Brennan’s Blog

I just found out that MSN.com has been rebuilt to use standard XHTML Strict with proper CSS. Actually the CSS uses a technique I have never seen used before, but it works apparently. I ran it through the W3C CSS Validator and the results show it is valid.

What I have not seen before is the @media reference and block groupings to place all media types in a single CSS document. I have been using one CSS document for screen and another for print. Now I just feel silly. What was I thinking?

I am only viewing it with Firefox and the Info dialog shows the page size is about 40k. That is not too shabby given that the kids across the pond are a whopping 55k and they are still using HTML 4.0 Transitional. They should feel a bit silly, which matches their accent.

But as I browsed around other sites I use frequently like Salon.com (11k), CNN.com (12k), and Slashdot (15k) I realize that 40k is actually a bit bloated. I suppose they could export all of that Javascript which is bloating the page to an external file and save lots of bandwidth.

In fact, I copied the XHTML source into jEdit which has the jTidy and cleaned up the code. Then I stripped out the Javascript and got the file down to 20k. Referencing an external Javascript document would save half the bandwidth.

It is a great start to go all the way to XHTML Strict. Heck, most sites I do for myself are XHTML 1.0 Transitional. Perhaps it is time for me to reconsider.