Sunday, June 29, 2003

O... mah... gawd...

I just spent the whole night converting this site over completely to CSS... I removed all of the tables and really cleaned up the template code. Everything was fine as long as I used Opera or Mozilla... but Internet Explorer completely fucked up every time. The whole point of an HTML standard is to have a clearly defined language that will be interpreted correctly by any standards-compliant browser... so of course Microsoft chose to add to their long list of dastardly deeds by releasing a browser that is not compliant. People get the browser with a new install of Windows, and most just stick with it. I typically use Internet Explorer once on each machine: right after installing Windows, I use IE to download a real browser. Opera is excellent, and Mozilla and Phoenix/Firebird are really coming along... I really like Firebird, which is the embodiment of a revolutionary new idea: make a browser that is capable of surfing the web correctly. Period. No web-page authoring, no email handling, no built-in chat, just a fucking browser that does its job very well.

The only complaint I have about Opera turns out not to be a problem with Opera itself, but rather yet another problem with Microsoft. There is documented proof that Microsoft's MSN.com deliberately messes up style sheets when it detects that the browser is Opera... specifically it sets some margins to -30 pixels, which moves some of the text behind other text and images, making the page unreadable. This style sheet issue is verifiable and repeatable, and is one more reason to wish that Microsoft would just make software and quit trying to take away people's right to choose how they use their computers.

Anyway, I tested the page on Opera 7.11 build 2880, Phoenix 0.5, Firebird 0.6, and IE 6.0.2600, and finally got it working in every browser. If you are using some other browser to view these pages, and they look all messed up (yet you are somehow still able to read this), please send me an email so I can work on making the page more accessible.

Always remember: Fuck the bozos.