tenpastmidnight blog
Making hay while the sun shines
» Thursday, January 08, 2004 «
<div id="bloody_annoying">CSS Woes</div>
I've been working on a new website for my freelancing work, so I can separate it from my ten past midnight site, which is more for the random stuff I think of and am building up in to more solid content.
I'd forgotten how annoying CSS can be. The content has been relatively fine, especially as I'm just transferring at lot of it from my current site. But writing the website using one browser - Safari - then testing it in Internet Explorer 5.2 (Mac), then moving across to test it on the PC (Internet Explorer 6), then discovering that the colours aren't right on the CRT and having to change then (nothing to do with CSS.) Then trying to set the design elements properly so I have little curves at the end of things, realising I can't get that working in CSS without lots of hacking. Doing it another way, then finally working it by just making a large block and setting it as a background image for certain divs.
It all reminds me why I went in to server-side development: you know what platform you're writing for, and you're using something relatively straightforward to create the HTML for you. You don't have to worry about what browser people are using, what each one supports, whether they have Javascript or Java turned on, if they have Flash installed, and which version. You do all the cool stuff in the background and serve up something created particularly for that person.
Unfortunately, design is another matter entirely, and it's back to the frustrations tomorrow. Joy!
I'd forgotten how annoying CSS can be. The content has been relatively fine, especially as I'm just transferring at lot of it from my current site. But writing the website using one browser - Safari - then testing it in Internet Explorer 5.2 (Mac), then moving across to test it on the PC (Internet Explorer 6), then discovering that the colours aren't right on the CRT and having to change then (nothing to do with CSS.) Then trying to set the design elements properly so I have little curves at the end of things, realising I can't get that working in CSS without lots of hacking. Doing it another way, then finally working it by just making a large block and setting it as a background image for certain divs.
It all reminds me why I went in to server-side development: you know what platform you're writing for, and you're using something relatively straightforward to create the HTML for you. You don't have to worry about what browser people are using, what each one supports, whether they have Javascript or Java turned on, if they have Flash installed, and which version. You do all the cool stuff in the background and serve up something created particularly for that person.
Unfortunately, design is another matter entirely, and it's back to the frustrations tomorrow. Joy!
