[thelist] Site check www.stimilon.org/blog

shawn allen shawn at alterior.net
Fri Nov 15 14:11:01 CST 2002


quoth Bill McBain:
> I tried to create a cross-browser compliant look for my blog. It is
> online at www.stimilon.org/blog . It is all divs that have their style
> dictated from a separate css sheet. I just want opinions on how I can
> make it better for non-css browsers because it is pretty weak right now
> in them.

First of all, there are *tons* of validation issues with your (X)HTML.

<http://validator.w3.org/>

As for why it looks "weak" in older browsers, you're not using semantic
HTML. Divs are intended for structural separation, not for headings. For
instance, <div class="bigger"> should be one of <h[1-6]>, depending on
its location in the structure of your document. Your #top div should be
an <h1>. "Login:" should be enclosed in an <h2>. Instead of using
multiple <br />'s to acheive vertical whitespace, you should be
enclosing paragraphs of text in <p>, and applying a margin in CSS (that
goes for your "<h3><span>...</span><br /><br /></h3>", too). Tantek
Celik calls what you're using "Bed and BReakfast markup":

<http://tantek.com/log/2002/10.html#L20021022t1432>

A lot of what you're doing in HTML is purely presentational, which is
what CSS was intended to combat. Once you remove presentational markup
from your documents, they'll be much easier to maintain regularly, and
when decide to redesign, all you *should* have to change is the CSS.

Good luck!
--
shawn allen
  mailto://shawn@alterior.net
  phone://415.577.3961
  http://alterior.net
  aim://shawnpallen




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