CSS

This site was created with structured XHTML markup and cascading style sheets for presentation. Here's why (from our chief architect):

I'm not a web designer, but I wanted to find out first hand how hard it is to create a site without table layouts and 90's-era html attributes to control presentation. Guess what? Not very hard.

Of course, good visual design ability is a rare skill, one that I haven't developed (being focussed on object-oriented programming, methodology and architecture for most of my career). My brother Trevor Gustafson has it (he designed the Standing Wave logo). I'm happy to let others come up with a great visual design for a project.

This site follows in a prestigious line of techie-built sites that are informative but not necessarily dazzling: Martin Fowler, Testing Foundations, Kent Beck, Pete McBreen, XProgramming.com (this last one I find particularly enticing for it's mock-handwritten menu items - you have to check it out).

Now that I've done a modern site I can know what to look for when I fill out this role for my teams in the future. For now, I'm happy that it's not a hack job like most sites out there. Try view-source once and a while -- it's like a horror movie most of the time.

Conrad Gustafson, Chief Architect