This is the seventh version of the Ruins of Asgard since it first popped up in 2001. Early efforts were designed in the Geocities Pagebuilder program, and they were, well...scary. I got ahold of basic html by poking around, mimicking others, and generally driving Nyohah insane with the usual questions asked by any hapless n00b.

I discovered Cascading Style sheets in '03, and have been using them to avoid hard work and needless hairpulling ever since.

The idea for this one was simple: Trinity falling forever through the limitless space that scrolls down the left side of the page. I spent a few months tinkering with the thought and spent Hurricane Frances figuring out how to make it go.

And there you have it.

This is basically a CSS version of a trick I've seen around that normally uses tables.

Tables are needlessly difficult, complicated, and just plain old. Plus, by forcing placement of an object inside a cell--text, for example--they affect other things around the object. Images, for example, or even text in a different cell (box) of the table. These push-pull daisy chains can easily slip out of control, but it's tough to put them back together again.

Tables are evil.

So I turned to CSS to get the job done, instead. CSS is super-flexible, easy enough to learn, and currently supported by most browsers. Also, any placement or code errors are usually predictable: checking for a dangling < div > or < style > command solves nine-tenths of all problems. Combing through billions of html values to find one misplaced apostrophe is officially a thing of the past.

Also: I prefer to specify everything in seperate < style > blocks on each page, inline as opposed to link-related. This is mostly because I could never get the hang of link-relating, but also because, frankly, I don't want one changed value to affect my entire site. There's a bit more work to writing it inline, but more versatility also. Plus, again, with seperate blocks of < style > to look at, one error in one command will only affect that comand, not necessarily your entire code.

Short version: CSS is king and everyone should learn it.

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