I still politely take issue with how a few non-functional misplaced characters on the style-sheet render an entire site inaccessible and invalid to the user. I’m asking in the spirit of understanding your point, not of being an ass.

I’m surprised to read the claim of a validator bug. Which known validator bug (number?) does your CSS trigger? Which bit of the CSS2.1 spec allows four dashes in the first non-comment line of a stylesheet?

95% of visitors.

Unfortunately your online/offline metaphor doesn’t hold up. In print, I can guarantee the final state of a piece. I would certainly not be satisfied with a 1 in 20 failure rate in that case. On the web however, it’s a different story. The final viewing state is totally out of my hands.

To put a twist on your comment though, our intent with our free templates is NOT to appeal to the 95%. We use the free templates as an opportunity to do something fun. If 99 out of 100 people don’t like it, that’s ok. It’s not client work: it doesn’t need to appeal to any particular group. If some people like it, great!

You are correct that the W3C’s css validator is showing one single error on the stylesheet. The error that is being displayed is a known shortcoming in the validator itself. The error is NOT invalid according to the W3C’s own specs for css2. The validator has it’s uses, but it is far from a perfect tool.

I’m at a total loss as to why you would feel it’s a shame that we’re giving away a template that thousands of people seem to be enjoying. To the best of my knowledge, no one is being forced to download it ;) Installing it won’t break anyone’s system, nor will it damage their data. If they don’t like it, or if it doesn’t fulfill their particular needs (ie displaying at very narrow widths), then they can simply switch the theme off.

Also, designing for the 95% can mean looking fugly to 1 in 20 people. Would you accept a 1 in 20 misprint rate on your offline marketing materials?

There are really few good reasons for putting out an invalid or inaccessible site in this day and age. We have the tools like xhtml, CSS and WCAG: this can be done right. It is a shame to see one such invalid page design being promoted as a free sample and it’s a tragedy if it gets “some pretty good reviews”.

That said, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. That’s part of what makes being a designer so much fun.

Hagrin has a couple of very valid points, and I really appreciate the time he/she put into the comment. The template he point to at mollio.com is indeed a lovely design. It’s not a wordpress theme though, and the two shouldn’t be confused for the sake of those with less development knowledge.

It would be really helpful to me if those of you who experienced the horizontal bar in IE could tell me what version you’re using. Here at the studio, we’ve tested it on 5.5 and 6, and don’t get it…

MJ Ray: as far as I know from my server stats, you’re in the extreme minority viewing a site at 510px. Over 95% of our site visitors have their browser windows open to 780px or greater.

And you’re right a more subtle green might be good

I think it could be a decent template, though, with some more natural color changes.