Why I don't use HTML or CSS hacks

I've been teaching (X)HTML and CSS for over a decade now and I've never ever taught hacks. You know, those little bits of code that many designers use to make their pages look the same in multiple browsers. (Yes, IE is typically the problem in this situation.) Whenever asked I've explained that when you use a hack, at some time in the future the problem your "solving" with said hack is going to get fixed and then your hacked page is now broken. Don't believe me? Check out this article from ars technica about the forthcoming IE8. Here's just two bits:

Internet Explorer 8 is going to be the most standards-compliant IE yet, but it's going about it in a way that has some people scratching their heads. With Internet Explorer 8, you have a choice in standards compliance modes. Sound oxymoronic? Shouldn't there be one standards mode by default? Heck, shouldn't the only mode be standards mode? Ah, idealism.

...

When IE8 eventually ships, it will have three rendering modes, two of which are the already familiar "quirks mode" and "(not so) standards mode." In an IE team blog entry, IE Platform Architect Chris Wilson revealed a third mode that can be invoked by developers:

1. "Quirks mode" remains the same, and compatible with current content.
2. "Standards mode" remains the same as IE7, and compatible with current content.
3. If you (the page developer) really want the best standards support IE8 can give, you can get it by inserting a simple <meta> element.

This third mode will use a <meta> tag to specify that a page should use the behavior of a specific browser version. To get IE8 really-standard-this-time-we-mean-it behavior, a page will include an element like <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />. That says that a page should use IE8's behavior—and should use it even in IE9, IE10, or any future version. The first two modes will continue to use the doctype switch to choose between them.

Clear as mud? I thought so. (Read the whole article and it'll start to make sense, I promise.) Look, just don't use markup or style hacks. If you feel you "must" in order to get your design to work, adjust your design so that you don't have to use the hack. You'll thank me in the long run.

What happened to the design?

To know more about why styles are disabled on this website visit the Annual CSS Naked Day website for more information.

CSS Turns 10

Sunday was the tenth anniversary of CSS. So, why isn't your library's Web site using it yet?

Cool library Web site features

The Yorba Linda Public Library has lists of the "most recently checked-in items updated every hour" and "top 10 Most requested items from our catalog" on their homepage. Great features! (Now, if they'd just get rid of the table-based layout and not embed their CSS in the middle of the markup...)

Thanks Rosario

Fall speaking schedule

• October 4-8: Idaho Library Association, Moscow, ID
  • Tech Terms
  • Firefox Search Plugins
• October 21-26: Internet Librarian 2006, Monterey, CA
  • 22: Integrating RSS Into Your Web Site (Pre-Conference)
  • 23: The Second Life Library 2.0: Going Where the Users Are
  • 24: Flickr & Libraries
  • 25: Book Signing (Information Today, Inc. booth)
• November 9-12: Colorado Association of Libraries, Denver, CO
  • 11: Tech Terms
• November 13-15: University of Nevada, Las Vegas Law Library, Las Vegas, NV
  • 14: Web Page Creation Basics (XHTML)
  • 15: Introduction to CSS
• November 26-December 1: Nevada State Library Gates Workshops
  • 27: Computer Security (Salt Lake City)
  • 27: Setting up a WiFi Netowrk (Salt Lake City)
  • 28: Technical Support in Your Library (Salt Lake City)
  • 30: Computer Security (Moab)
  • 30: Setting up a WiFi Netowrk (Moab)
  • 01: Technical Support in Your Library (Moab)
• December 5-8: Iowa City Public Library
  • 6: Blogs (BCR Workshop)
  • 6: RSS (BCR Workshop)
  • 7: Podcasting 101 (BCR Workshop)
  • 7: Wikis (BCR Workshop)
  • 8: The Social Web (Staff in-service day)

FrontPage's Replacement: Expression

Microsoft has released beta 1 of the Microsoft Expression Web Designer, the follow-up to FrontPage. I've installed and played with it a little bit and here's my initial reactions:

The interface is nice and easily understood after about five minutes of poking around. I especially like the ability to split the screen between code and WYSIWYG editing.

With Microsoft's "we write good clean code now" push, a validator is included in Expression. The validator does allow you to choose which level of "compatibility" you would like to test against.

The list of validation errors appears below. In this example, since I was validating against XHTML 1.0 Transitional, it did tell me that the legacy FrontPage Webbot in my code may cause problems. Bravo!

The menu-based CSS editing will take me a bit of getting used to since I'm comfortable writing CSS by hand. I can see this being very useful to someone new to CSS.

The new "Optimize HTML" feature seems useful but I've not played with it yet.

Expression's "Preview in Browser" feature is flexible. It auto-detects which browsers are on your computer and you can set up different preview types including multiple browsers in a specific resolution.

Expression still works with servers that have the FrontPage extensions installed but it doesn't seem to have a built in FTP and/or SFTP client allowing me to easily access sites on non-FrontPage servers. (I've got just one site I work on that is still on a FrontPage server.) I'm not planning on moving from HTML-Kit to Expression until I see what the actual cost will be (or maybe if I get it for free as part of some Office upgrade). Overall though, it does seem to be leaps and bounds ahead FrontPage and Microsoft deserves kudos for this product.

New errata

Two weeks ago I used my book XHTML & CSS Essentials for Library Web Design as a workshop text for the first time. As a result a few new typos were found. (Mostly as a result of copy/paste.) Corrections can be found in the errata section of the book's Web page.

What Can U Plug Into a USB?

What Can U Plug Into a USB?
Originally uploaded by travelinlibrarian.

This past week in Iowa I presented "What Can U Plug Into a USB" six times in two locations. (PPT available soon, I left it on my laptop at home.) The photo shows all of the items I had with me to pass around. (The version in flickr contains notes naming everything for those interested.) For the attendees of the sessions I ran a contest to guess which of the items presented were fictitious. I don't know who won yet, but I did promise to post the answer here...

There was only one fictitious device in my presentaion and that was the George Foreman iGrill. Yes, everything else I showed was real, believe it or not, including the lava lamp.

As soon as Michelle lets me know who won the copy of XHTML and CSS Essentials for Library Web Design I'll post that information to the blog.

Also, I have scheduled a WebLive version of this presentation through BCR for the morning of Friday, September 29th, 2006. Watch the BCR site for registration information. (Everyone is welcome, but seats are limited so BCR members will receive priority registration.)

One other note for those that were wondering about my trip home: I did make it to the airport on time to check in for my flight but due to the VERY stormy weather, we didn't end up taking off until 8:10pm. Pictures of the storm and all of the other pictures from the trip can be found in my flickr account.

Wonderful comment

Since I;m assuming most of my readers don't troll my comments, here's a great one regarding XHTML & CSS Essentials for Library Web Design. Read it then go buy a copy for yourself. ;-)

A problem with numbered lists in IE

I'm getting some odd results in IE right now (both in IE6 and IE7beta3) that I just can't explain. Here's what I'm talking about:

• unordered list
• unordered list
• unordered list
• unordered list

1. ordered list
2. ordered list
3. ordered list
4. ordered list

The first list is coded with <ul> and displays the bullets as expected. The second list is coded with <ol> and displays the nubmers one through four as expected, but only in Firefox. IE is not displaying the nubmers. The really odd part is that it only seems to be happening in my Blogger posts, but not with test files sitting on my hard drive. I've repeated this on multiple computers and would appreciate someone confirming this problem. If you have a solution and/or explaination I'd love to hear it.

UPDATE: As you can see, the CSS edit suggested by Steve in the comments fixed the problem. Thanks Steve!

Textbook

According to my publisher, "Texas Women's Univ is using [XHTML & CSS Essentials for Library Web Design] as a text for a summer class." If anyone knows which class (Neal-Schuman, Inc. just received and order from the TWU bookstore) I'd love to hear it.

The Pi-Search Page

For all one of my math-geek friends:
"The Pi Searcher lets you search for any string of digits (up to 120 of them) in the first 200 million digits of Pi. You can also show any substring of Pi."

What I love most about this page is that the actual functionality is stupid simple, the page was created ten years ago, and there's been only seven official "updates" to the site in the past seven years. (2001 was a banner year with a grand total of three updates worthy of mentioning ont the page.) The page is done in XHTML strict & CSS so you've got to love the standardness of the design too.
Thanks bro

First review

My Web design book has been reviewed in American Librares!

"For nonweb designers, the title of Michael P. Sauers' new book, XHTML and CSS Essentials for Library Web Design, may seem incomprehehsible, but with his help, you'll be fluent in these web standards in no time."
— Cathleen Bourdon, American Libraries, May 2006

CSS 2.1

CSS 2.1 is a working draft as of today.

2006: Conference Wrap-up

Some final thoughts and reflections on my recent attendance at the Computers and Libraries 2006 conference in Washington, DC.

• I was happy to meet Kimberly Babcock Mashek of Wartburg College (IA), Erin Kinney of the Wyoming State Library, and Paul Miller of Talking with Talis during the conference yet have been remiss in mentioning them earlier. Many apologies. (I'm bad with names so, if you should feel that you earned a mention, many more appologies as I probably have forgotten your name. It's nothing personal, honest.)
• Michael Casey: we were both there but somehow never linked up. Maybe next time.
• During the conference Neal-Schuman sold four copies of my latest Web design book. That may not sound like a lot but it was every copy they brought with them and more than most titles sell at a conference.
• The March issue of Computers in Libraries was the one being given away from free at the conference. The cool part is that that's the issue with my article in it.
• The overlap with PLA basically sucked but I understand the difficulties involved in planning such an event. However, I've been thinking about this and I thinking that maybe it was a good thing. Here's why. Granted, many of the people I wanted to talk to and hang out with went to PLA on Thursday but several people made the comment to me that it was "nice to see new blood presenting at the conference." One of the things that allowed all this new blood was the fact that the old blood wasn't there. Those folks not being there also forced me to hand out with different people and hopefully make some new long-term friends and contacts.

Well, unless anything else comes to mind in the next week you can safely assume that this is it for my blogging of CIL2006. Thanks for reading.

Sample chapter available

The folks at Neal-Schuman have made Chapter 5: Images of my book XHTML & CSS Essentials for Library Web Design available as a PDF for your sampling pleasure.

It's alive!

XHTML and CSS Essentials for Library Web Design
Originally uploaded by travelinlibrarian.

Look what just arrived via UPS!

XHTML & CSS Essentials for Library Web Design

I just got an e-mail from Neal-Schuman informing me that the book is back from the printer. (It's out!) If you ordered one, you should be receiving it soon.

XHTML/CSS book update

The latest from Neal-Schuman:
"It's at the printer; they're estimating a Dec. 1 date."

XHTML & CSS book update

The page for XHTML & CSS Essentials for Library Web Design is up and had the code samples and resource documents for your downloading pleasure. The book is at the printer and should be out in a few weeks.

Death to CSS Hacks

I've never used a CSS hack and I've never taught a CSS hack. If the design I wanted reuqired a hack, I changed my design. Why? Well, this post from the IEBLog titled Call to action: The demise of CSS hacks and broken pages is what I've been warning people would happen for a few years now...

"We’re starting to see the first round of sites and pages breaking due to the CSS fixes we have made. We would like to ask your help in cleaning up existing CSS hacks in your pages for IE7. It is has been our policy since IE6 that under quirks doctype we will not make any behavioral changes so that existing pages will continue to render unmodified, but under the strict doctype we want to change behavior to be as compliant as possible with the web standards. For IE7, we introduced new CSS functionality (see Chris’ blog post for the full list) and cleaned up our parser bugs. This leads now to several CSS hacks failing. If you are using IE7 (you are MSDN subscriber or received a copy at the PDC) you may notice major sites breaking due to the use of CSS hacks and the strict doctype. "

I that didn't make much sense here's the point: If you're using certain CSS hacks (as discussed in detail in the article,) you site will break in IE7 unless you add yet more code. Here's a more simple solution: quick using hacks!

XHTML & CSS Essentials for Library Web Design

I've received the first batch of page proofs and have reviewed them. I'll be receiving the rest over the next few weeks. Louise is graciously building the index. Also, the Web site for the book is up. All there is right now are the code samples for the book.

CSS3 Values and Units

The latest draft of values and unit specifications in CSS have been released. The coolest part, basing height and width on the viewport.

Publishing updates

• XHTML & CSS Essentials for Library Web Design
  The book is being typeset and I should receive proofs for final proofreading and indexing by the end of next week.
• Blogs & RSS: A Librarian's Handbook
  The second full draft has been turned in.
• The Collector's Guide to Dean Koontz
  Who knows... But I do have an interested third-party (who know's Dean personally) who's offered to contact him about the delay in getting back to me. I'll post more as soon as I know it.

One problem fixed

Well, the folks at Blogger never responded to my query about the odd bit of CSS that was automatically being inserted into posts which broke my layout. So, I finally changed the layout to overcome the problem. You may not notice much of a difference but now the posts do not wrap underneath the menu on the right. Oh well...

Blog errors

Yes, there's a problem with the layout. The title's up there and the content is down here. It seems that Blogger is inserting a bit of XHTML/CSS that's causing the problem. Since I'm not the one entering the code, I can't get rid of it. I've put in a request for assistance with the folks at Blogger and hope that they can offer me a solution.