Optimization

 

 

 

 

The CSS Test

When I was a freshman in college my major was computer science. I remember very unfondly the prospect of having to compile C++ code in some unruly manner using a cryptic windows-based system that took hours to fix. So when I had been informed of what was essentially the same thing in CSS, I was apprehensive to embrace the notion.

 

Thankfully, it's actually not as bad as C++: most of the mistakes made are, at least with CSS, fixed within a few minutes.

 

 

 

 

Optimizing the XHTML was slightly more arduous. Many of the features that I had used–most namely the drop-down menu–was not XHTML compatible. The biggest concern was that it would work with Internet Explorer, and thankfully, it did.

 

Another concern, which grew into a study of transitional to strict XHTML markup, was the coding behind the flash animations.

 

This article from a List Apart explains the situation pretty clearly, but not even their code could remedy the incompatibility situation. I had been running into some XHTML compatibility issues with the <embed> tag when I place flash movies. What I discovered is the <embed> tag is no dice. Its replacement is the <object> tag. This article details the situation and provides coding solutions.As it stands, the animations work fine if you have a relatively recent (few years) version of Flash.