bestkungfu weblog

(Here’s where Cameron goes berserk.)

Every so often, I look at a new Web site, and I’m convinced. This is the one. The site that will show lovely, clean HTML with a well-designed style sheet, no nasty nested tables, alt text where it’s supposed to be. Just like every site designed and launched in 2003 should be designed, since the tools have been there for several years.

Invariably, I am disappointed. Most of you need to learn some goddamn CSS, right fucking now. If you do not understand style sheets, you do not understand Web design. You are stuck in 1997 forever. You are making soul-draining busy work for yourself, locking yourself in to a specific design, and forcing expensive and unnecessary redesign time and cost on yourself and/or your organization.

So, go read something. For starters, read My Web site is standard! And yours?, and Making your website valid: a step by step guide, by the W3C Quality Assurance activity. Buy Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman, and Eric Meyer on CSS. Read them. Even the accessibility parts. It’s good for you.

Then, stop using spacer GIFs, nested tables, and unnecessary JavaScript crap, and start making Web sites like you mean it. You just might make money doing it.

(This is the profane executive summary of a 3000-word paper I am likely to unleash very soon now, titled Sin and Repentance. I’ll post the link here when it’s done.)