Yes, the internet sucks the very life from your lungs! Information overload is an every day occurence. I was re-visiting the ideal, "web standards" this morning. Staying on top of web development is a difficult chore and demands continuous education. Although an excellent foundation and "foot-in-the-door" for employers, college degrees are bunk for the world of technology (though I wish I had mine, so employers didn't have an immediate excuse to discard my resume).
So, I wanted to find out how much support the most recent versions of internet browsers out there have for "the standards". I have always admired the work Mozilla has done to adhere to standard compliancy. I was also very impressed with the tremendous success FireFox had in its recent release. Netscape 7+ seems to have good support for standards. IE simply hasn't changed for a couple of years. I hate to say it, but although Microsoft hasn't completely supported the standards initiative (which they should!!!), I really enjoy working with the fact that their browser hasn't changed (yes, despite TONS of security vulnerabilities and REALLY BAD reliability of standards implementation). I am currently in Opera 7 and haven't used their browser for more than minutes at a time for several years now. WOW! Congratulations Opera! I really enjoy this experience. With recent statistics showing that Opera is currently one of the fastest browsers for Windows, I may even convert. Who knows...
Let me get this straight standards-lovers... Your idea for a solution is to accept that browsers currently provide too much backwards-compatibility and so, your solution, is to simply embrace standards "as best you can" by compensating TONS of browser-specific workarounds and overly-simplifying websites so that you do don't have to do any work to display your website on multiple operating system platforms and browser software? hmm... NO. I simply can't embrace traveling back in time to use design elements of the 20th century with the code mark-up of the 21st. It seems like everyone who pushes CSS standards is also pushing site design like, AListApart.com and "Little Boxes". I commend these organizations and individuals for their hard work at adopting standards and attempting to wade their way through the muck-entrenched browser-incompatibilities by designing simplified websites that work for "everyone". But, I accept that 1) my website isn't for everyone, 2) Some people may not be able to view my website, and 3) I am providing some means of indirect support for Browsers to not fully comply with standards. NO. Well, not entirely on #3. Sure, they can spin a story saying that "Since Eric and a million others still use old, deprecated HTML mark-up to build their websites, we must support them." NO. Drop support for deprecated HTML completely from popular browsers a