Mark’s Blog

I have come to really not like Safari, perhaps even more so than Internet Explorer 7 (of course IE 6 will always have a special place in my heart of hate). Recently when attempting to implement the “Sliding Doors of CSS” from A List Apart, I noticed that universally changing the default font size (to 62.5%) is not in the capabilities of this browser. More over, you can’t highlight an element on a Web page, then right-click (or control-click, for the few Mac users out there) and view the source code of just that section. The only option available is to view the source code for the entire page. That’s lame in my opinion, but leave it to Apple to limit your options.

Another beef I have with Safari is that you can’t view a site’s CSS file directly in the browser. Attempting to do so just causes the file to be downloaded onto your hard drive and then you have to go out of the browser and open it separately in a text document (or Dreamweaver, or whatever your code editor/viewer of choice is). Again, leave it to Apple to limit your options. This is probably the biggest reason I’m not an Apple fan; they limit your choices thereby forcing you to do things their way.

My feelings that Web sites should be designed after (and around) the content and not before the content have finally been validated and put into words more graceful than any I could have produced in a recent article on A List Apart entitled, “Reviving Anorexic Web Writing.”

I’ve noticed this throughout my career (albeit pretty short, so far) in Web design that when a person thinks of getting a Web site built for his or herself or company, the first concern that comes to mind is “I want it to look good.” Content usually comes in at a distant second, or even third (because, they want high search engine rankings, too!). And no one wants to write her or his own content either. So if I guess if I could be a Web designer, developer and writer, I’d be off to a great start!

One critique I have of the article, is the author’s assertion that footers “…usually contain a handful of throw-away links, maybe a copyright statement, and contact information. Nobody reads them, because they’re not worth reading.” Obviously the author doesn’t concern herself with SEO or accessibility very much, because those “throw-away links” have a great deal of usefulness to ensure that a site is navigable for both users and search engine bots alike. I also often look at a Web site’s footer to see who (if it’s even listed) built the site.

However, at the risk of sounding like a flip-flopper, I do agree that more could be done with the footer. The visitors who actually read a Web site’s content are a Web site’s best friend and therefore should be catered to (in terms of design and content) in hopes of creating more friends of the like.