Dean Edwards has released an updated version of IE 7 which is an amazing tool created to make up for the shortcomings of Internet Explorer‘s implementation of the CSS 2 specs. If you are a Web Developer/Designer, check it out. It isn’t quite ready for production sites, but it shows promise. IE 7 may well leave a mark on the Web Development world. I sure as hell hope so.
CSS
centricle : css filters (css hacks)
A great resource of information concerning various CSS hacks is the “Will the browser apply the rule(s)?” chart on the css filters (css hacks) page created by Kevin Smith of centricle.
3D CSS Box Model
Need to visualize how the CSS Box Model fits together? Check out the 3D CSS Box Model the beautiful creation of Jon Hicks. Douglas Livingstone in turn, built upon Jon’s work, creating an interactive version of the illustration, making it all the easier to understand how the pieces interlock.
IE7
For those of us in the Web design/development profession, one of the biggest problems we have faced in the last couple of years has been Internet Explorer’s spotty support of CSS. At the moment, the latest releases of Mozilla, Opera and Safari have good support for these advanced features, but IE 6 (the dominating browser on the planet) doesn’t support everything it should. This isn’t much of a surprise when you factor in the fact that IE hasn’t seen a major release in two or three years now. As Microsoft has stated that there will not be a revision of the browser until their next operating system is released (2005 at the soonest), we have had to stick to the safe methods, working around the non-standards compliant rendering of IE 6.
But some dream to rise above these shackles. Dean Edwards, is one of them. He has been working on a solution to the problem, and appears to be making a lot of progress with his new project: IE7. The stated aim is “to make Microsoft Internet Explorer more compliant when it comes to web standards”, which will developers and designers the ability to used CSS Levels 2 and 3 selectors and attributes.
Anyway, if you are a Web geek, give IE7 a look. I will be investigating it once I am done with my current project at work.
Wired News
Finally, a major site shifts to standards support. Check out Wired’s new look, and if you are a Web Designer, Developer, Master, Producer, Enthusiast take a look at the source code. The markup is quite beutiful, and other than the code written by ad-serving middleware is perfectly compliant with Web standards. I can’t fault them for the non-compliant code as they don’t control Doubleclick’s output.
It is hard to ensure a site remains standards compliant from day to day. If you use any middleware programs you introduce the risk of some code slipping in that is improper, and though some great tools output valid XHTML, it only takes one mistake in your templates to throw everything off.
Support of Web standards is a double-edged sword as you are building future-compatibility at the risk of losing some backward-compatibility. I do my best to write code that works for both. Utilizing PHP and other server-side technologies, I insert blocks of code tailored for certain browser/OS combinations. This adds a bit of time to the development and testing phases of the process, but I think standards compliancy a worthwhile pursuit.
Congrats Wired! I hope you will be a beacon to the other large sites.
meyerweb
This is Eric Meyer’s Web Journal. The name may be familiar to you, and for good reason; Eric is considered a DHTML/CSS guru and is a major standards advocate. I recently purchased his book Eric Meyer on CSS which has paid for itself several times over already.
His site is proving quite the good read as well.