Study: FireFox still gaining on Internet Explorer

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An EXTREMELY impressive demonstration of the value of Web standards

Go to http://CSSzenGarden.com with IE or any Web standards-compliant browser. What you see there is a single fully standards-compliant HTML (actually, XHTML) Web page being displayed with a fully standards-compliant CSS stylesheet.

Somewhere on the page you will see a "Select A Design" header, and underneath it a list of the eight most recently-approved featured stylesheets. Click one (be sure to click on the name of the STYLE SHEET, *NOT* the name of the DESIGNER [a person] -- alternatively, you can hold [Alt] or [Option] {depending on platform} and press a letter key from [A] through [H] for CSS StyleSheet #s 1 through 8, respectively). The VERY SAME XHTML will now be displayed with that selected CSS stylesheet! NOTE THAT THE XHTML ITSELF HAS NOT CHANGED AT ALL, NOT EVEN ONE CHARACTER! ONLY the CSS has changed!

Once you've viewed all eight, click on "View All Designs" under the "Archives" header. This will take you to a categorized listing of the most recent submissions in each of several categories. At the top is the most recent of the Official Designs (the ones that make it to the front page). Click on "All Official Designs" to view all of them to date (136 as of when I wrote this). My favorite so far is #99, "Wiggles the Wonder Worm." Direct link to it: "http://csszengarden.com/?cssfile=099%2F099%2Ecss" Yes, that is STILL the SAME XHTML file, with ONLY the CSS having changed!

Go back to the Categorized Listings, and scroll down to the "Special Effects" section. These are ones that use features in CSS that are implemented in standards-compliant browsers such as Gecko (Netscape 6+, Mozilla, FireFox, Chimera), Safari, Opera, etc., but will NOT fully work right with IE due to its incomplete CSS standards implementation. Some of the things that these CSS stylesheets can do that the IE-compatible ones cannot include pop-up menus, text areas that appear as you hover the mouse over a heading, cool scrolling effects, etc. Yes, many of these things can be done in IE by using scripting, but these are doing it with JUST CSS StyleSheets! NO SCRIPTING OR OTHER PROGRAMMING INVOLVED!

This site is just ONE example demonstrating just ONE ASPECT (CSS) of the power of following full standards compliance!

Posted by: Joel R   Posted on: 11/03/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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