By a roundabout route I happened on a post describing an Internet Explorer 6 bug (of course) in applying the :first-letter pseudo-element in CSS.

In IE6 there must be a blank between the selector and the declaration block.

/* does not work */
p:first-letter{property: value}

/* works */
p:first-letter {property: value}

Additionally, there appears to be a problem with IE6 (and IE7?) when separating selectors with a comma—include a space before the comma:

/* does not work */
p:first-letter, .extraneous {property: value}

/* works */
p:first-letter , .extraneous {property: value}

That explains a lot as I remove a lot of whitespace in my CSS files (and so may any compression tools) and unwittingly invoke the bug. 9am and I’ve already learned something new

To know more about why styles are disabled on this website visit the Annual CSS Naked Day website for more information.

Today, Joe Clark is saying “Captioning Sucks!” with a new website.

Why does it suck?

There’s not enough of it.

• Your complaints are ignored (if you can even manage to file a complaint).
• Captions are hard to read, mostly because of lousy fonts.
• Deaf people settle for less than 100% captioning.
• Broadcasters use the wrong kind of captioning (like scrollup or real-time captioning).
• So-called regulators let broadcasters get away with murder—because regulators and broadcasters play a game of musical chairs and swap positions over time.
• And finally… there are no standards.

Joe’s research project, the Open & Closed Project aims to solve that last problem and Captioning Sucks exists to raise awareness on just one of the issues the Project will address.