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Ah, now I remember what caused me to write my little post below on using web standards. This rather ill-informed article. I knew there must have been some reason.

On the “standards don’t seem to be standard” — a.k.a always appear the same in all browsers — issue: I designed this site without once looking in KHTML or IE. A couple of weeks later I thought I really should check out what it looks like in those browsers. You know what, it looked identical.

The layout of this site is very simple. I don’t think that is the entire reason for the consistency of display across browsers. It is because I’ve had practice with CSS. I know what works. I stick to the things that work.

You might say, “shouldn’t it render the same whatever CSS you choose to use? After all tables do.” In an ideal world, yes that would be true. It is not just CSS that has this problem: table-layout does too.

To table-hackers I say: your tables look the same in all browsers because you know how to design with tables to make it look the same in all browsers. There are some things you don’t do because you know it will not work properly. It is the same with CSS. A little practice and you know what CSS is “safe” to use; much like you know what table techniques are “safe”. This is my experience, and I think with a little effort it will be your’s too.