i’ve been trying to get my head round css (cascading style sheets) for ages. not just the simple stuff but the whole idea that the look and design of a web page should be totally separated from the content. i think this kind of orthogonality is a great thing to have. and also nothing could be worse than trying to lay pages out using tables. could it?

yup. the implementations of css in internet explorer 5 and netscape 6 are quite passable. but netscape 4 is proving to be a complete nightmare. yes, i know no one except me is using it anymore but i still hang onto my outmoded ideas that things ought to work on all browsers. however this is the problem that stylesheets are supposed to solve. the easiest way to make something written for stylesheets look good in netscape 4 is to just switch off the stylesheets and view the content. it’s a bit in the raw but it’s far more readable than the old table based layout version was.

i’m getting there though. i have a version of this page that is css layout only and i’m just polishing it off and sorting out the problems now. one of those problems is that netscape gets very picky about it’s tags being closed properly. who on earth closes p tags? aren’t missing p tags even part of the spec? anyways i will get it sorted and i will not succomb to one browser-one platform design.

there’s a curious difference between internet explorer and netscape in their interpretation of the background colours here. i reckon i can live with that though!