“… that IE is no longer the leader as the statics will show ..”

I don’t know about that:

22.0% + 30.7% > 36%

… as far as I know.

Stefan

Why use fragile hacks when all you need do is use IE conditional comments.

Stefan

2008 IE7 IE6 IE5 Fx Moz S O
February 22.0% 30.7% 1.7% 36.5% 1.1% 2.0% 1.4%
January 21.2% 32.0% 1.5% 36.4% 1.3% 1.9% 1.4%

What all of these articles seem to bring to my attention (so far I’ve found three where you are harping on the WSZ’s) is that:

a) You regard IE6 highly (or not highly, but as a 100% necessity)
b) Tables are much easier for you to do than CSSP, and somehow you are able to keep tables clean.
c) You agree with us all that the standards are a great idea, but the zealots are a problem
and finally,
d) IE7 proves the myth of forward compatibility to be false.

I can’t help but get frustrated a bit, for a few reasons. I agree with you entirely on a). IE6 must look just as good as the rest of your browsers you check for. What client says yes to a wishy washy html guru that says “My layout will only look good in browsers that appreciate the proper theory behind my cleanliness and hardcore standards.” They don’t give two seconds thought to turning him down. So yes, you do need to code to be sure IE6 is going to look good.

Tables have always been difficult for me. The organization of the code is a nightmare for me most of the time, where code is much easier and more natural for me using CSSP. Markup that is ridiculously slim is something that CSSP provides me. But you claim to be able to do very clean tabled designs.

My kudos, making a tabled design look as elegant as a CSSP (properly planned and implemented mind you) is something of a bear for me to tackle, and so I avoid it. Then naturally the flexibility of that table is generally horrible. I think someone in a previous blog post had a wonderful point, sticking something in the middle of a table is never an easy task after its been designed. Throwing a new P tag between other P tags is simple. Even throwing a new div in is simple, and the key here is, how slim can you get your code, because CSS lets us abuse any element as a wrapper. Nest up DIVs like they’re tables and you’ll be in the same boat, sinking fast. I just feel that CSSP tends to lend itself (if you devote some time to it) to cleaner, more easily maintainable sites (regardless of whether tables get it right or not all the time, if the layout changes, its very difficult to get going again. Atleast for me, you probably have a fantastic mix going on).

I’m with you on the zealots. I swear to god, Molly frustrates me to no end, she’s become brash, cocky, and fierce, but bless her stupid little head, she’s gotten more done with IE and M$ than I’ve ever seen anyone else do. If I were to ever hear her evangelize however, I don’t think I could sit through the entire session, and I LOVE being a CSS guru. I think the whole forward compatibility does have merit, and the cleanly code as well as the content separation. I think all three of those things have merit, but file size? I’m with you on this, thats ridiculous. Rendering speed, bah, if you do CSS wrong, you’ll get a flash of the ugliest thing on the planet (FOUC) because of rendering CSS incorrectly. Or god forbid you select all your content to reset it with a * attribute ( EX: html * { Background: margin: 0px; padding: 0px; } ). There are ways to do CSS badly, really badly in fact, just as you can nest tables to all hell and back and really screw yourself. So yeah, you bring some valid, straw-grasping points to light, and I hear ya, and shake my head whole-heartedly yes with you. But here’s where I disagree with you:

The forward compatibility bit. I think your wrong about this bit. It’s unfortunate that what you read lead you to believe that hacks were -pushed- and -encouraged-. I read, most likely, the same books and websites from the CSS Gawds (sarcasm), and was still able to walk away and say “I see the benefits of using tabless layouts, I know its going to be hard, but I refuse to use hacks, from the very beginning.” Understanding what is going on with the browser and why the author created the hack is half the battle, the other is to use a different tool from your plethora of CSSP techniques. I have yet to run into, after 5 years of continuous study, an issue I HAD TO tackle with hacks. Your right, these type of people are few and far between, but its possible. I don’t like however how you dismiss us so easily. “Congratulations, your one of the few,” is silly to do. Look at what we’re doing! It’s working in all the browsers and we’re all happy, I think you should pay a bit more attention to people who can do this.

Web standards offer a way to be forward compatible, provided (and here’s the kicker) you don’t hack your way through them because they are too hard in the beginning and take too long. Spend a bit of time without them, working around them, and you’ll find yourself with sexy clean code, a single stylesheet, and no crazy selectors that will screw you in the end.

Myself as well as my CSS Burner team refuse to use hacks, conditional comments, or filters. If the client requires them 100%, after much discussion, we scream the same warnings you do, it’s gonna break in the near future, and they lose their money back guarantee.

Your right, but not right about web standards not being forward compatible, what your right about is that web standards -hacks- are not forward compatible. And so the kool-aid I’m passing around is this: you can do it without the hacks. Reach into your toolbox, get creative, open your eyes to all of the containers you can tap into in a properly planned page, and burn past the hacks. It IS possible, you just have to want it more than the WSZ’s want to shove a hack down your throat.

Can’t agree more.

I was W3C standard zealot and I leave the IE users to burn to hell for using the least compliant and least reliable browser on the planet today (IE7 is not much improvement).

“Was” because I have to use IE hacks now for the company I am working because their majority customers are using IE6 and IE7.

But regardless, I agree that the sites created with the W3C standards are forward-compatible and IE hacks makes this concept useless.

Really, thanks to IE, the whole idea of W3C goes to waste. Depending on where you are and your target audience, you must always check your site against IE6 and IE7. If your site visitors are non-IE users, then good for you!

^_^

Right ill stop gushing and ill get on with my point.

I think that pretty soon that things are going to change in the browser wars, as more and more companies are supplying mogzilla as a browser of choice over IE.

Don’t forget that GBrowser is starting to be seen popping up in stats (admitadly still in developement) and that is also using the mogzilla engine… now i know both are reporting that this is tosh – but that is to give them a market edge.

Hopefully within 5 years there will be mac’s and GPC’s and microsoft will have found out that life isnt so rosie and the only people using ie6/7 are developers / designers thinking about the old days.

Now where is my spectrum 64k Emulator!

Forward Compatability should be exactly that. If you use a hack to get around an IE6 flaw, then make the hack only affect IE6… not IE in general, and definately not browsers which haven’t even been finalised, released and bug-tested.

Create a standards based site wherever possible. Use the “Strict” DocType if you think your code is 100% compliant (and MS have repeatedly said IE7 should respect that). Add hacks for various browsers if necessary, but make them specific to the faulty version.

This is a lesson I learned with Netscape long ago. Remember NN4.04 vs NN 4.06 anyone?