The tutorial is humming along. It still needs some serious work, but we’re getting there.

Sticking with an “HTML 4.01 Strict” approach has been educational, at least. For example, it’s becoming pretty clear that tables in HTML 4.01 weren’t thought out very well. In the Strict interpretation, the width attribute is not allowed for table headers and table data cells. Okay, fair enough, you’re supposed to set cell widths with CSS. But HTML 4.01 Strict permits the width attribute for the <table> tag itself. Ditto for the <colgroup> element.¹

Then there’s align, which is disallowed… but cellpadding, cellspacing, and border are all perfectly okay. <b> is in. <u> is out. <blink> is out but text-decoration: blink is in. Those are some crazy cats over at the W3C, I tell ya.

In more exciting news, Jedediah Purdy is on NPR tomorrow. I enjoyed Being America — it struck me as much more grown-up than his earlier For Common Things. (That’s an extraordinarily patronizing thing to say, coming from someone who’s the same age as Purdy, but there you have it.) Now to be totally honest: despite my sincere affection for Purdy, Being America doesn’t tell us too much that Thomas Friedman hasn’t said already. And for that matter, both men strike me as equally heartfelt and sincere. Purdy just seems to drive more people up the wall. He’s a gifted young man. Buy his book.

Anyway, for now I’ve had enough of modern politics. After this it’ll be finishing up the last few episodes of Sports Night. Reading Vile Florentines, on Bill’s recommendation. And maybe a re-reading of the Sandman series, if M’ris ever sees fit to return them to “poor” lil’ old me. Hope springs eternal.

1. But of course IE ignores setting the width using <colgroup>, so the tag is effectively useless. Sigh.