Our fourth informal get-together to discuss style, CSS, web standards, and other über geek topics will be this Thursday, May 22 at Atlas Cafe in the Mission. In addition to what Tantek mentions, I’ve been thinking about independent projects, like the CSS Zen Garden, which cross disciplines and show off the power of beautiful design and efficient coding, and could also create interesting discussion. Join us if you can.

Over at Mezzoblue, Dave Shea introduces a wonderful space in which we can explore and experience the intersection of beauty and innovation. His CSS Zen Garden offers examples of aesthetically-pleasing layouts constructed with clever techniques intended to showcase the power and potential of skilled CSS design. continued

Via a post on css-discuss from the lead designer, Cingular Wireless launches the next big commercial site to adopt XHTML for markup and a heavy reliance on CSS for layout and presentation. Apart from my natural interest level in this arena, Cingular happens to be my wireless carrier, which adds to my own intrigue. continued

Already know the basics of CSS? Want to learn more about the ins and outs? It’s not too late to join Westciv’s free self-paced online course, currently covering CSS Level 2. I’d recommend looking into it if you’ve never bothered to see what Westciv offers. Because how convenient is free? New material comes out each week, replacing the prior week’s material. Of course you could buy the course if you want to take it at your own pace (faster or slower, without material disappearing). Or you can simply follow along with each of the 18 weekly doses Westciv will provide under the free course schedule. This course assumes an understanding of the foundations covered in CSS Level 1, so it may be confusing to jump in as a beginner. The course started last week, and has already moved on to Week 2. But the introduction from Week 1 is still available — possibly for a limited time, so get there quick.

Alright. It was low-hanging fruit. I couldn’t resist. I mentioned the launch of the New Yahoo! Search a couple days ago. After wading through their code for an hour or two last night, I almost gave up. But determination kicked in. I’m not going to add any hoopla or propaganda. I’m not even going to claim whether it’s a solid improvement or a horrible compromise. Does it look pretty in Netscape 4? Hell, no. With very few design liberties, new markup, and about 85 stylesheet rules written from scratch, here’s a few free hints of what Yahoo! Search could be if it used valid XHTML+CSS. Cleaner code. Heavy reliance on CSS. And, of course, as you’d expect: no tables in sight. continued

In the continuing trend of large sites converting to web standards and CSS-based layouts, Fast Company finds the religion and adopts it as their own. FC relaunched their site today, giving up reliance on tables for layout. Instead, they turn to lean XHTML markup combined with the power and flexibility of CSS. File sizes of various pages were cut in half and speed up the site dramatically. New features make improvements to the site’s accessibility. Color schemes can be changed each month with little more than the flip of a switch. FC details some of the new features in a revised Site Guide. continued

Sitting down where we please. Foaming at the mouth. Blood pumping through our veins. Well, ok. Probably not quite what you’ve been seeing happen in San Francisco over the last few days. More like a distraction to get our minds away from what’s happening here for a brief bit. Eric will be in town starting this weekend. Assuming none of us have been arrested for innocently walking down a sidewalk, we thought it appropriate to gather in the Haight for our third — yet unnamed — caffeine-assisted discussion about style, standards, design, and blogging, etc.

Tantek discovered another open wifi network at Rockin’ Java. The three of us, and any other friendly folk who’d like to join us, will be there this Sunday (March 23) from 2pm until whenever. So far, our first two gatherings have been small and informal, with discussion floating freely to whatever we deem appropriate or interesting. We expect this one to follow suit.

Thanks to David Havelin, who just wrote in to report back the results of pointing JAWS 4.5 to the background-image text-replacement examples (Ex.1, Ex. 1.2, Ex. 1.3). David writes:

In all cases, when I asked JAWS to read the whole page, I heard: “Using background dash image to replace text vertical bar example one hello world exclaim“. [Replacing “one” by “one point two”, etc. as appropriate] I am using Internet Explorer 6.0.

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Jeffrey Zeldman writes up a very worthwhile read on the recent hot topic of CSS backgrounds. He appropriately attributes the original technique to Todd Fahrner, (from whom we’ve all drawn a lot of inspiration and practical problem-solving) and dubs it the Fahrner Image Replacement (FIR). In addition to providing several more benefits of the technique, Jeffrey also gives us a hint or two of future intentions with his ongoing redesign of zeldman.com. continued

If anyone read the CSS tutorial I wrote last week involving use of the background-image property, they should be aware of an apparent critical flaw in the method as it’s currently described. It’s hard to tell whether the flaw is in the method itself, or simply in the way screen readers verbalize text of a page. A footnote added to the bottom of the tutorial tonight reads as follows: continued