So, d’ya remember that whole CSS debate that flared up about six months ago? (Actually, it flares up continuously in various circles. In fact, I think it’s about time for it to flare up again in weblogging circles. These things are inexorably cyclical. CSS-vs-tables is the hemorrhoid of the web design world. But I digress.)
If you were around back then, you will no doubt recall that I was in the pro-CSS camp.
So anyway, d’ya remember that argument that went something like you should design with web standards and CSS because it will future-proof your site for the pie-in-the-sky future when people surf the web on mobile devices
? Well, it’s crap.
There are lots of good arguments for designing with web standards and CSS: automatically print-friendly pages, dynamic style switchers, reduced bandwidth, and aiding and abetting accessibility (a topic which I claim to know a lot about), among others. But because it’ll future-proof your site for the next generation of mobile devices
is not one of them. The theory is solid, but apparently nobody told the makers of the mobile devices (now that we have them) how it was all supposed to work in practice. Oops.
