Interview with Eric Meyer: Death of Netscape, CSS, Standards and Star Wars

CSS guru and Netscape Standards Evangelist Eric Meyer talks about AOL, Netscape, CSS, Web Standards and Star Wars and answers DMXzone members' questions in this interview conducted immediately before the news that Netscape has been discontinued (and one question asked immediately after the Netscape deathblow).

You're a renowned CSS teacher, name-checked by many. Who do *you* name-check as great teachers/ influences?

(Bruce)

The greatest teaching influence I've had was my mother, who passed away in April.  She was a teacher almost my entire life, mostly at the grade school level and as what was then called an "LD" (learning disabilities) teacher.  Through her I saw what it meant to be a teacher, both good and bad, and what incredible good a teacher can do.  And of course she taught me a great deal about life as well. I'll always be grateful she lived long enough to see me become a teacher in my own way.

On a more general intellectual level, again Mom, but also Carl Sagan and James Burke.  Both are great examples of an expert making his field of study accessible to anyone with an interest to learn, presenting deep and fascinating concepts in engaging ways.  I try to emulate them as much as possible in my writing, knowing that I may never reach their level but hoping to come close on occasion.

What's your favourite piece of music/ building/ movie/ pizza flavour/ Batman super-villain?

(Bruce)

Whatever I'm listening to in iTunes/ my house/ Arsenic and Old Lace/ Death By Meat/ Akiva Goldsman.

I read http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2003b.html#t20030528. Do you think you have lost touch with what people want to know about CSS, especially CSS newbies?

(Russ Weakley)

I'm still grappling with this question, to be honest.  Part of me thinks I have, but that it's okay because I helped chart the CSS terrain, and now that younger blood is moving in to explore all the nooks and crannies, it's time for me to take a rest and not worry about what interests people.  Another part thinks I'm still enough in touch to keep doing what I do, and that's all I could ask.  A third part thinks I should stop fretting and get back to work.  I try to listen to the third part.

Are Standards preventing people from publishing on the Web by placing barriers to entry (CSS, XHTML etc etc)?

(Bruce)

No, I think they lower the barriers to publishing, period.  Imagine if the only way you could get your ideas to the rest of the world was by paying to have it printed and distributed.  That gets expensive.  Now imagine the Web if you had to create a different site for every browser, and I mean had absolutely no alternative than to have an IE site, a Netscape site, an Opera site, a Safari site, a Mozilla site, a Konqueror site, an iCab site, a Lynx site, a Hiptop site... and so on.  That would be incredibly time-consuming:in other words, expensive.

Instead, we have a core set of standards that should be cross-platform and cross-browser.  They aren't, exactly, but they're close in a lot of ways.  And I don't accept the argument that we can dismiss all these problems by doing everything in Flash, because then the barrier to entry is not only the cost of the Flash authoring tools, but learning how to use the tool.  I don't imagine that the effort invested in becoming expert in Flash authoring is all that different from the effort that goes into becoming a Web design professional. So I'd say standards actually encourage people to publish on the Web, whether or not they realize it.

"I'd say standards actually encourage people to publish on the Web, whether or not they realize it."

Who, in your opinion, are the most exciting, cutting-edge, web professionals at work today?

(Matt Mills)

Dave Shea, Doug Bowman, and Jeremy Keith are the three names that come immediately to mind.  They're all three showing us how lean, validating mark-up and CSS can deliver great visual design using half (or less) the bytes of old-school HTML-driven layout, and yield highly accessible and multi-medium documents in the process.  They're also making it abundantly clear that CSS-driven design doesn't all have to look the same.

What would you like to be doing in 5 years time?

(Bruce)

Reading to my children.  Kat and I don't actually have any children just yet, but I'm pretty sure at least one will come along in the next five years.  Professionally, I'd like to be doing the same kinds of things I'm doing now: figuring out ways to improve the overall Web ecology, working to keep information as accessible and interoperable as possible, and teaching those who can learn from what I know.  Maybe that will still be related to CSS, and maybe it won't.  I'll just have to see where the Web's evolution takes me.