Two excellent resources to begin or continue your education with CSS & Web Standards are discussion mailing lists.

• The Web Standards Group is for web designers & developers who are interested in web standards (HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, XSLT etc.) and best practices (accessible sites using valid and semantically correct code)
• CSS-Discuss is a mailing list devoted to talking about CSS and ways to use it in the real world; in other words, practical uses and applications.

Both of these mailing lists are High Volume. Read their policies and guidelines before subscribing. You’ll get upwards of 150 email a day between the two of them. I’ve set up different email addresses and seperated my email accounts on Thunderbird to better manage them.

No CSS Style in Internet Explorer

Although cross-browser compatibility is high priority for my clients sites, I admit I don’t often fire up Internet Explorer to view this site. I had a reason to do that today and was dismayed at what I saw.

No, I haven’t been an extended participant in the CSS Naked Day.

So why is my site unstyled in Internet Explorer? It worked fine in my trusty Firefox, Opera displayed it ok, Netscape didn’t have any problems.

I viewed the source of some web sites I trust. I was looking at how they linked their stylesheet. I don’t think I have a hard and fast rule for how I normally do it. The few web sites I browsed had relative, absolute and @import links to their stylesheet. I figured I’d change mine from relative to absolute and see if that did the trick. Sure enough it did.

For those just wrapping your head around links:

Relative link to stylesheet

<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”css/stylesheet.css” type=”text/css” />

Absolute link to stylesheet

<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”http://www.darrenfauth.com/css/stylesheet.css” type=”text/css” />

A slight hiatus

So what could deter me from the 30 Days Of Web Standards posts?

If you guessed playing Ratchet & Clank “Up Your Arsenal” on my PS2, you’d be 100% correct. Well, maybe just 99% correct. My brain has been working overtime at work developing a backend client administration area and a front-end database integration with MLS for a flat-fee listing realtor site.

Blow things up vs. write about web standards

Once home, it’s much more relaxing to blow up one-eyed Tyhrrranoid’s and other assorted alien creatures, then spend more time computing.

If you have never played the Ratchet & Clank series of games your missing out on some fun. They are a lot like the Jak & Daxter series, except with less strategy and more weapons and blowing things up. The graphics and character movement is top-notch.