So i’ve been thinking a lot about HTML/XHTML/CSS and the importance of proper validation.
i have to admit. it was weakness of mine. i didn’t know much about it, and didn’t really care about it. “i write fine html, and i use CSS for text styles,” i thought, “that’s good enough…” And up until yesterday, that was fine with me.
but… there have been several articles and happenings in the small corner of the web that i read regularly, that really started making me think more about it. Zeldman is doing a new rev of his site (that’s still, unfortunately in the stalled middle) in pure CSS, slorp.org, antiPixel, daring fireball, and a few other blogs i frequent, have had a couple of entries about it. And the of course, the big news last month, wired completely redesigned their site to with some nice CSS, and it all validates.
but i think the thing that really made me stop and think about it was this series of entries. now, it’s finally occurred to me why validation is important. Because _not-_writing and supporting the Right Thing(TM) is actually doing a disservice to my chosen profession. It sounds silly, i know, but it just struck me. Validation and proper standards are important. The longer i continue to write “bad” code weighted down with a million nested tables, the longer browsers (meaning both the visitors and the programs) will have to work to support it.
zeldman always preaches CSS allows the developer to cleanly separate content from design. i’ve always kind of read past that thinking “oh, bother. i can separate content from design via SQL and ASP or CFML…” boy, how ignorant i can be. now that i’m actually taking the time to muck around in it and do some proper research, i can see that this is a really good thing. a page written in CSS takes much less effort to navigate around in.
and it’s not that my code was that bad. but there’s a huge difference in writing a page with tables nested in tables nested in tables—with all of their <tr><td></tr></td>‘s and col and row spans—vs. a series of cleanly nested <div>‘s.
So what does this all mean? well for starters, i’ve moved (or am in the process of moving, depending on when you read this) my blog over to a new domain, damagedAnimals.com. and this mess of tables that i’ve built for my cfml blog engine, has been completely rewritten entirely in CSS (and first time out, it even validates! rock on!) After that, the entire distinctPixel site will be re-written in pure CSS. I’m also going to try and sell the importance of this concept to james, so when we get around to working on vintageDrumCellar.com we implement it there, too.
i’m excited. this is going to be good.