First of all, let me start this by saying thanks to Dan Ott. It was his persistance that prompted me to give this round of the CSS Off competition a go. Now here I sit, nearly 45 minutes after the final bell. Damn I'm tired.

I submitted my entry two minutes before the end of the contest. After spending nearly the entire day on this, I must say it was a lot of fun. I've always enjoyed working under pressure (to some extent) so this was right up my alley.

I can say that after having gone through it, I've learned a few things. I would now like to take the time to impart my new found wisdom:

  1. Make sure that you close any comment tags in your CSS properly.

    I had fifteen minutes to go and so I thought I would upload the folder to my server in order to validate the CSS file. Much to my chagrin I found that I didn't close a comment tag. Upon doing so it broke the layout of my entry. I had fifteen minutes to fix it, but I made it. Barely.

  2. Find better ways to clear floats than me.

    I cannot stress this one enough. Please, PLEASE stop what you're doing and read this article on clearing floats. Actually read anything you can on the subject. It is one of my weak spots and cost me a ton of time bug fixing when I could have been testing in more than one browser.

  3. Test in more than one browser.

    Actually, I always do this. Except in those cases when I have 24 hours to complete a design and have spent far too much time focusing on little details.

  4. Don't spend too much time focussing on little details.

    I was so worried about trying to use the include pattern that I ended up wasting two hours of time that could have been better spent with tasks like cross-browser testing. In the end I went ahead and marked up my hReviews without it.

  5. Internet Explorer has been and will continue to be the bane of my existence.

    At least for the foreseeable future anyhow. Although I can't really take all of my anger out on IE. Opera did a poor job of rendering my review table. I was a bit surprised.

Well, that's all I have for now. If the judges at CSS Off decide that they are only going to test my entry in Firefox and Safari, then I should be okay. If they break out Opera and IE (which I'm sure they will do, it is only fair) then I probably won't make the cut. Oh, well. I had a great time participating and encourage anyone reading this to do the same.

I will most likely participate in the next one (barring any unforeseen family events). Thanks for telling me about the contest, Dan. As you are one of the judges now, please show mercy on a fellow Clevelander.