How the Internet rocks your world:

An awful lot of print, air time and bandwidth is used trying to figure out how the online revolution will change our lives next month, next year or next decade, but sometimes we forget just how far we have come already.

Number 10 is my favourite… I love googling… myself that is ;)

Aren’t Cascading Style Sheets the best? Why? They just saved Internet Explorer here at disassociated! Although I recommend visitors use Mozilla Firefox or any other modern, standards supporting browser (and not just for the sake of viewing disassociated either), I know that a lot of people are still using Internet Explorer 6.

Despite the fact IE6 is some three years old, it is still likely to be bundled with Windows® operating systems sold with many new PCs today. After all, Microsoft would hardly allow another browser to be installed as the default web viewer on one of their operating systems, would they?

As a result many people are still unwittingly using 2001 technology to view and use today’s internet.

So, as a web designer, I have to take that into account when developing a website, as much as I would like everyone to upgrade their browser. To finally reach my point, I have just changed the underlining on the hyperlinks here. Internet Explorer users may notice the difference, whereas anyone else probably won’t. I will explain.

As you will notice, there is a one (1) pixel dotted line under every link I post. This is achieved by using CSS. While it looked fine in (and here I go again) modern, standards supporting browsers, due to a rendering bug in IE however, the dotted lines looked more like dashed lines.

I was able to correct this anomaly by using background images to form the text decoration for the hyperlinks. Again, this can be achieved by using CSS.

This article at A List Apart will clue you in, if you want to try it yourself.

Now all looks cool and fun-kee in as many browsers as possible. I hope so anyway; in validating code I trust…

The Pig Personality Test. Self analyse yourself by drawing a… pig. Oddly revealing. And highly scientific, no doubt. Great party game though.

Sort of topical, in an all too indirect way, unfortunately. Imagine finding out one day you were several million dollars better off? How would a big lottery win change your life? (now, now, don’t say it wouldn’t, liar!)

For many a big windfall is the chance to peruse long held dreams. Some choose to be a little more altruistic, and share their good fortune. Others, however, almost come to regret the whole affair.

My “philosophy” on hoarding possessions and belongings? If I haven’t used something for more than a year, then out it goes! (travelling light, right?) So there are hoarders (those who hold on to every last thing) and those who don’t. Then into the fray enter stockpilers, people who keep extra supplies of little used items “just in case”.

For instance I have ten copies of Pink Floyd’s “Dark side of the Moon” CD sitting in the cupboard, against some future… requirement.

Jugglezine attempts to lift the lid on this highly contentious issue, and how a hoarder and a stockpiler (who happen to be married to each other) come to terms with the quagmire (and the quandary) that is the junk in the basement of their house.

Actually I didn’t even have time to read this article, let alone offer a 800 word thought provoking commentary on the topic at hand.

It’s not meant to be a climb down, or a backward step, but I have returned to the XHTML 1.0 transitional specification for coding disassociated.

Previously I had gone all the way and deployed the big gun, XHTML 1.1 strict. And while the pages I coded using the top shelf spec validated with no problem, I really didn’t feel comfortable using 1.1 strict. Mainly because I felt my markup may not exactly have been semantic.

Semantic was the buzzword on the web last year. It wasn’t good enough to use validating XHTML and CSS, you had to use it correctly, or in context. For example, tables remain an element of the XHTML 1.0 transitional spec, so I could use tables to layout my web pages, and still produce validating code.

The problem of course being the aforementioned use of tables is incorrect. We all know that CSS should be used to determine layout and presentation. Sure, use tables to present information and data within a CSS layout, but not for anything else.

The next issue that arose was how exactly did one produce a 100 per cent, pure, semantic document. Well, if the various discussions I saw on the topic were anything to go by, it seemed there was a fair degree of doubt as to how this could actually be achieved.

Even the experts appeared to differ in opinion as to the correct method of being, well, correct. And bizarrely it seemed work-arounds were, in a fashion, required to generate this pure semantic markup!

The upshot of what some referred to as hair splitting was simple: aim to use XHTML and CSS correctly, and produce work that also validates.

Which brings me back to my original point. I have discontinued using 1.1 strict as it seemed too easy to produce validating code, as opposed to semantically correct work. I don’t know; maybe it was ok after all.

Finally though, I have to say that I prefer using a specification type that is transitional, rather than strict. It just seems to suit the person I am.