10 Years of A List Apart
Every once in a while, it’s good to go back to basics and remember where you’re coming from. When better than after (all right, a little while after) 10 years of A List Apart?
I wasn’t around in the beginning, when ALA started as a mailing list. It wasn’t until two years later that I first used the internet, and it was another two years after that before I first made a website.
For me, ‘the beginning’ at ALA was Jeffrey Zeldman’s article From Table Hacks to CSS Layout: A Web Designer’s Journey.
From the beginning, we’ve done whatever we had to do to make our sites work in every browser. In the world of non-standard HTML Design, we bolt every word, every image into place by manipulating table cells.
At the time, I was just starting to realise there had to be something better than the rather painful process of developing with HTML tables for layout. This struck a chord.
We all know the future is about web standards. And web standards are about the separation of style from content – presentation from structure – design from data.
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We also know that millions of people view the web through 4.0 and older browsers. And this knowledge prevents us from crossing the line and implementing tomorrow’s web methods right now.
I crossed the line.
I’d long since heard of CSS. I even used it for colour schemes and text effects. But at the time, explanations on how to do more—actually separating presentation from content—were thin on the ground.
Zeldman went on to explain box models, floats, specificity, and even how to protect version 4 browsers. It worked. It was amazing. As he said, “For people who make websites, that is nothing short of revolutionary.”
“We will see some of you at the barricades, and the rest another mile up the road.”
Thank you, Mr. Zeldman. Thank you, ALA. See you there.
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