xhtml

So far, all the buzz is pretty much about IE7's "new" features like the tabbed browsing that other browsers have had for years now, with some mention of the upcoming Firefox 2 release.

But just wait until websites start breaking. Internet Explorer has always required non-web-standard hacks. The net effect of this has been my thumbnail estimate of 30-40% of loss of productivity in the web design field while developers work around Microsoft's "we don't need no stinkin' standards" attitude and break out the duct tape and chewing gum to make sites that work in every other browser work in IE.

IE7 honors some more web standards, but still has its own quirks -- some new ones, apparently.

Let the kvetching begin!

I just went and did it: a little css reboot. I just couldn't take the drab look of this place any more. Really, the old theme was an embarrassment. My apologies are offered in advance to those of you on dial-up for whom this page will take some 40 seconds or so to load fully. The graphics should all be there by the time you finish reading this post -- Evelyn Wood graduates excepted.

The theme is powered by phpTemplate. (I'm still running Drupal 4.6 here.) The photograph is mine, shot in Colorado. There are more where that came from on my photoblog.

Lucky for me there's an occasion for this. I saw the CSS Reboot happening last year, but it was a total coincidence that this little redesign is coinciding with the current "event."

Alas, this site is not validating right now. Grrr! Part of the problem -- most of it -- is because I blog using ecto, which doesn't quite generate valid strict xhtml -- or at least it doesn't with the settings I'm using. But I'm sure one or two of the errors are in my Drupal theme template files themselves. (If I were a petty soul, I'd be gratified that I'm getting fewer errors than the CSS Reboot site itself. But I'm only petty enough to mention it without any joy.) I'll try to clean things up before the May 1 deadline. Because even though I did this for myself, the site really should validate.

But it's late. I'm tired. I have work to do tomorrow, and for many tomorrows after that. Hopefully I'll find some time before tomorrow is yesterday.

(Okay, dial-up visitors. By now the background images should have loaded by now. Do you like it?)