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CSS: The Tech Ajax Forgot

Filed under: Web 2.0 News, Front Page, Ajax, CSS — Chris Cornutt at 8:24 am on Tuesday, August 1, 2006

The shifting sands of time can make people forget things, things they once knew and loved, things they couldn't live without....things important to Ajax too. Michael Mahemoff reminds us of one such thing in his new post - CSS.

CSS is as important to Ajax as Asynchrony and XMLHttpRequest. Which is to say, it's very useful, even though it's not essential. Due to an accident of the English language, JJG's creative mind, and the propensity of certain terms to rise to buzzdom, it doesn't explicitly feature in "A.J.A.X.". However, the original Ajax article certainly spells out the importance of CSS matters.

Michael continues, talking about the real significance of CSS in an Ajax-enabled architecture, noting that it's more than just a way to "cut down on markup". CSS really is a key to several of the features we've come to know and love - just take a glance at Script.aculo.us.

CSS is as integrated into Ajax and Web 2.0 applications as anything yet some seem to forget about some of the other powers that it has. Simple CSS can be found all over, but look at CSS-only layouts and some of the more advanced documentation to see how its power can be used for good for you and your site. I think you'll be impressed.

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Advanced Box Model Testing

Filed under: Web 2.0 News, Front Page, Usability, CSS, Testing — Chris Cornutt at 9:49 am on Monday, July 24, 2006

From Qooxdoo.org, there are two new posts spotlighting something that developer after developer have struggled with at least once in their work - the differences between box models in the major browsers. They explore these differences in a two part series of posts.

In part one, they focus on the differences in the “border-box” model in Firefox, IE, Opera, Konqueror, and Safari. A sample page was created and screenshots were taken (both in standard and quirks mode). Their findings show that there was only one, in this test case, that rendered the example correctly in both modes - Konqueror. Others came close, but had to switch to a “context-box” model to render correctly both ways.

Their other findings in this first test include the differences between versions of Internet Explorer, problems with Firefox’s “box-sizing” rule, and Opera issues.

In part two of the series, they take the test up to the next level, testing this time for some overflow problems within the same tests as before.

The results for this test were similar - Konqueror was a clear winner for consistency between modes. Opera sees consistent errors between the two modes, and Internet Explorer doesnt even render the boxes in one mode. Firefox also sees some differences, with version 1.0 getting a failing grade for this test of the “content-box” settings.

Examples and screenshots of this second test are also included.