So I try to put this layout, which at the time was coded in very simple ancient tables. Now, I know they're on their way out. I had my fun with positioning div containers back when I was 16, but fucking wow, what a disaster. First I looked up how to do it, in their oh so helpful tutorial section. They tell me its just a few simple blogger specific custom tags I'll need to know to be on my way. So I look up these things called widgets, which are supposed to do things like show links to my blog archive, show posts, you know normal things. They appear to be controlled by what looked like CSS to me in the head. It outlined a bunch of attributes, so I copied this header information, so that their tags would work in my layout. But it turns out that in this new web 2.0 future it doesn't work that way. Much to my surprise, inserting the code for the blog widget didn't work. Blogger is now parsing my code with xhtml strict protocol. This is all gibberish to me of course, who remembered when editing a blog involved getting into the raw HTML. Now, the HTML is generated client side with a bunch of div tags with IDs that don't seem to even reference any css attributes I had copied into my head.

so try and try and try, and I just keep ending up with xhtml errors, which I of course try to fix, as it pointed me, albeit blindly, in the right direction. when I loaded that file in a browser... ouch, it wasn't pretty. SO I thought to myself, "wow, has it been so long that I can't even edit the layout on my blog' A table style layout with about 6 cells at most' Apparently it had. When did everything become so convoluted' What is with this validation garbage, and self closing tags' really' like my img tag really needed a slash at the end' :br: wasn't fine on its own' it needs to be :br/: now? The nerds really got their way, because the average person used to be able to steal enough code to learn HTML within a few months. This new shit... what the fuck, something is seriously wrong. I'm thinking I must be high.

somewhere around 3am I realize I have no pot, I have no cigarettes, I have nothing to read, I'm bored out of my mind. And more importantly, NOT crazy, or stupid. Being as determined as I am I wonder, could I make this a blog layout if I converted my slightly redundant table into a series of div tags. I wouldn't know because I spent all night fixing float tags and wondering why I couldn't get a background into a god damn div. That brings me to my next point, what hasn't changed..

Mozilla and IE interpreting code in completely opposite ways.

You see, this really burned my ass back in the day, so I did what most teenage graphic designers who wanted to be programmers did, we said fuck mozilla, I'm coding in IE. Well, older now, and maybe wishing for a few more hits than my high school portfolio site, I took a stab at making my new DIV layout cross compatible. Not an easy task. I will never understand how it is possible for something so simple as layer order, background images, and float tags to be processed so differently. I mean shit, we're talking about the SAME language, with a standard, and a committee, people sit around and make sure that THIS is how it works, and this is how it SHOULD work, ALL the time. But leave it to Microsoft to implement everything at their own leisure giving the w3c the middle finger. I did notice one thing, it's a lot harder to code for mozilla. It is like that strict teacher you had in 11th grade who made you come in at 7am for detention. It is like that cop who gives you a ticket even after your girlfriend flirted with him. It's attention to the hierarchy, and parentage, etc is uncanny. I'm pretty sure it even gives a shit what order I write my classes in my style sheet. IE on the other hand, is like your friend who gives you your keys when you're obviously too drunk to drive. For about 90% of this ordeal, everything worked fine in IE, all the while I'm finding broken tags, unclosed attributes, stray semi colons, and IE is still showing foxy robots in all its glory. IE was interpreting things the way I intended, it was great. But its not fun finding out your code flunks a stricter browser. So who do I love' Do I love mozilla's consistency, and attention to syntax' or do I love my old fling, internet explorer who loved to do coke and display style sheets in a way that to me, always seemed more accurate to my vision than the alternatives.

That's really the problem though, is coding an art? is it a science? It depends who you ask. Ask someone who's writing the rules and they will tell you that the deprecated inline attributes like "width" and "height" are redundant so long as one is adept with cascading style sheets. If you ask someone who's trying to get a website up for any number of reasons, the blogger, the business man, the artist, they might tell you something else. I remember the gratification I got that I used notepad, and not a wysiwyg. Now? What's the difference, I'm jaded sure, but I bet dreamweaver cs3 outputs better xhtml than I do. That's why the X stands for retarded.