That was so two weeks ago
...to coin a phrase I heard at work. The design I had worked so hard to build up over the last few months suddenly looked boring. Like I was seeing it done on every other site. The design you would've seen just yesterday was my first true approach to all that is standards-based design. Semantic markup, minimal table use, CSS-based layout and clean XHTML 1.0. For the most part, I think I succeeded, but now I wanted to find out for sure. So I decided to do a little exercise.
I wanted to see just how much I could do with this CSS-based design. I'd never completely made a switch from one layout to another for a whole site and had it actually hold together. In the past, I'd gotten div happy and paid no mind to headings and/or syntax that would render appropriately in any situation. But in the final year of attack22.com, I made it a point to straighten out my CSS and weed out all of the garbage. The XHTML was never a big problem, but the CSS was ridiculously crowded with IDs and classes that could've been easily replaced with a simple h1 or em tag.
All I really wanted was a new layout. I'd had enough of the centered, 800px wide page look. To me, it began to feel like a vertical roll of paper centered in a horizontally shaped rectangle. Sort of like reverse "letterboxing". That and I just felt like something a little looser. Something that looked like it belonged in a browser window.
I made a copy of the stylesheet and just went to town. There are some different methods used to get this new look (which I haven't fully tested in all browsers), but I like it so much better. Also, I continued to forego the bastardization that is sIFR and went ahead and set a parameter for a specific typeface, which is generally a no-no, but I couldn't resist. If you have Agenda, you'll get the complete experience. If not, you'll get the next best substitute.
Now it wasn't a perfect transition. I did have to make a few adjustments here and there, but it was mostly me breaking some of my own tricks for more standard methods. So, yeah, everything validates (on most pages) and even though there may be a few snags here and there, I'm pleased overall, both at the switch and the results. If you have any suggestions or maybe a better way of doing something, I'd love to hear about it.
