As a public service announcement, and not to pick on the Insolvent Republic of Blogistan, but I just happened to notice it here as the latest inadvertent offender. Strict HTML requires that tags like <i> be opened and closed on each paragraph. If you don't, HTML-compliant browsers like Opera will display only the paragraph that has the tag in it as that font--the rest of the grafs will revert to standard text, even though the tag wasn't closed on the first graf.

This problem doesn't show up in Explorer, because it's either more forgiving, if you want to consider it a Microsoft feature, or non-HTML compliant, if you want to consider it a bug.

Anyway, as an Opera user, I often find it hard to tell excerpted text from the blogger's because the italics or whatever disappear after the first paragraph. Please fix this, if possible. I'll give Mr. Slotman a break, because I can understand the the tag supply may be limited in an insolvent republic...

Now back to your regularly-scheduled blogging, and be careful out there...

why not just use ie?

Because I have a thing about security. And I like to keep Microsoft at least semi-honest by helping keep their competition in business.

Unless you have access to multiple platforms with multiple browsers, most HTML authors probably aren't aware of the problems-- it looks fine to them. The advantage of writing conforming HTML is that if there is a problem, it is either due to a browser bug (or feature), or the writer's ignorance of the subtleties of HTML and stylesheets and such. (I still have problems with properly centering things.)

By writing to the standards, not only are you maximizing the number of people who see things the way you intend, you are writing for future browsers, not the old, obsolete crappy ones of the past.

I will have the happy and prosperous workers start making up more tags immediately. They are glad to subordinate themselves to the higher goal of the State.

im using ie6 (security updated) on a win98 machine and it does not resolve the 'i' tags unless it is per paragraph.

If i try to 'i' all the paragraphs in a 'blockquote' for example, i have to do all paragraphs for it to show up.