I just had an ‘aha’ moment that I’m sure many others are waiting to have. I’ve used the W3C Markup Validation service for a long time. Sometimes, it can be challenging to find the little snippet of markup displayed by the validator within my html document. Although the markup validator shows a line and column number, it never jibes up with my markup in my html editor.

Tonight, while looking for a really obscure list item tag error, I had my ‘aha’ moment. While displaying the html page in Firefox, click on ‘view source’. Do it all the time, right? Well, up under the ‘EDIT’ menu is ‘Go To Line…’ (or just press Ctrl + L). Type in the line number given by the W3C validator and your there.

I tried finding a similar feature with the ‘View Source’ option on Internet Explorer 6. It, of course, opens up Note Pad. Which, doesn’t seem to have any such ‘Line Number’ option.

The old adage ‘you get what you pay for’ is true in most all scenarios. Web site design included.

I shake my head when I see web design (developer / programmer / et al) classifieds on craigs list offering $8.00 - $10.00/hr. Or, the individual (or start-up) that is willing to fork out a whole $200.00 for a dynamic web site.

Am I A Perfectionist?

Maybe so. Or maybe I read too many books and blogs. I don’t think I ‘know-it-all’. Far from it. But, it aches to see fellow web designers dive into a new project with ‘mocking up a killer graphic design’ as their primary goal. If you haven’t really identified the needs of your intended audience, how do you really have a clue on your layout?
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As I pointed out previously I prefer to start my CSS Stylesheets out with the wildcard (*) selector zeroing out the default margin and padding settings that the various browsers implement. I do this to level the playing field and assure myself that I am starting at a common ground cross-browser.

Here’s the CSS declaration I’m talking about:

* { margin: 0; padding: 0;}

Maybe this CSS declaration is taking things a little too far. Turns out that somethings…I want left alone.
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More Multi-million Dollars of Yahoo! Research for Free!

The resources being unleased by Yahoo! this year are quite impressive. I’ve just begun reading and studying their CSS Layout Library. Of interest tonight is the Fonts CSS Library.

Big Money = Big Research

I’ve got to believe with the money that Yahoo! has, it’s wise for any serious web developer to study and learn from their research.

Yahoo! has reached conclusions on font sizing through CSS styling that is right up any devotee of web standards alley.

With the goals of:

• Offering full A-grade browser support.
• Providing consistent font sizing and line-height.
• Providing appropriate cross-OS font-family degradation paths.
• Supporting user-driven font-size adjustments in the browser, including cross-browser consistency for adjusted sizes.
• Working in both “Quirks Mode” and “Standards Mode.”
• Normalizing the dimensions of an “em” unit, facilitating liquid-dimension development.

Yes. This stuff rocks!
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Understanding Complex CSS Class Selectors

Understanding how a CSS Class Selector effects an element can sometimes be tricky. Especially, when you start to deal with Child Selectors.

Reading a CSS declaration right-to-left (r-t-l) helps decipher what is happening a little better than reading left-to-right (l-t-r). You can use the same method to write what can be a sometimes tricky CSS style.

Here are some examples of what I mean. They all produce the same result, but in a different way.
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