Daily Web Dev

Welcome to the World of CSS Web Design

Although CSS was first introduced in the mid 1990s, it did not become a mainstream tool among web designers and masters until more recent years. This is unfortunate, because there are millions of poorly designed web sites cluttering the internet that could be easily improved with the help of CSS.

So what exactly is CSS? CSS is an acronym that stands for Cascading Style Sheets. The term Cascading Style Sheets implies two things. First off, the style sheets are cascading. This means that multiple style sheets can be used for a single web page. Additionally, the term “cascading” also refers to the way a style is determined in the event that more than one rule matches a single element. The second thing that is implied by the name Cascading Style Sheets is that the purpose of CSS is to style web pages. Whereas the purpose of HTML (or XHTML) is to define the structure of a web page, the purpose of CSS is to define the presentation.

The reason that so many web pages have broken layouts in different browsers is because they try to use HTML to control the structure and presentation of the page. The most common abuse of HTML is attempting to use tables as a presentation method. Although you may be able to achieve the look you want in a single browser, your web page will look broken and distorted in many other browsers. The only time that tables should be used is to hold a set of data (such as the results from a scientific experiment). If you do have a legitimate use for tables on your web page, you can even use CSS to style your table and make it more attractive.

By taking the time to learn CSS, you will be able to create a web page that looks much more consistent across a variety of browsers.

On Feb 1, 2010, Google officially announced the discontinued support of Google Apps for older browsers.

Google sent an email to all Google App users:

Dear Google Apps admin,

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology.  This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5.  As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010.  After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser.  We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience.  We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely,

The Google Apps team

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Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

Keep in mind, Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above. Although this may affect many users and corporations dependent upon older browsers, the innovation of new technology only calls for updates. We can view this as a great step forward for the virtual world.