Mark’s Blog

I think that it’s sort of ironic that Apple, known for making computers that “just work” and are rather forgiving with it comes to user error, would make a Web browser that is very particular and less forgiving when it comes to displaying XHTML and CSS Web sites.

As it turns out, in order to display an image in the body tag of a Web site using CSS, you must first make sure you order your rules accordingly. That order is as follows:

1. Color (#000000, for example)
2. URL of image
3. Whether or not it repeats (no-repeat, repeat-x or repeat-y)
4. It’s position along the x-axis (left, center or right)
5. It’s position on the y-axis (top or bottom)

An example of this would look something like this:

body {
background: #000000 url(../images/bg.jpg) no-repeat center top;
}

I just wanted to say this. Coding for Safari just requires too many work arounds for even the simplest tasks (such as displaying a background image and/or color in the body tag of the stylesheet). Safari may tout being “standards compliant,” but it most defenitely isn’t. Please, Internet surfers of the World, use Firefox instead (hell, I’d even settle for IE 7)!

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.

I’ve always been meaning to write more, but the fact that I feel I’m not a very graceful writer has been one of the key factors that has kept me from doing so more often. However I feel that if I were to begin to write more often, I would eventually get better. So I am pledging to myself (and whomever is unfortunate enough to be reading this) that I will start to write more — and perhaps at greater length — about whatever I feel like writing about (most likely it be technology and Web related).

To start, I’ll explain my stance on the Microsoft vs. Apple topic.

Personally, I’m not a fan of either Apple or Microsoft. Any piece of technology that limits your options and is proprietary, can go to hell in my opinion. Sure, you’ve got to make money somehow, but I just think it would be really nice to see one day where all technological devices, software and peripherals included would all just be compatible with each other and nothing would be proprietary. I can dream, can’t I?

I choose to use a PC (one I built myself) because it doesn’t limit my options as much and is easier on the wallet. I choose to use Microsoft’s operating systems because I don’t think it’s even possible to install an Apple OS on a PC, plus I have a great deal more control over it, and I like that.