CSSquirrel

Let’s get the disclaimers out of the way.

This week’s comic is not about Microsoft. The history of Internet Explorer’s many issues with standards compliance is well documented elsewhere, including various frustrations listed in this blog and in many of my posts over at Mindfly.

This week’s comic is about expecting a certain standard from someone when you are not living up to those standards yourself. In this case, of course, I’m discussing web standards and the big flap they cause in the development/design world due to the various browsers’ speeds at implementing them.

If you’re a designer, and you’ve ever had to make a website trying to find out how to make a website look correct in Internet Explorer, than you understand how important web standards are. It saves us time, which means it saves businesses money, and ultimately all the happy little people surfing the web get to see their favorite website about cute puppies the way that the site’s designer intended it.

So when someone says: “Hey, browser makers, get on board with styles already,” I’m going to be right there holding a sign and trying to pretend that protesting in the middle of winter in Seattle isn’t cold and demoralizing.

Everything in moderation, though. When Opera went to the European Commision to try to force another browser maker to change it’s feature set through legal actions, we start to muddy the line between “good activism” and “bad business behavior”. When Håkon Wium Lie, Opera’s CTO, then at several different points (including in this article/rant at The Register) outlines a very specific, detailed list of what Microsoft needs to do in order to be compliant to Opera’s view of a browser maker’s responsibility, things go from bad business to hypocrisy.

Why hypocrisy? Simple. Mr. Lie’s little list is incredibly specific, as expected of a programmer, and includes several points that must (his word) be adhered to. The one of most interest to me at the moment is the closing one:

“5. Commit to interoperability. It is important to ensure that Microsoft remains committed to supporting web standards, even beyond Acid2 and Acid3. If two or more major web browsers, in official shipping versions, add standards-related functionality that’s generally considered useful to the progress of the web, and described in a publicly available specification, Microsoft must add the same functionality.”

Is this a good idea? Why yes, yes it is! Nothing frustrates me more than finding a good CSS3 property (or CSS 2.1 property) that would solve a design issue I have with a website, only to discover that a couple of the leading browsers don’t have it, thereby making it of limited use. This is something I experience on a weekly basis (if not more frequently), and probably the largest source of frustration with my job.

However, Microsoft isn’t the only browser that needs to do this. After all, what good is it if only IE was keeping up with standards? Yes, it has the dominant share in browser usage, but there’s a good 25%-30% of users who are using other browsers like Firefox, Safari, and Opera. We wouldn’t want them suffering because their browsers aren’t keeping pace.

Generally, of the four browsers, IE is in fact the one that typically is behind the game. But while going through several CSS3 properties last week, I found myself looking at three that Opera was not yet using, but that were in use by at least two other browsers.

What’s that? Is Opera not living up to the standards it’s expecting of others? Why… that would be very hypocritical of them, wouldn’t it? They’d NEVER do that!

Well, as it turns out, yes they would.

The properties in question (and this isn’t a complete list, I’m sure, just one that came up from only an hour or so of looking) are as follows: border-radius, outline-offset, and word-wrap. The first two are implemented in Firefox and Safari. The last one is implemented in Firefox and (gasp!) Internet Explorer. All three are documented in publicly available specifications.

Opera can’t render any of them.

Now, granted, outline-offset will appear in Opera 9.5. As of yet, though, I’ve seen nary a peep about those other two, and I doubt that’ll change before 9.5 goes gold.

Frankly, Opera, you need to stop focusing on legal action against your competition. This kind of behavior is belittling, and ultimately serves as little more than a PR stunt as long as you’re failing to actually keep your own browser living up to the standards you’re yelling at others for failing to uphold.

We get it already. Microsoft sucks. Now stop poking the big dog with a stick and go grab a larger share of the market by showing everyone how cool Opera really is.

A new Hulk movie is coming out soon. By all accounts, this one isn’t a monstrosity featuring squid DNA, and much more closely resembles the comic franchise it was built upon. Like the movie’s signature character Bruce Banner, I’m generally considered to be a fairly mellow fellow guy. (Unlike him I have neither a doctorate or a gamma radiation tan). Yet, like Dr. Banner, I also can sometimes feel a powerful rage coming over me.

Sadly, I don’t gain a few hundred pounds of muscle and turn green. I just make growly noises and squint my eyes.

I’m reliably informed that it’s not that intimidating.

What is the source of this pathetic geek rage? Web designs that are one page proofs of a pretty homepage, accompanied by a summary by clients to the effect of “Make the rest of the site look like the homepage.”

Why does this drive me insane? Because this rarely (in fact, never) works, and I find myself going back and altering (and re-altering) the carefully crafted markup and CSS that was made for the aforementioned homepage so that the core functionality of their website actually fits inside the design. Usually the “design”, as a result, turns out to resemble the homepage less and less with each pass, until what is left is typically some sort of chimeric mismatched beast.

I’m sure there’s plenty of smart methodologies to prevent this sort of thing from happening, but it occurs to me just often enough that I feel the need to rant about it here.

Look, as Jeffrey Zeldman said in one of those insightful tweets that I’m always hoping to witness (instead of the less insightful tweets about the contents of a man’s lunch): “Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration.”

I think that’s one of the most useful/relevant things I’ve seen written about web design in months. Based on the responses at his blog, I don’t think I’m alone.

I’m going to add an addendum to this. Barring some exceptions in the “wrapping paper” category, a pretty homepage is not a website. Nor should the homepage be the focus of the design. Creating a design by starting with the homepage, handing it to the developers to cut, and then later heavily modifying said design to actually accomodate the core features of the site wastes time, money, and patience.

Let’s think about it for a moment. Are your customers coming to your website to check out a nifty banner? Are they there to look at a really wicked paragraph of “about me” text? Are they there to see an embedded flash movie of the ocean?

In case you’re not following along, the answer is no. (Except maybe for the ocean movie, depending on the purpose of your site.) They are there to shop at your store, read your blog, play your game, read the news, share their life story, or fulfill whatever function it is that your website serves in their life.

Now, granted, some pages (like blogs about adorable critters) combine the homepage and the core function of the site. In the case of the linked blog, it’s all about displaying cute animals, and they’re doing that from page one. But even in that case, the homepage is following the function of the site, rather than the design following an arbitrarily pretty (and potentially pointless) homepage.

Look, take a page from Daniel Burka, who at the WDN 2008 conference talked about taking the inspiration for the design of a site from the core function the site serves. He’s done it with a little site you may have heard about (Digg, do I even need to link this page?), and I dare say it’s worked well for them.

Seriously, next time you have a pretty proof of your website’s homepage all decked out with bells and flowers, do me a favor and use it to wrap your daughter’s next birthday present. Then, after you’re done affixing the bow, go back to the drawing board, figure out where the tasty flavor of your site lives, and design that first. I think you’ll find that the site (and your budget) will do better as a result.

Spending a few hours in a raid in World of Warcraft with friends? Good.

Spending the two hours after that removing a power supply from Emily’s computer, installing a new one, and then installing a high-end graphics card? Not good.

The last time I did any major hardware stuff with a computer I ended up blowing out an expensive processor in about two seconds due to the heat sink not being firmly attached. Since then I’ve made it a point to be as far from an opened up PC as possible. Being potentially responsible for destroying an expensive piece of equipment isn’t my idea of a good time.

On the plus side, everything turned on and nothing exploded.

When I finally get around to acquiring a new system, I think I’ll make sure it comes with all the pieces I want pre-installed.