Just a few thoughts on CSS today, as I’m still recovering from excess turkey-consumption from yesterday (Thanksgiving). I have found that being thankful every day just makes me feel better, and I’m thankful we have a holiday to reinforce that decision.

Anyhow, on to CSS. I hate seeing websites where CSS has been used to try to control every pixel on the page. If they further suggest I should use a particular browser to ensure their page looks right, I usually just click away. They probably have nothing to say that I’d be interested in listening to.

I rarely browse the web with my browser (Firefox of course) set to full-screen. In fact, I often have two or three programs running at once, and the browser may be confined to a relatively small space. With sites that use CSS to control layout, this often results in overlapping text or overlapping text and images. It can become totally illegible. I wonder how it looks on a cell phone? Using the browser’s font-size settings have no effect if the person designing the site didn’t use relative font sizes in the CSS, further limiting legibility.

Nor is there any consistency from one web browser to the next. I have Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera and Firefox installed on my computer, but I almost always use Firefox. One of my bank accounts forces me to use Internet Explorer for web-access to that account, and the others I use occasionally to make sure my websites look OK on them, but I find Firefox provides the best user-experience.

Do not assume your viewers have large screens, particular browsers or anything else when designing websites for your Internet business. Simple designs are best, not only from a usability standpoint, but for search engine optimization (SEO). I do like to use CSS to control font characteristics — it supports the modular design principles I espouse. But always put your CSS in a separate file, and reference it in the header section of your HTML. Including it in-line is a strong negative for SEO.

For page layout, I try to rely on the browser to render things in whatever manner the user prefers, wherever possible. For gross features, like the number and relative size of columns, I use tables — but try to avoid nesting them — again, a negative factor in SEO. For fonts, table column sizes, and images (when practical), I try to use relative sizes rather than absolute values.

Build your Web Empire with sites as simple and practical as possible, to ensure the widest audience possible. You won’t impress them with appearances, but can still make sites reasonably attractive, and it is the content, after all, that attracts most users.