, why didn't he just insist that everybody calling "CSS/AJAX"

Re:Shades of RMS!

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me, but that should be Gnu/CSS/Ajax.

RMS

Not just a flash replacement

[Anonymous Coward]

Combined with the canvas element, developers can create Flash-like content without resorting to a proprietary format.

What excites me the most is that the canvas element has the ability to return the data currently displayed in it. If we can get some javascript together to let the user draw in the box, we'll have a web-based solution to all of the signature capture stuff we've been struggling with. If you want to get a signature on the web you basically have to generate a PDF, use a PDF plugin to let the customer sign the PDF, then use a separate file upload page so that the user can browse around, figure out where the signed PDF got saved, and upload the whole PDF again. There are plenty of less business-oriented uses as well, such as just letting the user draw and save stuff, as well as its stated purpose of presenting animation and generated graphics to the user.

Personally, to me this has been microsoft's biggest failing and proof that a monopoly does not always produce the best product. The Tablet PC version of IE should have had a handwriting capture element that would upload a GIF or something based on what was written there. Why deal with shitty handwriting recognition when Journal could have directly interfaed with the web?

Re:Not just a flash replacement

[outcast36]

I like the ideas of uploading hand-drawn images, but I hate the idea of uploading an image of a signature to indicate authorization. I would much prefer a cryptographic signature. If you want to collect a signature on the web this is really the way that you should be doing it. It's even legally binding in the U.S. (thank you Mr. Clinton)

Re:Not just a flash replacement

[xbasic]

You should use SVG for that. And if you have a touch screen, you could sign directly on screen and send it back to the server.

IE Development Resources

[Space_Soldier]

I remember watching a Channel9 video. If my memory does not deceive me, Microsoft have 4-6 people working on IE7, and most of their work was to fix bugs, mostly security, and change the interface. With so few resources given to IE after it has been neglected for many years, one cannot expect Microsoft to provide a decent browser. Based on the fixes (CSS, transparent PNG, etc.), IE is moving into the right direction. However, as we all know, they tied it with Windows releases. Assuming that IE8 will be at the same standards support or better than Opera/Firefox and further assuming that the next version of Windows is released 3-5 years after Longhorn (Vista), IE8 is very far away. For a web designer, which I am, IE is a hell. For programmers, think of sending a compiler valid code, and instead of generating the executable properly, it generates rubbish, or it whines that proper syntax is invalid, or it generates 2+2=5.

Re:IE Development Resources

[MSFanBoi2]

This is quite simply wrong.

Re:IE Development Resources

[Space_Soldier]

Do you care to elaborate on how it is wrong?

Re:IE Development Resources

[Ant P.]

It's not wrong at all. You can tell IE to do 3+3 in CSS and it _will_ give you 3 as the answer.

Re:IE Development Resources

[ccr65]

Actually I believe that Safari got it's ACID2 compliance almost solely from the efforts of David Hyatt. I really don't think the number of developers is the problem.

Re:IE Development Resources

[Anonymous Coward]

That Microsoft only has 4-6 people working on IE speaks not for what they can accomplish when it comes to providing a decent browser. It speaks instead to what they want or feeel they need to accomplish. Putting 10 more engineers on the project could be done for around $2 million / yr. Ballmer wipes his ass with that kind of money (mind you it's a large ass, but still).

Microsoft has the resources, they just don't care about making their browser better. Only creating the perception that they are so that people won't switch.

Re:IE Development Resources

[Pyrosz]

I think it may be up to web developers (me, you, and the other guy) to use the newest standards that are supported by the other browsers (Opera, Firefox, Safari) and to stop supporting IE to any extent other than basic page layouts. I know its often dictated by business to support IE, and you still would be, but not to the extent that it has been. Telling people that a site will be better in a alternate browser may be a good choice in this as well.

Re:IE Development Resources

[Locomorto]

But! Comrade, 2+2 IS 5!

No no no - must be recursive.

[douglips]

You must use a recursive acronym, like this:

ADHJACS: ADHJACS Doesn't Help, Just Amplifies Confusion and Silliness

Good luck with your quest, Don. Say hi to Sancho for me.

Re:No no no - must be recursive.

[smittyoneeach]

Sonofa...

I was all set to triumphantly play the "Bet you didn't know this acronym" card, and all I got was a lousy "Error parsing XML Data":

http://www.fjax.net/

I am teh s/_/x0rz.

The Acid Test

[dmjones500]

The link in the answers seems to be broken. The page can be found here: http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html

Re:Incredibl[y hard to] read..

[Tackhead]

> > .. one would have to ask, "What is CSS, and do we think it's involved in these discusions some how?"
>
> What I have to ask is, "Is CSS to blame for the tiny text in boxes with horizontal scrollbars?"

No, that's the new Slashdot layout. But the guy who knows about CSS thinks it's cool, so suck it up with the rest of us.

Maybe the Slashdot layout's choice of the Microsoft system font, probably the least-readable sans-serif font of all, is part of a nefarious GNU/plot (heh, didn't see that pun coming! :) to get those of us stuck on Windows to finally migrate, or to learn how to use Greasemonkey)

(I cheated - I went to low-bandwidth, which gives me the old serif font back, and hit Ctrl+ on every page to bump the size back up to the old font size. Yeah, it's a kludge, but it's great motivation to learn Greasemonkey. )

Of course I can...

[Otter]

I often tell non-Norwegians that my first name is pronounced "howcome". That's close, but not quite.

I understand that people can get aggravated trying to get others to pronounce their names, but it always comes across as incredibly condescending when they do that "You can't really pronounce my name but here's a comical substitute!" thing. (The most egregious was in Clinton's first campaign, when George Stephanopolous was telling people to pronounce his last name "stuffinenvelopes".)

Especially in a multicultural country, people are used to learning unfamiliar names. If I can handle Thai, Cambodian or Hindi names, I can deal with a damn Norwegian!

Re:Of course I can...

[rastakid]

Don't be too anal about some things in life and take them for granted. Perhaps not everyone is as gifted as you are in pronouncing foreign names?

Re:Of course I can...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate the pretentious attitude of CSS hardcore-users. Today it seems like someone is always judging websites not based on the website, but how well your CSS was coded. As a professional web/design/developer, I could not care less if your site support's proper bullet-spacing due to IE, and Firefox conflicting CSS rendering. As long as it gets the job done.

Sure, I like CSS, I like the idea. But I am getting the same feeling, about the internet as a I do when I see white kids dressed like 50 cent rapping on the corner of their barn.

I am so aggrivated with the internet lately, nutralization, RIAA, myspace?, AOL, I am starting to hate what its turning into :\

/rant - i hope this is compliant?

Re:Of course I can...

[SpinJaunt]

Point taken, although very few people are good with there native language let alone a "foreign" one.

Re:Of course I can...

[Eberlin]

You're a bit on the special side, I guess. Most people in passing wouldn't really care to get your name right. Giving them a novelty pronunciation would probably get them to remember you more than you spending a few extra minutes correcting them, pronouncing things with accents they aren't accustumed to, and in the end you'll come to a "How Come" compromise anyway.

My last name gets butchered enough times that I don't really mind anymore. With him, I'm guessing his purpose and his message are so much more important than his name that it doesn't matter if they get his name absolutely right as long as they get what he's about correctly.

Lastly, it'll be tough to correct people on their pronunciation over plaintext communication. I'm sure he'd get a soundbyte if it worried him so much.

Re:Of course I can...

[rblum]

Point taken, although very few people are good with there native language let alone a "foreign" one.

Way to prove your point! ;)

Re:Of course I can...

[vidarh]

My first name is "Vidar". Looks simple enough doesn't it? Despite that I've yet to come across a single person from an English-speaking country who's tried to repeat my name to me and who got it right even after multiple tries with me repeating it to them.

Håkon Vium Lie is significantly more difficult for non-Scandinavians than most Norwegian names, as well.

At some point you get tired of trying to get people to get it right, and settle for something "close enough".

I'd bet the same is true for your pronounciation of quite a few of the names you "can handle".

Re: Plan B

[bcat24]

You know, somebody really should make an online petition for display: table support in IE 7. I'd sign it in a heartbeat.

Good questions, godawful formatting

[rucs_hack]

Why oh why is some of the text in the topic text so small as to be unreadable? (for the sight disadvantaged or blind drunk (um, not admitting anything, or anything)).

There is no reason to reduce font size below comfortably readable except stupidity

Re:Good questions, godawful formatting

[JazzLad]

I think you answered your own question.

-
Karma=bad
I care=no

Re:Good questions, godawful formatting

[Anonymous Coward]

Because your web browser isn't configured right.

Audio in HTML5?

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one who hates flash and doesn't visit web sites that use audio?

Goodfish isn't free-as-in-freedom either.

[jbn-o]

In his news.com editorial, Lie recommends people download Larabie's "Goodfish" family even though the licensing for Goodfish isn't any better than Microsoft's Corefonts, thus a major portion of his editorial makes little sense.

Goodfish faces many of the same practical problems Microsoft's Corefonts families do—incomplete sets of glyphs for certain sets of characters making the font families not so useful or downright useless for some users. Goodfish's primary distribution site (myfonts.com) also wants you to register with them before downloading gratis copies of the font families. This registration is framed as though it's a bonus for the user: "Because MyFonts.com's products are all downloadable, our customers often find that they need to return at a later date to download their fonts again." but if the fonts were free software, I could get a replacement copy from anyone, even my next-door neighbor or some online repository which means I benefit from mirroring and I can get the font I want without the hassle of registration.

Goodfish is only licensed for 1-5 users to use the fonts (and it's not clear how Larabie would enforce this in the US without a license manager).

Furthermore, the hypocrisy of the last part of his essay cannot be overstated: all proprietary software distributors are monopolists. When you get the proprietary Opera browser, you are prohibited from fixing the bugs, improving it, or sharing your improved copy with others. The Opera 9 license even prohibits running the program on certain devices (again, without a license manager it's not clear that this portion of their license is enforcible in the US). If you want any changes, you have to go to the proprietor--the monopolist--for those changes. There is no other place to go because everybody else is prohibited from helping you. Opera won't distribute to you a copy of the Opera browser source code under a free software license to allow any of this activity.

Yet here's a monopolist decrying the state of affairs for fonts on the basis that Microsoft's fonts don't grant the user sufficient freedom.

I appreciate the bad position the user is in with fonts on the web, but the way out is not to build a dependence on fonts you can't use, inspect, share, and modify anywhere you want for any purpose. The way out is to find free software fonts or make them, build on them to improve them, use them, and distribute the free font with the freedoms intact so the community benefits. Some free software fonts have been named in this /. thread, complete with links.

Re:Goodfish isn't free-as-in-freedom either.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with most of your comment, except that you are confusing a wannabe monopolist (most businesses would like to become monopolists in the area in which they trade) with a convicted monopolist (Microsoft in this case). This is an important difference that weakens the second part of your comment.

Re:Goodfish isn't free-as-in-freedom either.

[howcome]

Lie recommends people download Larabie's "Goodfish" familyrabie's "Goodfish" family

No, I don't recommend people download Goodfish. Rather, I recommend that browsers are modified so that they can download Goodfish and other TrueType fonts.

Goodfish's primary distribution site (myfonts.com) also wants you to register

You'll find Goodfish in the "larabie-straight" package in Ubuntu. No need to register. Just "apt-get install larabie-straight".

Goodfish is only licensed for 1-5 users to use the fonts

I have never seen this restriction in any of my Goodfish files. Where did you find it?

Goodfish faces many of the same practical problems Microsoft's Corefonts families doincomplete sets of glyphs for certain sets of characters making the font families not so useful or downright useless for some users.

No single font family will be all things to all people. But, by supporting web fonts, browsers will make it possible to point to a suitable font -- one that looks right or one that has the right unicode coverage.

Cheers,

-h&kon

A solution looking for a problem?

[Penguin Programmer]

However, CSS2 fixed positioning allows you to place content relative to the viewport (which is CSS-speak for window) instead of the document. For example, by setting position: fixed; bottom: 0 on an element, it will stick to the bottom. This works in Opera, Safari and Mozilla-based browsers. IE6 doesn't support it, however. It remains to be seen if IE7 will support it.

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding this comment, but I think this fails to solve the common case. Most often, we would like to have a footer that is at the bottom of the viewport when the content is smaller than the viewport, but always moves with the bottom of the content. The way I understand it, this sticks your footer permanently to the bottom of the viewport, which is not as useful IMO.

That said, I seem to recall finding a hack to make CSS do exactly what I have described (footer at the bottom of the viewport or content, whichever is lower). Unfortunately, I don't remember what the hack was.

Re:A solution looking for a problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

The first place to look for CSS layout solutions is css-discuss.

The only other comment I have is that Mozilla supporting columned HTML is a lie. It supports that about as well as IE 6 supports CSS2. The javascript-only css-multi-column does a better job.

Speed of new specs

[truthsearch]

Good interview, but I have to disagree with this: "The dominant browser on the web hasn't been updated for years, and it doesn't make sense for specifications to get too far ahead."

Create the best design for the problems at hand and publish specifications. It's up to developers / vendors to implement it at whatever speed they wish. If the monopoly has no incentive to conform to standards there's no reason to wait for them to catch up. The rest of the world can move on and smart users can choose to switch.

Re:Speed of new specs

[daveb]

If the monopoly has no incentive to conform to standards there's no reason to wait for them to catch up. The rest of the world can move on and smart users can choose to switch.

I *think* his point was that the rest of the world doesn't bother - so there's problems getting too far ahead

It baffles me why IE is still dominant when it wasn't THAT long ago people were happily changing browsers based on what worked best. I can understand how MS got to the dominant positioning - bundling + decent product (and for its day it was). But I really don't understand why it is still dominant. I don't think bundling+lazyness fully explain that.

Re:Speed of new specs

[truthsearch]

I don't know why it's still so dominant either with so many tech-savvy people promoting firefox to their friends and relatives.

But back to the standards, I really don't think there's such a thing as "getting too far ahead". A standard is a standard. Implement it if and when you feel like it. Physical things are invented first, then widely used later. If someone comes up with a great idea, write it down and try to get organized group approval. Hopefully someone will later implement it.

Re:Speed of new specs

[UpnAtom]

How long did it take for MS to maximise IE usage?

There haven't been THAT many people recommending FF to a big enough audience for long enough.

Besides, Opera is far better. ;)

Re:Of course you can't :))

[Anonymous Coward]

See? It's Stephanopoulos, not Stephanopolous :)

When I find some name difficult to pronounce or remember, it usually helps me to analyze the grammar of names in the target language.

There was a time when these English-Speaker-Confusing suffixes in Greek surnames actually meant something. Today, the son of "bar foo" is usually named "baz foo", but surnames weren't always so standardized, and many times they came out as indications of the father's name with a suffix that meant "the son of" . -opoulos (and -idis) mean just that, so the result would be something like "baz baropoulos" (baz, the son of bar). Other times, surnames were just puns. A famous example is Theodoros Kolokotronis, whose surname literally means "rock-ass".

The same thing apparently happens in english, for example with the -son prefix (johnson = the son of john). Several surname suffixes also have the property that they once were rather localized, so the surname of a person gives an indication of the geographical area of his/her ancestors heritage.

OT: awfull CSS (pre)

[belg4mit]

What's with turning pre into an iframe for 3 or 4 characters of scrolling?!
I mean, if you want to do this in some way to save readers from wide comments,
fine. But apply a class to the article contents to undo the god-awfulness.

It's a defense mechanism.

[oneiros27]

... when someone calls and asks for 'Mister (something not even close to the correct pronunciation)', I can correctly answer 'nope', and hang up.

Of course, it helps that there are only 8 people in the US with my last name, and it has silent character and accents which aren't typically reflected in most American data collection.

Table Layout?

[teraph]

Is the difficulty of producing a layout that consists of three or more columns of equal height justification for adding some new feature to the specification to make this easier?

I don't think so. CSS2 defines a table layout that can be used for this purpose...

Wait, we're supposed to use tables if we want to do that? Isn't one of the talking points of CSS that we get away from using tables for layout?

Re:Table Layout?

[POWRSURG]

The talking point is to not use table tags for non-tabular data. Tabular layout on the other hands is something that many would still like to have, and is a part of CSS2 (display: table/table-row/table-cell/etc.). There have been literally thousands of articles written on how to achieve a table-like column structure using CSS that would never have been written if IE had support for any of the table related values for the display attribute.

Re:Table Layout?

[IMarvinTPA]

The tag is bad. This is structure being used for layout.

A <div> tag that acts as a table is good. This is layout.

<div class='overContainer'>
  <div class='containerRow>
  <div class='contentColumn1'>Links</div>
  <div class='contentColumn2'>Content</div>
  <div class='contentColumn3'>Ads</div>
  </div>
  <div class='containerRow'>
  <div class='footer3Colspanner'>Site Footer</div>
  </div>
</div>

Should theoretically make a great 3 column lay out.
I admit, it was one of the first things I tried when learning CSS. Confused the hell out of me when I couldn't figure out what I had done wrong. (Following the recommendation and expecting it to work.)

Your choices for display include: inline | block | list-item | run-in | inline-block | table | inline-table | table-row-group | table-header-group | table-footer-group | table-row | table-column-group | table-column | table-cell | table-caption | none | inherit

IMarv

Re:Table Layout?

[teraph]

However, unless I'm deeply misreading it, the original question wasn't about tables or tabular data. It was about having a layout with three or more columns that share the same height. The questioner never mentions tables.

Re:Table Layout?

[Bogtha]

Isn't one of the talking points of CSS that we get away from using tables for layout?

You are confusing two different types of table. The HTML <table> element describes a relationship across multiple axes. The CSS display: table-* property values describe a grid-like layout scheme.

These are totally different things at totally different conceptual levels. There are only two things that link them - the word "table" and the fact that the usual method of presenting information that is related across two axes is in a grid.

Please do not confuse HTML tables with CSS tables. They are totally different things, and the arguments against "table layouts" are specifically targeted at HTML tables and not CSS tables.

Re:Table Layout?

[NickFitz]

It was about having a layout with three or more columns that share the same height.

The point of the answer is that you can achieve this using display: table; and display: table-cell; without having to have irrelevant tabular markup in your document.

Re:Table Layout?

[leoPetr]

The talking point of CSS is that you separate the semantics/tag structure of the content from the presentation of the content. HTML tables should only be used for table-like data, not to separate your logo from your navbar. display:table; in CSS, OTOH, is just a way to achieve grid-like formatting. Doesn't work in IE6, though.

Re:Table Layout?

[rar]

Thanks Håkon for answering my quesition!;
Also for me asking about people having trouble with CSS layout he mentioned CSS tables as a "solution". While proper support for display: table would counter people shouting "html-tables were better for layout than divs", wouldn't that still be a step backward?

Please do not confuse HTML tables with CSS tables. They are totally different things, and the arguments against "table layouts" are specifically targeted at HTML tables and not CSS tables.

I'm not so sure. I've seen people arguing that a proper div-based layout degrades better for small screens and non-visual devices. I think those arguments would still hold true for divs with display: table. I still think new layout sematics are needed, embedded in CSS or not.

I like the idea of an 'advanced layout' module in CSS3, but the suggested syntax (describing layout in a string that represents a template) looks a bit like a hack...

Re:Table Layout?

[teraph]

Thank you for the clarification.

I'm still reading the spec, but it looks to me like the message is "Go ahead and use tables to design your sites, just don't use the HTML table tags because those mean something specific."

But using the CSS table display values still means we're using tables and rows, now they're just attached to different tags. So the mark-up will still have tags whose only purpose is to make a visual design work (i.e., tags to define tables and rows). That seems to go against the idea of seperating content and form.

That is, We'll have this:

<div class="table">
  <div class="row">
    <div id="one">Box 1</div>
    <div id="two">Box 2</div>
    <div id="three">Box 3</div>
    <div id="four">Box 4</div>
  </div>
</div>

Rather than this:

<div id="one">Box 1</div>
<div id="two">Box 2</div>
<div id="three">Box 3</div>
<div id="four">Box 4</div>

Isn't the latter more desirable, since it doesn't use tags that only exist to affect the design of the page?

Re:Table Layout?

[teraph]

Ah.

Shouldn't the elements that are display: table-cell be contained in a display: table-row element?

Re:Table Layout?

[crush]

Yup, that's what I meant.

Re:Table Layout?

[NickFitz]

Quite possibly. Unfortunately my clients tend to be primarily concerned about IE 6 Win, which means I've let myelf get a bit rusty with the nicer stuff that only works in proper browsers. Time for a holiday doing nothing but reading W3C specs... or maybe not :-)

Re:Incredibl[y hard to] read..

[Effika]

I just used some CSS in my userContent.css file to make the font a legible one.

Conspiracy theories aside, it did prompt me to learn more about how Gecko browsers work.

Onto the article: I did feel disappointed in the responses; they didn't go very deep. I expected less glossing over and more details.

Zipped Truetype Fonts?

[spectecjr]

Er... there are licensing issues here. Not every TTF file you can get your hands on is licensed for generalized distribution. That's why MS has their embedding format - to respect the copyright of the font creators.

Re:Zipped Truetype Fonts?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some TTF files are, though, so it kind of sucks that you can't use them, doesn't it?

Re:Zipped Truetype Fonts?

[spectecjr]

Just tell the server to send the TTF file as gzip'd data, and include it using the @FONT-FACE tag.

New Question...

[Rev Snow]

If CSS (and SlashDot's use of it) is so
great, why am I being forced to horizontally
scroll every one of these questions?

Re:New Question...

[riegel]

Looks great in Safari. Not sure the code is bad possibly just the rendering.

Re:New Question...

[Fallingcow]

Up your font size or shrink your browser window. Anything formatted with the "pre" tag gets a horizontal scroll bar when it overflows to the right, rather than wrapping. Not such a bad idea, since the whole idea of the pre tag is to avoid screwing with the text as much as possible, and inserting line breaks might mess something up.

The problem is that some dumbass used pre tags instead of something that mades sense for a fucking quote, like, oh, I don't know, the "blockquote" tag? It's not like it's listed right at the bottom of the comment submission form on this site or anything *eye roll*

What browser do you use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Curious: I don't have to in Firefox or Epiphany.

Re:What browser do you use?

[Rev Snow]

Mozilla on a Solaris box.

My assumption is that the browser
matters less than my local setting
that I prefer a minimum font size
of 18 pixels. ( I don't read
flyspeck.)

Still, isn't the ability to adapt
to such local preferences one of
the main alleged benefits of CSS?
Something somewhere's not getting
the job done.

Re:What browser do you use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try making your browser narrower. I don't have to scroll until I make my browser narrow. All the regular text is fine (wraps), but the questions text doesn't wrap and requires scrolling within the window.

Re:What browser do you use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like the use of the overflow is blocking the text wrapping.

That's actually kind of nasty, I think it might be better not to do quotes like that in future, unless they are code or something.

Box model, padding question.

[the web]

> Why was the decision made to make padding apply outside > of the width of a 'box', rather than inside, which would seem > to make more sense? I've always thought of the box model as actual boxes, in a warehouse. You have the box, it's contents, the styrofoam peanuts for shipping, and space between other boxes on the shelf.

Re:Box model, padding question.

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, the padding *doesn't* apply outside the width of the box; it applies outside the content.

In your example, the styrofoam peanuts are the PADDING around the contents, the cardboard box is the BORDER, and the spacing between boxes is the MARGIN. Your analgy seems to work fine to me.

he didn't reply to my +5 mod question

[ars]

He didn't reply to my +5 moderated question: http://interviews.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=189 030&cid=15570901

Did I achive perfection? Is there nothing that can be said about what I wrote? No one on /.replied to it, and he didn't answer either.

Maybe it wasn't a question? It was though, - of the "do you think this is a good idea" type. And maybe "why didn't anyone else think of this".

Re:he didn't reply to my +5 mod question

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say because it is neither a useful idea nor politely enough asked ("why DID you FORGET?!").

Personally I have a hard time to understand what your proposal is meant to accomplish at all. And mixing "vertical-align" and "top" doesn't make sense at all. Overall it looks like a difficult shortcut to achieve something trivial, though I'm not sure HOW elements could be aligned "middle" AND to another element at the same time.

Maybe it makes sense, but I just didn't understand your idea. A HTML exmple would help, though a graph is the only serious way to explain it fully.

Re:he didn't reply to my +5 mod question

[howcome]

In your own followup message you stated that you perhaps had mixed up horizontal and vertical and that your question was about vertical placement of content. You may have seen that I answered another question about vertical placement. The www-style mailing list is a good place for posting concrete proposals, I'd be interested in seeing yours there once the vertical/horizontal issue has been sorted out.

Cheers,

-h&kon

Re:Incredibl[y hard to] read..

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the idiot who made this shitty design is. Its not CSS's fault when people do stupid things with it. Also, just use opera so you can Ctrl+F11 to fix all sorts of horrible horizontal scrolling problems.

Definition of pixel

[Sara Chan]

It was me who asked about the defintion of pixel. Perhaps I didn't phrase the question well enough. Consider that as screen resolutions improve, a CSS pixel will have to be mapped to two physical pixels on a screen. So simple phrases like "the image is 100 pixels wide" will have two different meanings (depending on "pixel" = physical pixel or "pixel" = CSS pixel). I think that this is needless confusion, and the answer given by Håkon appears to be flippant.

Re:Definition of pixel

[howcome]

I think that this is needless confusion, and the answer given by Håkon appears to be flippant.

I didn't intend to be flippant. However, I don't agree this is real problem. The problem of having to rewrite all style sheets when new hi-res devices comes along is more serious.

Cheers,
-h&kon

Håkon vs. Haakon

[harmonica]

Especially in a multicultural country, people are used to learning unfamiliar names. If I can handle Thai, Cambodian or Hindi names, I can deal with a damn Norwegian!

My Norwegian is a bit rusty.

Is this guy pronounced the same way? Given the importance of royalty gossip (sigh), it's hard not to hear that name at least once a week while zapping TV channels. At least here in Europe, where we only have royalty, not real celebrities like Ms. Hilton.

Re:Håkon vs. Haakon

[syclik]

Håkon and Haakon are pronounced the same way. Hilton is a norwegian name as far as i know, and relates to a farm somewhere not to far from Oslo. aa = å, oe = ø, ae = æ.

Re:Incredibl[y hard to] read..

[saskboy]

That small text is crazy for a professional site. I had to CTRL + Scroll to even see what it said. I thought maybe it was a joke about CSS being so crappy.

Re:Incredibl[y hard to] read..

[Aewyn]

The author of the current Slashdot style perhaps, at least for the font size. Specifying a smaller font size than default, although common, should be avoided in most cases (possible exceptions might be copyright-type statements and the like).

That said, Firefox' default for monospace is slightly weird, as mentioned elsewhere in the comments. (The font is perfectly readable in Opera 9 at least.)

I blame the HTML markup for the annoying scrollbars. It would be more appropriate to use <blockquote> (along with sensible CSS) than <pre> for this.

XML+XSLT

[kieran42]

Would the web benefit from HTML and CSS being complemented with some kind of "layout language"

It does. or at least it's starting to.

XML+XSLT is an effective way of taking any XML based information (like an article, a list of questions and answers, or even an existing web page) and re-formatting it in a sensible fashion. Since you then control the "layout" of the markup, it's easy to apply CSS to make everything as pretty as /.

Incidentally, using XML+XSLT also closes the gap between web sites, services, and plain old data sources... Proper support for XSLT is a close second on my list for browser support and interoperability.

And just think how powerful microformats could be if they weren't a hack... just saying...

Re:Bit of a non answer on the Vertical CSS front..

[infestedsenses]

Yeah, I'd like to thank Håkon for taking the time to answer my question, but it's not really the answer I was looking for.

position: fixed will stick a footer to the bottom of the viewport, but not to the bottom of a page (perhaps I am not using the correct terminology). That means that if the content is longer than the viewport, the footer will just overlap the content and stay put, while the content beneath it will continue to flow and scroll. What I meant was a footer that will always be at the bottom of a page "in dependance of the content" (as I mentioned). That means, it's at the bottom of a viewport until the content gets larger, which would then push down the footer accordingly. The lack of such a feature is the reason faux columns and hacks like the "One True Layout - Equal Height Columns" exist. I'm sure Håkon is very busy but perhaps he could spare a little more time to look at the examples I linked to in my initial question to get a picture of what exactly I am talking about.

The examples I mentioned work perfectly via tables without the browser knowing the exact height of a page. I know CSS works fundamentally differently but there must be a way to emulate the behavior?

I'd pronounce it like..

[esbjorn]

"Hawk-on"

Some better questions that I didn't get to submit

[null etc.]

I missed the call for questions, and didn't get to ask the following questions. Somebody please keep these in mind for when the topic resurfaces in the future:

1. Why doesn't CSS allow web designers to specify styles per user agent? I would kill to stop using the stupid "IE doesn't see direct-descendant selectors so let's use that hack to fix IE's box model problems" in my style sheets. Furthermore, this approach inspires programming techniques that can be considered only as abominable. Instead, I'd like to be able to specify one style for IE 5.5 and another for Firefox 1.0.7, etc. It's pure fantasy hoping that the problem will be solved by insisting there is only one standard, and let's everyone get together and stick to it.
2. Why didn't the W3C provide a compliance test to allow browser developers to determine if they were implementing CSS properly? Sure, there's now the ACID tests, but the CSS specs have bits of ambiguity in them that can cause browser developers to disagree as to how CSS should be implemented. I'd like to see an officially sanction CSS test provided by the W3C.
3. Why does CSS order content according to "top-down left-right" page flow? Can't there be a better way of specifying that a DIV on a page should float left to a particular paragraph?
4. Why is the box model so broken? Wouldn't it be more intuitive to simply realize that when most people specify a width of 100%, they want that box and everything it contains to be 100%, not 100% + margin + padding + border?
5. Does the W3C consider CSS to be a success, given the number of people that have to resort to browser hacks to use it? Also, does W3C consider CSS to be powerful enough to meet the needs of web designers, with so many designers still using tables for their consistency and logical cohesiveness?

Dominant Browser Bottleneck

[fbg111]

"W3C isn't the bottleneck, browsers are. The dominant browser on the web hasn't been updated for years, and it doesn't make sense for specifications to get too far ahead."

I tend to disagree. Just b/c MS can't/won't keep up doesn't mean that others can't. Opera and Mozilla are not too far behind the advancing CSS spec, and slowing down for IE will only stunt the other browsers' development. It's like putting the advanced kids in the remedial classes; it helps neither the advanced kids nor the struggling ones.

In fact, possibly the only way to force IE to update is by advancing the CSS spec at whatever pace is feasible, and as Mozilla, Opera, Safari, etc. implement it, IE is left behind. That's the only reason why MS finally reinstated the IE team to push out IE7, except it was over security concerns rather than platform advancement concerns. Not advancing the spec prevents the other browsers from leaving IE behind, giving MS no reason to upgrade IE.

Re:Incredibl[y hard to] read..

[AnyoneEB]

No, that's called using

 when you mean 
 or 
.

Re:Bit of a non answer on the Vertical CSS front..

[shlashdot]

How many CSS inventors does it take to screw in a light bulb?

They can't, because browsers won't support it.

Monopolies hurt regardless of illegal leverage.

[jbn-o]

I don't compare them on the basis of whether they abused their respective monopolies or not because that doesn't matter. Håkon Lie claims that Microsoft's font monopoly is an unrecognized (or perhaps under appreciated) leveraging of their monopoly elsewhere.

I'm also not making a legalistic argument. Looking at this from the user's perspective, it makes no difference whether antitrust regulation has caught up to what an organization is doing. I understand the significant market power, capital, popularity, and other business differences between the two monopolists. But those things aren't important here because the argument I'm getting at centers on user's freedoms.

Both organizations are monopolists. Users are not well-served to do business with monopolists, nor to become dependant on what monopolists offer (even if it's offered gratis). The Opera browser programs don't become more trustworthy, inspectable, sharable, or modifiable because the organization that distributes it has not been convicted for illegally leveraging a monopoly (like Microsoft has been in the US), or because Opera has not been found to have illicitly distributed software (like Microsoft was found doing in France).

Re:Some better questions that I didn't get to subm

[NutscrapeSucks]

If you want to pull in a IE hack stylesheet, check into the conditional html comments that IE supports. Much better than using a CSS-hack.

<!--[if IE]>....<![endif]-->

I agree it would be nice to see something this supported more universally.

Reading with quality

[edis]

It boils down to:

1. Delightful professional, simple and competent to the max,
of best technical readings. What an evening.

2. Whassup with supa techies, that they can't present question
in readable form? Scrollbars? But, why?
Get some respect for yourself, coolest of geeks. Or are you punks?
Everybody hangs around here, don't you realise?

3. It is special pleasure to see high target professional working
at the company, product(s) of which you personally admire.
I'm probably old, too sensitive, but feelings, they are, nevertheless, REAL. Good and further best of luck, Opera!

Re:Incredibl[y hard to] read..

[Anonymous Coward]

Try bumping your screen rez from 640 x 480 douche...

The quotes shouldn't use this style. It should be used for displaying source code, so line wrapping won't destroy the readability of the code...

Re:Bit of a non answer on the Vertical CSS front..

[Snover]

1. Set html and body to height : 100%; (otherwise they will not fill the viewport properly).
2. Set your main content element to position : relative; min-height : 100%;.
3. Put your footer inside the main content element and set it to position : absolute; left : 0; bottom : 0; width : 100%;.

Caveat: You need to know how high the footer is and add padding/margins to the bottom of the content so that the last bit of content on the page doesn't get swallowed by the footer (which is floating above the content on a separate layer).

HTH,

MS drives standards?

[routerguy666]

Why is a supposedly neutral standards body worried about releasing updated specifications that are far beyond the capabilities of IE? Do the work and release the standards. If MS can't/won't write an updated browser then that is their problem. It should not prohibit other companies from writing browsers that utilize the new specs. God forbid, one of them might actually innovate and create something that unseats IE as the browser of choice - even with the countless obstacles to that ever happening standing in the way.

I just don't understand what one has to do with the other. Standards creation should have nothing at all to do with the product development of any one company, even the world's most dominant in the field.

font-size-adjust (was Re:Ubuntu)

[Calroth]

Don't get me wrong, I totally understand what you are saying about the x-height and how it makes text more readable, but the thing about the web is that you can't know that the reader is actually using that font. Sure, you can suggest Verdana, but if they don't have it on their system, or they prefer another font, the x-height you assume to be in use usually ends up being much smaller.

In this case, you want the CSS2 property called font-size-adjust, which reads the x-height of the user's font, and scales it up to the x-height that you want. Illustrated example available on the linked page.

Of course, this isn't a bulletproof solution, not least because Internet Explorer 6.0 doesn't support it...

But the CSS folks have considered this problem.

Re:font-size-adjust (was Re:Ubuntu)

[Bogtha]

Not only does Internet Explorer not support it, as far as I know, nobody has ever implemented it. That's why font-size-adjust is no longer part of CSS 2.1.

Re:font-size-adjust (was Re:Ubuntu)

[Anonymous Coward]

It's implemented in Firefox 1.5 and (iirc) Safari.

Re:font-size-adjust (was Re:Ubuntu)

[Bogtha]

Right. It's implemented in Firefox 1.5, but only on Windows.

I just tried Safari 2.0.3 and it doesn't support font-size-adjust.

Re:Bit of a non answer on the Vertical CSS front..

[cargoculture]

IIRC setting to height of anything to 100% will fail horribly in most browsers if DOCTYPE is set to Strict.

Re:Bit of a non answer on the Vertical CSS front..

[Snover]

I'm actually using this right now with XHTML 1.0 Strict doctype, so I can confirm that it does work (thankfully!). I only hope it's helpful to the original poster. :)

Re: Plan B

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha, Ha. Let's march on Redmond.

another question

[CAIMLAS]

Here's another question... I must've missed the original thread.

Why not just create a specific server-side language which is browser agnostic and plan for it to be implimented by a specific date, starting over and making it the web 'standard' with several stages in its implimentation? This way we could, in stages, get rid of all the bloat that's resulting in web developer difficulties now. The mess of combining functionality and appearance in separate programming components - sometimes as many as 3 or 4 different languages/syntaxes - is seemingly wrongheaded to me.

Have it be a language which creates browser-targetted syntax so that it doesn't matter which browser it's being viewed in - it'll display identically based on the server's determination.

Have it come into play in stages. First stage would be server support of the language; not such a stretch in terms of accomlishment, as apache is the primary server online. The timeline for browser implimentation of the spec would be somewhat down the line from that, as IE is the big player. Then, over a period of several years simply drop support for old browsers - shouldn't be too hard, as FF now comes with 'automatic update' functionality, and with most of the stuff being done server side, there shouldn't be too much of a bandwidth issue to upgrade the browsers.

It would be no different than the internet "starting over", not too different than how things all started back when Mosaic was made. Really, it's asinine to still be using HTML in 2006+, when it was originally designed as a minimal markup language for term papers...

Re:another question

[howcome]

Why not just create a specific server-side language which is browser agnostic and plan for it to be implimented by a specific date, starting over and making it the web 'standard' with several stages in its implimentation?

I'm quite happy with the web as it is, and I believe it's better to build on what we have than to start over again. However, the web is a most generous place and you are welcome to define your own favorite language and argue for its use.

Cheers,

-h&kon

Re:Some better questions that I didn't get to subm

[howcome]

Why doesn't CSS allow web designers to specify styles per user agent?

It has been proposed and rejected many times. The basic problem with it is the same as for the User-Agent header in HTTP: every browser will be forced to lie about who they are.

Why didn't the W3C provide a compliance test to allow browser developers to determine if they were implementing CSS properly?

W3C published a CSS1 test suite which has been very helpful. A similar test suite for CSS2.1 is being worked on. However, it's a lot of work and it tends to lag behind the specification. They are called "test suites" instead of "compliece suites" for a good reason: It's almost impossible to write a suite of tests that, if you pass, guaratees complience.

Why does CSS order content according to "top-down left-right" page flow?

This is typically how Latin scripts are rendered. However, CSS can also be used to style right-to-left text as well as well as LTR/RTL combinations. Work is underway to give better support for vertical scripts.

Does the W3C consider CSS to be a success, given the number of people that have to resort to browser hacks to use it?

I'm not speaking for W3C (any more) but I belive W3C is happy to see the widespread use CSS has achieved. I also think it's fair to say that there is some frustration about vendors who do not fix reported bugs and thereby force web designers to resort to hacks. IE7 will fix some long-standing problems and we should cheer the developers to continue their important work.

Cheers,

-h&kon

Re:Incredibl[y hard to] read..

[zxSpectrum]

What I have to ask is, "Is CSS to blame for the tiny text in boxes with horizontal scrollbars?"

Ok. I realise this answer is coming very late, but no: Your browser is. This is a particular aspect of Gecko's special handling of font declarations that specify monospace. See Monospace, Firefox and braindeath and Sizing monospaced fonts

Re:Bit of a non answer on the Vertical CSS front..

[howcome]

What I meant was a footer that will always be at the bottom of a page "in dependance of the content" (as I mentioned). That means, it's at the bottom of a viewport until the content gets larger, which would then push down the footer accordingly.

One possible way of addressing this is to use float: bottom. This construct is described in the recently published CSS3 module: Generated Content for Paged Media. In the draft, it only applies to paged media, but it seems quite intuitive that it has the effect you describe in continous media. What do you think?

Cheers,

-h&kon

Re:Some better questions that I didn't get to subm

[null etc.]

Wow, excellent answers!

Re:Some better questions that I didn't get to subm

[apathy maybe]

"Why doesn't CSS allow web designers to specify styles per user agent? I would kill to stop using the stupid "IE doesn't see direct-descendant selectors so let's use that hack to fix IE's box model problems" in my style sheets. Furthermore, this approach inspires programming techniques that can be considered only as abominable. Instead, I'd like to be able to specify one style for IE 5.5 and another for Firefox 1.0.7, etc. It's pure fantasy hoping that the problem will be solved by insisting there is only one standard, and let's everyone get together and stick to it."

Why not just use PHP? It does all that you want, with all the reliability that useragents offer.

<head><!-- Other Stuff -->
<?php
if (strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], 'MSIE') != FALSE)
{
echo ("<link rel=\"stylesheet" href="msielayout.css\" />")
}
else { echo ("<link rel=\"stylesheet" href="layout.css\" />") }
?></head>

a nono from a web geek..

[Anonymous Coward]

dead link in guys PhD thesis...click on the word surf...http://people.opera.com/howcome/2006/phd/

More mobile

[jessicalandy]

I appreciate his examples and clear communication. I wish we would have brought more attention to the mobile css issues, I think that most of my friends will be using the web on sidekicks and mobile phones more than anything else once they are out of school. I am trying to get my new site mobile compliant and there is so much confusion about the future of mobile content formatting.

No, you can't.

[Howzer]

There are sounds in most other languages that simply don't exist in English, and viky verka.

For example, a Chinese person called Shi Cu could tell a native English speaker -- even a native English speaker with a wonderful "ear" for languages -- how to pronounce his or her name for several hours without getting a return pronunciation anywhere near "authentic".

This is not anyone's fault, the English speaker's brain simply translates the sounds they are hearing into English-language sounds that they know. It takes hundreds of hours of teaching, and thousands of hours of exposure for a native English speaker to correctly make several of the key sounds in Chinese -- let alone get the tones right.

The number of people who get it right the first time? Zero.

You may be quite proud of your ability to get Thai, Cambodian & Hindi names "right". My bet is that people say their names to you several times, hear their names butchered several times, and then smile and say "Yes! That's it!"

They probably even compliment you to protect your feelings. After all, you've made an effort and that's more than most people do.

But don't fool yourself into thinking that you are pronouncing foreign names "right". That almost never happens, and when it does it's almost always because of the closeness of the sounds in a particular name to common sounds in English. Mr Hao, to return to Chinese, is probably pretty ok with people calling him "Mr. How". And even that isn't exactly right.

In fact, your reverse hostility -- "How dare you tell me I can't pronouce your name right!?!" -- is probably one of the very good reasons that Haakon tells people to call him "Howcome"....