RichInStyle.com

[Note this is a repost from CIWAS]

I am pleased to announce the launch of RichInStyle.com.

RichInStyle.com features the following:

1. Lucid, complete and accessible guides to:
   A. HTML 4 - from objects to OPTION, it's all covered here, and in an
easy to understand manner - right from the basics up to the most
complicated issues.
   B. CSS 1 - the best CSS-1 tutorial on the net, discussing all the
issues in a clear and correct way.
   C. CSS 2 - the best CSS-2 tutorial on the net, discussing every
aspect of CSS 2 - including oft-neglected issues such as aural style
sheets, generated content and tables, and in a more easy to understand
way than I have seen in any other source.

2. More CSS bugs (over a thousand bugs and hundreds of kilobytes of bug
data) than the rest of the internet put together:
   A. Internet Explorer 3 (197 bugs)
   B. Internet Explorer 4 (203 bugs)
   C. Internet Explorer 5 (155 bugs)
   D. Netscape 4 (250 bugs)
   E. Mozilla 5 (112 bugs)
   F. Opera 3.6 (161 bugs)
, and in each case precise information on bug trigger conditions, tips
for avoidance, and all arranged in a logical way to provide FAST access
to and assimilation of bug information.

plus Internet Explorer 4 and 5 bug sheets; these demonstrate each of
the bugs on a single page, showing incontravertibly the evidence of the
browser's bugginess. (I will shortly produce similar documents for
Mozilla 5 and Opera 4 TP (if it ever gets released (I have installed
the Linux TP, but I am loathe to test it because I am not sure whether
it shares the same rendering code as the Windows one (anyone?)))

(Please note: currently no MacIE bugs (this _will_ be rectified).
However, from what I gather Mac IE 3 is near-identical to Win IE 3 in
bugs, the difference being that MacIE doesn't have all of WinIE's bug;
otherwise MacIE is in general slightly less buggy than WinIE).

Note that the number of bugs is not necessarily in proportion to the
quality of the browser although there is a reasonable correlation;
Netscape 4 is the worst, followed by IE 3, followed by IE 4, followed
by Opera 3.6, followed by IE 5, followed by Mozilla 5).

3. A CSS-2 bug table, which boasts the following features:

   1. where the table indicates a bug, a link to the full text
description of that bug (or bugs)
   2. effective structure so that it is easy to see whether there is a
bug in the browser or not
   3. links to the appropriate section of RichInStyle.com's guide to
CSS; so if @import's bugginess is being discussed, there is a link to a
description of @import.

4. A CSS master class - aimed at people who know CSS, but who want to
write better style sheets, and featuring:

   A. A guide to how to write the perfect style sheet - that can't
conflict with browser or user style sheets, always looks the way you
and your user want, and as concise as possible (typically <4kb).

   B. A guide to coping with older browsers - how much old-style HTML
should you use with CSS, and tips on how to ensure that newer browsers
aren't constrained by this.

   C. A guide to how to write cross-browser style - style that works
perfectly on all of the browsers, all of the time - including hacks
that exploit the browser bugs to hide style from buggy browsers,
including a description of how to do browser 'detection' simply using
one style sheet; plus free JavaScripts to serve different style sheets
to different users according to the browser that they use.

   D. A guide to CSS units - the joy of px, the evil of pt, and the
relative uselessness of ex; and the bugs affecting use of the units
with the browsers, and thus the cross-platform solution.

   E. A guide to fonts and line heights, including information on best
practise for font and line height specification, the best units to use,
the best size of line height (e.g., 1.2 times, 1.6 times font-size,
etc.) and the effect that the type of content that you have,
backgrounds, font families, etc., have on these. In addition,
information on the best fonts to use, how to ensure that your fonts
work across browsers (avoiding bugs), converting ems to pixels, default
font sizes and text effects.

  F. Successful margins: the 'best' margins for different content
types, the best way to specify margins, and how to ensure that you do
not fall foul of browser bugs.

  G. A guide to color on the web including, as ever, bug information.

  H. A guide to the styling of links, including CSS issues and complete
bug-avoidance information.

5. Free stuff:

  A. Free browser-detection JavaScripts

  B. Free MySite (TM) technology - designed to offer viewers of your
site the ability to view your site the way *they* want to see it, via a
JavaScript that remembers their preferred style sheet (using a cookie)
and serves the appropriate style sheet to them - like alternate style
sheets, except actually useful!

  C. Free AlwaysWork style sheets - style sheets that take into account
the 1000 bugs listed to give the page viewer the appropriate style.
Furthermore, since there is no programming involved (instead some
rather sneaky hacks), none of the problems (i.e., network slowdown,
proxy server confusion, requirement for JavaScript to be enabled, etc.,
etc.) of other methods can occur.

  D. The Web-safe Colorizer - this tool this allows you to select one
of the web-safe colors as a background, and simulatenously view what it
looks like with each of the web-safe colors as a foreground color
(although web-safe color finders exist elsewhere, _none_ offer this
service).

6. Test pages - many thousands of tests in more than three hundred test
pages (and don't let that high figure lead you to think that they are
spread out - tests that elsewhere would be spread out into three or
four pages here form only one - in total the test suite is nearly
3,000,000 bytes), testing every aspect of CSS 2 (*), and revealing
hundreds of previously undocumented (apart, of course, from my bug
pages) bugs in every web browser.

7. Two proposals for CSS:

   A. A floats proposal that makes floats easier to understand, and
removes the errors and ambiguities from floats by describing floats in
a clearer way; and, most crucially, replacing the present rules, which
are a (incomplete) set of 'ifs' and 'nots', and which do not easily
translate into computer code, with rules that describe the position of
all elements in terms of the edges of previous elements. 
   
   This proposal is intended to be entirely equivalent in effect to
CSS-2, except it removes a few ambiguities and also proposes a few
minor changes.

   B. An inline box model proposal that, while different from CSS-2
(and indeed from anything that I or anyone else has suggested before),
is a good deal simpler than CSS-2.

8. Probably some other stuff I've forgotten about - in total the site
presents more than 5MB of web-style-focused information.

* Except @font-face and bidirectionality (sorry - I _will_ write tests
for these in time (bidi imminently; @font-face eventually).

PS. Please notify me if you experience any dead links, buggily rendered
pages or such like.

------------------------------------------------------------
Cheesy slogan alert:
RichInStyle.com - <URL:http://www.richinstyle.com>, putting the 'Wow!'
into Website.

Received on Monday, 6 March 2000 19:32:06 UTC