monkinetic weblog | redmonk.net

You can’t use DHTML to change the contents of <table> or <tr> elements in IE6.

MSDN says this: “However, because of the specific structure required by tables, the innerText and innerHTML properties of the table and tr objects are read-only.”

Of course, the Safari and Mozilla/Firefox engineers seem to have been able to make the “structure required by tables” work for them, as my javascript works just fine there.

|Dave Shea| gave his CSS Crib Sheet a permanent home. It’s a great resource for things to keep in mind when building standards-compliant websites.

Doug Bowman, designer and css guru, published yet another article dedicated to getting those of us who have not gone the “standards-compliant” route on our sites to make the leap.

There’s no longer any reason to use tables for layout, nor is there reason to maintain multiple versions of a site solely for different desktop browsers. Throw the tables out first. Trust us, they’re not needed anymore.

God, how I wish I could believe him.

You see, my company has clients whose customers are instructors found in educational institutions across the country, from Harvard to such-and-so community college. These are often non-technical users - though intelligent and very vocal - at least 3% of which are using some form of Netscape Navigator 4.x.

These users do not want to see something like what you see here, which is Doug’s site rendered in the aforementioned browser, and they are unlikely to be willing - or even permitted - to install a new web browser on their computer just to complete a business transaction with us.

Believe me, I would love to move completely to a standards-compliant layout, brandishing my delete-key like a samurai’s katana, slicing open tables and gutting pages in an honorable fury. But until I can justify to our clients that those 3% of decision-makers don’t count, and that the negative word-of-mouth a crappy-looking site will generate won’t hurt them that much, I’ve got to stick with tables and spacer-gifs.

Any other opinions?

I got a call about another small (very small but nice) web site job today. As much as I want a permanent position, there’s something special about sitting down to lunch with someone who needs a website and has little budget. I feel like a neighbor - a craftsman. That’s nice.

The web designer’s online magazine A List Apart has redesigned and relaunched again, and man, is it nice. Gone are the shocking-orange and reds and yellows, this time around it’s a subtle mix of modern and painterly styles. Very nice.

And of course, there’s several great techical articles on easy image rotation, CSS, and accessibility.

Russ at MaxDesign continues to provide great CSS resources: this time it’s the Floatutorial, on how to properly use css floats. Huzzah!

Ok, as a confessed color-junkie, this article on ways to distill natural color pallettes from photographs simply kicks ass.

Thanks Andrea!