>Hmm, I disagree. In my opinion, 'clean' web design means the now sadly old-fashioned approach of: have some text, marked up to indicate emphasis, headings etc., then let the damn browser decide what it should look like.
What you're describing isn't clean web design, it's HTML without CSS.
>Did these designers ever stop to think about blind people relying on text-to-speech? It's obvious how that should render <em> - with emphasis - but what does it do with "letter-spacing:110%;"?
Yes. Check out the concept of the semantic web. It's the idea that the structure of the page should give some semantic meaning to the content. Which is why the use of <i> or <b> tags is eschewed in favor of <em> and <strong>.
>Fixed-width web pages are _evil_, where by evil I actually mean _stupid_.
Depends on the content. If I'm reading a something text-heavy, I want the width of the page to be relatively small - I find it much more comfortable to have a vertical column of words.
What you're describing isn't clean web design, it's HTML without CSS.
>Did these designers ever stop to think about blind people relying on text-to-speech? It's obvious how that should render <em> - with emphasis - but what does it do with "letter-spacing:110%;"?
Yes. Check out the concept of the semantic web. It's the idea that the structure of the page should give some semantic meaning to the content. Which is why the use of <i> or <b> tags is eschewed in favor of <em> and <strong>.
>Fixed-width web pages are _evil_, where by evil I actually mean _stupid_.
Depends on the content. If I'm reading a something text-heavy, I want the width of the page to be relatively small - I find it much more comfortable to have a vertical column of words.