You should focus on the real reason for web standards

Web|web Standard

Eric A. Meyer has been working on the Internet since 1993 and has been employed by Netscape as a standard design trainer. Eric is quite famous in this industry, and he often speaks at conferences on Web standards, cross-browser compatibility, CSS, and web design. As a network administrator and graduate of a Western Prep University, Eric developed the CSS1 calibration program for the world's Web, and recently published a limited set of CSS designs that could be found to the best of its ability. Eric is also Eric Meyer on CSS, mastering the Language of Web design (New riders), Style sheet: authoritative guide (O ' Reilly & Associates), CSS2. 0 Programmer's Reference (Osborne ' Mcgraw-hill) and the author of the well-known CSS browser compatibility table.

Original (April 21, 2004 interview)

Eric Meyer, an internationally renowned expert in HTML,CSS and web standards, has a wide readership and is also the initiator of Complex spiral Consulting. Complex Spiral Consulting is a company that uses Web standard technology to help customers save costs and improve efficiency.

Question One

Russ: The second edition of your new book, "CSS authoritative guide" (cascading Style sheets:the definitive Guide), has just been written, and before we know the details of this book, we'd like to ask: how many books have you published? I swear my local library has a special category for your books.

Eric: No, no, that's Molly Holzschlag's book, I'm just a similar, auxiliary part. I've written 5 books, one of which is a compact version, and I think that might not be a book (my wife insists). The first is the "CSS authoritative guide", if this second edition of the independent version, then I have 6 books. I think this second edition is a book, because it's the amount of work that is equivalent to writing a new book.

Question Two

Russ: In the new Authority Guide, what additions or updates are made to the first edition?

Eric: Almost everything has been updated. The only thing that doesn't need to be changed is the first chapter and the chapters on fonts, and everything else is updated in half or completely. The original chapters are arranged completely and rearranged in the text state. For example, in the first edition, there are "floating in the Visual formatting" and "positioning got its own" chapters, in the new edition I merge them into a separate chapter, and rewrite most of the format chapters. In the same way, "the bit about lists" moved to its original section and added a lot of content. There are three chapters that are brand new, they are: Table Layout (table layout), User Interface Styles (UI style), and Non-screen Media (non-screen display class medium).

Question Three

Russ: I heard a rumor that your "Eric Meyer on CSS" also has a new version, how many design methods are available for the new version?

Eric: That rumor is true. We have named it "in a blinding flash of the creative genius, ' more Eric Meyer on CSS. ' "It has some improvement over the first edition, but not much. What I'm saying is that these two books have no relevance, and you don't need to read the first edition for the second edition (even if you both have it.) Readers of the first edition can recall that the first design method is how to convert a table-driven layout into a simple table and CSS. In the new book, the first way to do this is to convert pages with HTML tags and blank GIF designs to a page that replaces the table layout with pure CSS.

Similarly, there are a number of design methods, such as: Multiple ways to display albums (Photo gallery) styles, a neat financial statement with table-column data, and a translucent effect in multiple browsers with a background layout, including in Ie/win.

There is a design method for displaying level three list, including nesting of lists and how to convert them to a "dropdown" menu, and work on most browsers (including Ie/win), like Doug Bowman sliding Doors (Sliding doors) Technology as well.

In addition to the above, there is a combination of methods to solve the weblog of the entrance style problem. The last method in the book is to take a design of CSS Zen Garden (created by Dave) and implement it with CSS. Basically, Dave gives me a Photoshop design file, and then I cut it into a few parts I need and use CSS to make it work, so you can see the whole process from design to final code. I also thought about using PNG pictures, and I don't look ugly in ie/win.

Question Four

Russ: Two years ago, CSS was rarely discussed, and now it seems to be talking everywhere! Do you think you helped it shift to the main stream consciousness?

Eric: It's a natural thing, really. First of all, IE6 began to support the DOCTYPE switch, and later announced that it will not release the new IE version, give you a sense of stability. Second, enough designers have enough time to read books and tutorials and use CSS to do experiments on their own sites. In this context, a group of excellent design site appeared. Third, I think it's because as the art of design improves, web designers with the ability to design and really understand the benefits of CSS (like Doug Bowman, Dave Shea, and Jeffrey Zeldman) are pushing things forward. The redesign of Wired magazine website, Zen Garden (CSS Zen Garden) and other sites began to show CSS-driven design, not only to work, but also to look very beautiful and unpredictable.

More and more practical, easy to follow resources (e.g. Listutorial and floatutorial) also play a big role, and so on.

Question Five

Russ: What are the most important aspects of CSS for designers and developers who are just beginning to touch and use web standards?

Eric: What's the most important thing? I have to say the Cascade (cascading) section. Not just cascading, but also inheritance (inheritance), features (specificity), and selectors (selector construction), once you've mastered these, the rest is just a matter of detail.

Next, I want to thoroughly understand the visual effects, including block and inline (inline), is also critical. If you know what the design will show, you can avoid a lot of headaches (CSS doesn't work as expected). Like many languages, CSS has its rules, ignoring the rules will definitely lead to confusion.

Question Six

Russ: In the past 12 months, there has been an image substitution (image replacement) technology introduced. What is your overall feeling about it? If you have to use it, which mode are you going to use (model)?

Eric: I prefer to use the CSS3 method: replace the content with the ' content ' attribute. This is as lightweight as possible (Low-weight) and Non-hackish methods. This is also the case in the current low support method, because at present only opera supports picture substitution.

In addition, I have found that the advantages and disadvantages of image substitution are the advantages of making some text look beautiful, with the disadvantage of creating usability problems for sound readers. Frankly speaking, the real problem lies with the reader himself. They try to show real pages and read the results, but they are doing exactly the wrong thing. If a page has a screen-medium style set, the reader will completely ignore those styles unless most of the readers are repaired again.

Question Seven

Russ: It seems as if a reference to "font size" would ignite a large discussion of CSS--a war between a font-purists and a web designer. Do you think there is a workaround for all users?

Eric: No, although I wish there was another way, but I didn't. Each method of setting the font has advantages and disadvantages. The best way you can do this is to find a method that is the best and the smallest in the future, and it needs to be done in the continuous design change (design-by-design) process. A designer's goal is to achieve the best possible performance with pixel control of text fonts, although using EMS or keywords such as x-small can achieve better results. Any time, if someone tells you that there is a way to define your font size for all sites, then he just tells you a principle, not a solution.

Question Eight

Russ: There is a question that has always been debated, what do you think of CSS techniques (hacks)?

Eric: This is inevitable, until one day, our browser will be able to perfect the support and implementation of CSS, is the CSS hacks stop day. We will persist in doing so before. To point out, I mean for all the hacks, whether they are for CSS or anything else, like Microsoft's conditional Comments.

Question Nine

Russ: Do you think that when the browser market is ready for CSS3, it will enter a new era---remember the Microsoft Longhorn operating system schedule.

Eric: I think so. However, in this way, the visual media (Visual-medium), which fully supports CSS2, looks as if it should be completed by 2003. My predictions are always worse than others, and perhaps not suitable for a long-term plan.

Question 10

Russ: The last question is that more and more web designers are joining the CSS2 team, do you think CSS3 's complexity will reduce its own attractiveness, and even make some designers who fear it completely give up CSS?

Eric: There's worse than that: most web designers just learn a part of CSS2 without really understanding its nature.

Anything can happen, as if a designer had been afraid of CSS1 's "complexity" (relative to what they know).

One good thing about CSS3 is that it's separated and integrated into the module (modules), so you can ignore the part you don't care about and focus on what you want to know. If you really want to go deep into the print style, you can read the print module to learn about it. If you are concerned about internationalization, then you find the i18n module, where there are some parts (such as selectors and stacks) that everyone needs to know about, but then, along with your interest, you have to chew over the huge spec sheets.