Here’s a screenshot of my blog when viewed at Internet Explorer 7:
Using the IE7 web browser, the heading appears as it should be --- the subtitle under the heading "…in pursuit of sensible sanity" is divided into six equally sized boxes, with text scrolling in different directions, at the same speed. I was able to customize the text content of this title bar when I sourced the code from an HTML tutorial site (which I can’t find anymore). At the time, my web browsing experience was exclusive to Internet Explorer.
Now that I’ve switched to the Mozilla Firefox web browser, the title bar turned into this:
My subtitles are now in a state of disarray --- the scrolling won’t work, boxes are randomly shaped, and some text won’t even appear. The title bar is now overwhelmed by the ugly and obviously erratic result of bad HTML codes.
My web designing knowledge is limited to my blogging experience – which actually means inadequate proficiency in HTML. I would only look at some HTML tutorial sites to copy creative codes or make logical revisions of codes based on my previous entries. I would also copy the codes from other interesting sites (using the view source command) when they’re simple enough.
Imagine my distress when I saw the Firefox look of my blog! I didn’t lose faith in the highly recommended browser; I considered instead the possibility that something was wrong with my codes.
Later I would find out that some codes are locked-in to specific web browsers or servers, or even operating systems. A web site design (or at least HTML codes) which adheres to long-established standards should work with any browser and can produce roughly the same experience in any browser since they’re vendor-neutral, cross-platform and standards-compliant.
I also found out about The Web Standards Project and their Acid 2 Browser Test, a test page written to help browser vendors ensure proper support for web standards in their products. Apparently, both IE7 and Firefox 2 failed the test.
Should I feel any less guilty [that the HTML codes I used in IE7 doesn’t work in Firefox]? I guess so. But Acid2 compliant or not, bad codes will lurk in websites as long as there are bad code writers (including guilty me). Hence, I’d be very eager to learn about basic standards-compliant web designing, if only to be able to tweak and pimp my blog for creativity’s sake.
Firefox 3 is in the works and they’re improving the web browser to pass the Acid2 test. For the meantime, I’d appreciate if someone could help me correct the non-compliant codes in my title bar...
