Slashdot: CSS for Nerds, Markup that Matters

According to CmdrTaco himself, Slashdot will soon no longer be partying like it’s 1999. A CSS-based layout has been developed and the Slashdot site will be converted over soon.

Hats off to the Slashcode team. I’ve played with that code before, and I’m sure it was no easy task removing all those layout tables.

There are a few nits to pick, of course. The site doesn’t validate, yet. I would have liked to see them use XHTML instead of HTML, but that’s just a personal preference, and probably would have caused them more grief. I doubt they have any control over the code they get from their ad servers, and ad servers are notorious for screwing up XHTML. It appeared all the img tags had alt attributes, but most of them were empty. It’d be nice to see those filled in with useful descriptions. And, there are some rendering issues in Mac IE 5.2. Nothing that would keep a person from viewing the site, just some of the boxes are unnecessarily tall.

Anyway, I just took a quick look at it, and I’m sure they have more work to do, but I think it’s off to a great start. If Slashdot can convert to a CSS layout, no other web app has any excuse for not doing it. I’m looking right at you, osCommerce.