web coding like it's 1999
Today I worked on an HTML email, and since they tell us the CSS doesn't work in email, I did my best to make things go with tables and font tags. Remember when we used to do that? I tell you, I forgot all the tricks I used to know back in 2001 (the 1999 in the heading is a little hyperbole, and also a song reference or something). I had to go look at some of my old pages to remember that 'cellpadding' has no hyphen, and fonts come in 'faces'. Man, I'm glad those days are gone.
Although, the future has also brought us some pretty unpleasant abominations. I'm also working on a few designs for a Movable Type design contest thingy (there are prizes; wishes of luck will be greatfully accepted), and I am obliged to report that the folks at MT haven't advanced tremendously since I complained about them back when I started this blogging endeavor, and also a couple months ago. They pretend to be all forward thinking and flexible now, but what they mean by that is that they wrap every single page element in not one, but two or even three named divs. I'd rather have tables! What happened to semantic markup for lightweight pages?! I guess they figure we all have broadband now, and also they didn't think about their design very much.
So, my apologies to the 9/10ths of our readers who could care less about web design (perhaps Eric is the exception). I've been dealing with it alot, so a little had to leak out here!