HTML & CSS: The Good Parts

The Awful Parts

It gets worse from here.

HTML and CSS are full of stuff that is deprecated, ill-considered, and pitilessly inevitable, each iota unto its own end…yet still with a strong claim on redeeming social value.

And then there’s the misbegotten matter that inexplicably made it from the back of someone’s mind, onto the back of a BevNap, through meetings, into the Action Item List of a manager’s manager, around and within code, and finally came to life in the steaming bowels of a working web browser. Never use the tools described in this final passage, unless your refusal will get you sacked.

The marquee and blink Elements

These elements are really artifacts of the Web’s late childhood—in fact the blink element is disabled by default in Firefox, if still supported—but they force visitors to divide their attention. As an added bonus, they also put some epileptics at risk for seizures.

Verdict

Animations are different from content—and they’re behavior, not structure or presentation. If you must animate, do so with JavaScript or Flash, and be a good citizen about it.

MSIE User Interface Properties

It so happens that Internet Explorer gives stylists access to scroll bars and the chrome of windows that they instantiate. This creates an opportunity to extend branding into other parts of the user experience, which might be seen as a win in the eyes of some people.

But it’s not. When you mess around with the user interface that in every other application stays constant, ...