The Move To Web Standards
After a failed attempt a few weeks ago, the Tiny Pineapple web site has undergone a major redesign. We’re now using CSS for almost all of our page layout. The next step will be to update all of the underlying code to XHTML 1.0 (but that won’t affect the layout or design). Our goal is to eventually be 100% web standards compliant.
This move to web standards doesn’t come without some pain. We’re saying goodbye to full support for ancient browsers. Those people using browsers that have a rendering engine that is more than 5 years old (an eternity in the world of browser advances) will still be able to access all of the information on the site, but they won’t have the same stunning aesthetic experience as those who aren’t frozen in a state of browser-upgrade denial.
Also, keep in mind that since the basic design of this site hasn’t changed in over three years, regular visitors might become disoriented and may need to put their head between their knees until they get their bearings.
Internet Explorer on the Mac likes to cache old stylesheets, so if things look odd you may need to quit and restart IE to have it recognize and load the new one.
Let me know if you experience any other anomalies or have any questions…
Further Reading:
Comments
Chris
WOW! I really dig this new layout. It is by far the best one. However, I’m not sure about the font for the logo. It reminds me of the short dumpy cousin of the 1980’s Banana Rebublic Logo. Other than that it’s fantastic. Of course, I am viewing this on a Mac. So I’ll look at it on a crappy PC tomorrow and let you know.
Jodi
I beg … to differ. I dig the font for the logo. I am viewing it on a non-crappy PC, and I likes what I see.
And the opinion of someone you don’t know from Adam and/or Eve surely counts for something, yes?
Yes.
Rob
When viewing the site on a Mac using Safari, I get the “oldbrowsers.css” stylesheet and the basic style.
If I take the source of the page, force it to use “tinypineapple.css”, add a base tag pointing to tinypineapple.com and open *that* file in Safari, the page looks just fine.
Safari may not support @import yet or maybe the imported style isn’t overriding the “oldbrowsers” one.
Perhaps an option on the page to select which style to use? For those browsers which fail the sniffer, yet can still support the full stylesheet.
Oh yes, “oldbrowsers.css” could use a page margin. I’m getting text right up to the browser frame. ? : )
Rob
Followup:
After viewing the locally-saved version of the page, then going back to http://www.tinypineapple.com/ in Safari, it used “tinypineapple.css” for display. Maybe Safari has the sheet cached somewhere now — I think I’ll stop poking at it.
Grettir
Jodi,
Yes!
The idea was to go for something with a Hawaiiana-ish, tropical woodcut look. Not being a font hoarder, that was the closest I could get.
Chris is my recent-MFA-graduate artist brother, so since he didn’t like it I asked him to make a stab at a new logo. He’s gotta be able to come up with something better than I did. I didn’t get an ounce of the family’s artistic talent. At least I’ve got my looks…
Grettir
Rob,
That’s really odd. I tested Safari during the design process to make sure that it was going to work OK. I never had the same caching issues with Safari that I had with IE, but I may not have hit it in the same way/sequence that you did.
I changed my oldbrowsers.css to add page margins for Netscape 4, etc. You’re right. It doesn’t look that good to begin with, but it looks even worse right up against the left margin.
dan
I had my head between my knees anyway.
Kate
It was much better than Cats. I laughed, I cried, I want to see it again and again.