Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Style Sheet Tactics

Now that HTML has resumed the role of providing document structure, Cascading Style Sheets bear the burden of delivering consistent page layouts and formatting. The good news is that the vast majority of browsers support CSS Level 1, so you can do basic text formatting with peace of mind that the majority of your visitors will see it the way you intend.

The bad news is that there are still inconsistencies in the way much of the specification is implemented, even by those browsers who claim full CSS support. So CSS implementation still requires some extra effort to achieve consistent results. In some cases, it is necessary simply to live with one browser displaying items a few pixels off. Remember, the goal is to communicate. A few pixels shouldn’t matter.

The specifics of known bugs, limitations, and workarounds are covered in Chapter 25, so I won’t go into detail here. But I can show you a general style sheet strategy for addressing the special needs of all browsers. This technique comes from web standards guru Jeffrey Zeldman. In his book, Designing with Web Standards(New Riders), he describes the Best-Case Scenario Design Method.

The crux of the method (in addition to the proper use of XHTML and CSS) is to design for your favorite full-featured, standards-compliant browser. This is a departure from the past practice of checking how pages looked in the lowest common denominator browsers first. Then test your page to make sure it looks and works the same in comparable ...