Design State: A weblog about government web design

I’ve started using Eric Meyer’s Reset Stylesheet at work, as I slowly build a framework for our County sites. Using the reset has cut down on the time I spend getting each site to look the same in most browsers. Something like 88% of the folks using County sites are browsing with Internet Explorer, and fully half of those are still using IE6, so getting the CSS to hang together in a framework that has a consistent, bug free look in the quirkiest of browsers is a high priority. The way using the reset saves me time here is by highlighting the limitations of IE6 only. Judicious use of my adaptation of Eric’s stylesheet has made my framework stable in Opera, Safari, Firefox and IE7, so if I take a look at a site in IE6 and see something broken, I know it is a IE6-only issue and finding the work-around is as simple as a quick Google. I sometimes wonder if IE6 has the most thoroughly documented bug list of any piece of software, ever.

The framework hasn’t saved me any time yet. I’m still streamlining the design elements, adding accessibility features, and integrating it with our .NET content management system. Once I’ve got all of the kinks worked out, however, creating new versions of our sites will be as simple as clicking a button in Visual Studio, changing the colors in the CSS, and adding the content to the CMS. All of the glory and the craftsmanship is done up front, which makes pumping out sites conveyor belt-style seem a bit low-class, I suppose. I can live with that though, since for me, consistency and expeditious site development are high priorities in the face of the often torpid pace at which a bureaucracy moves. It’s also an added bonus in a shop with 3 designers and nearly 100 sites to manage.