< Use almost any browser! >

Please note: This article was written in 2002 and is very outdated, thank < insert whichever deity you prefer here >.

I've left the original article (or essay, or rant, or whatever) here for nostalgic reasons, though. Trying to make standards compliant CSS that actually worked in all the popular browsers was quite the pain in the arse back in 2002. Not surprisingly, IE was the biggest problem: it was in no way standards compliant, and to make things worse, every version of the browser had different bugs!

< The original rant >

This website is best viewed with Internet Explorer, resolution 1800x1600, 32-bit colors, the font size changed to 14, the browser window placed at the top of your screen and resized so that it fills exactly 81.6721 % of your screen, and you need flash and javascript enabled in order to view this site.

Don't you just hate it when lazy people put something like that on their sites and expect others to use a specific OS or browser or install bizarre plugins or do weird tricks in order to view the sites? Well, I do hate, and I'm doing my best to avoid that sort of attitude. I once visited a website that didn't even let me view it because I didn't have Microshaft Internut Exploder. Instead, I was greeted with a message that told me to download IE. If you ever make a website like that, I promise I'll slap you with a wet trout!

I'm trying to make tuXfiles at least readable by anyone. Of course tuXfiles will look better in specific browsers or screen resolutions or color depths, but any standards compliant browser should be able to view this site. Because I validate my pages with the W3C validator before uploading them, I've at least made sure that there aren't any non-standard tags or serious errors in the XHTML code I write, so tuXfiles should be ok in any standards compliant browser.

< This site doesn't work? >

So, after reading the above you decided to go slap me with a wet trout because this website is completely fux0red up in your favorite browser? Layout's all messed up, the text is unreadable, images are broken?

I told you that any standards-compliant browser should be able to view this website. Well, there's the problem. Very few browsers these days fully follow the W3C standards. Especially CSS is problematic to many browsers, and because I decided to make the colors and layout of this site with CSS, some buggy broken browsers may have problems. If you have serious troubles when viewing this site, PLEASE CONTACT ME IMMEDIATELY so I can start pulling my hair out. Just tell me what browser and OS you're using and what's the problem. I'd be really grateful for the information.

But please don't bother reporting about some minor squirming and other weird behavior of the link lists on the left when hovering with a mouse. It's a known thing and I'll rewrite the code when I feel like rewriting, but I don't consider it a big problem.

< Images are broken? >

So, you think all the website's pictures are broken? Nope. Your browser is broken! Most of my images are in PNG format, and if your browser can't display them at all, you must be surfing the web with a trashcan. Even some versions of the n-year-old browser Netscape 4 can display PNGs! Do yourself a favor and upgrade your browser or switch to one that does support transparent PNG's, like Mozilla, Opera or Konqueror.

And no, I didn't mention Microsith Planet Exploder, although it can display PNGs. Why? Because that inferior pile of randomly generated junk code doesn't fully supprt PNG: it doesn't support transparent PNGs unless I insert some weird, completely non-standard and invalid code into my web pages. IMHO the only valid reason for a modern browser not to support PNGs is that the browser is a text-mode one and doesn't support any images at all.

< So why use CSS then? >

Why use CSS if browsers support it badly? One of the reasons is that it makes my life a lot easier. With CSS, I can control the colors, appearance and layout of this whole website with only one single file. Because I hand-code everything, it'd be really painful to change every page of this site if I later decide to change the look or layout of tuXfiles.

Another reason for using CSS is that it makes your life a lot easier. Because I keep all the formatting in separate style sheet files, these pages are much smaller so they load more quickly.

Maybe the most important reason is that I'd like to promote the use of web standards (CSS and XHTML) by using them on my pages. What's the fuss with these standards, anyway? Without open standards it'd be impossible to create web pages that can be viewed with any browser. The standards make it possible for you to use your software of choice to view web pages that were made with the webmaster's software of choice.

You don't believe me? Fire up a non-Microsoft browser and use it for viewing a website that uses non-standard, Microsoft-only code that can be viewed only with Internet Explorer.

< Netscape 4.x >

If you're using an older Netscape Navigator for viewing tuXfiles, you're probably wondering why this site looks so ugly. That's because it's a major pain in the 455 to create a standards-compliant website that looks good in older Netscapes. The reason is that Netscape 4.x and the older ones are not standards-compliant. Especially CSS is very badly supported.

I decided I won't even try to make this site look good in NN 4.x but at least the text should be completely readable. NN 4.x users get exactly the same information as people using other browsers. I figured that people who use NN 4.x want a reliable, fast browser and use the internet for searching for info they need, not looking at websites having all kinds of pretty bells and whistles.

If I was wrong, and you're a NN 4.x user who wants all the pretty bells and whistles, please tell me why the hell are you using a 6-year-old browser then?! And if your explanation is a good one, I'll write a doctoral thesis about it and make a great bunch of $$$ and win a couple of prizes.