I'm not a big fan of minimal html, but reality is such that in some cases I don't have any control over the html code I have to style. And implementing a design on some standard piece of html code can be quite tricky indeed, especially when the html is completely outdated or not up to modern standards. On the other hand, it's those cases that allow you to expand your box of css tricks.

Some time ago I wrote an article about some peculiar css behavior in Safari 3. We did some more research and came up with some clearer results and four small test pages to boot. The good news is that most recent browser versions seem to have resolved the problem already.

If you look at what css people write about, there are mainly two types of css articles you'll run into. One type is about bugs, how to fix stuff and workaround methods. The second type is about the future of css. What needs to be fixed, what is missing and where we are going. And once in a while you bump into an article that's basically a sobbing wail of css sorrows. I guess this article is a bit like that third kind of articles.

If you've been following this blog, you might already be aware that I'm in favor of conditionial css targeting, a method that allows separate blocks of css to be served to specific browser(s/versions). This is already possible for IE, but not for other browsers (unless you are using some obscure css hacks). Last week we hit a different way to accomplish this for Safari 3, completely by chance and hardly recommended practice, but still worth an article.