In a perfect world, Ethan Marcotte would star opposite of me in a web design-themed, buddy cop action comedy called Beep and the Squirrel.

Actually… I’m writing that one down, just in case.

Until that glorious moment, I’ll enjoy his raw intellect and seasoned wit while envying his creative talent in a suitably stalker-like fashion. (Unless you’re reading this, Ethan, in which case I assure you that I am in no way digging through your refuse bins looking for cast-off brilliant ideas and toothbrushes.)

While we’re in the vein of borderline creepy idol worship, I’m going to agree with Ethan’s succinct tweet on the W3C’s CSS Conditional Rules Module Level 3 Working Draft (which I’ll reduce to the much easier to remember abbreviation “CCR Module”, hereafter nicknamed the “More Cowbell” document). I feel cold.

I’m still perusing the document. Although any judgement leveled while shooting from the hips (hello, ladies) is bound to be rife with bad summaries and skewed views, in my opinion the module doesn’t seem to solve any problems that aren’t already being solved in a better fashion by good CSS practice or other techniques. It’s a lazy man’s shortcut to “supportin’ olla them thar browsers”.

As Dylan Wilbanks said, these aren’t the conditionals I’m looking for.

Just look at @supports, for the love of cheese (or dairy-free cheese alternative for vegans and the lactose intolerant). It lets you test if a browser supports a feature, before (in their examples) you then go and use the feature. What? How bizarre is that? I know in their examples you can get far trickier with not and or and doogie howser, but seriously?

When it comes to the problems that CSS is supposed to solve, although @supports and its ilk would work, they seem to encourage bad or unnecessarily laboriously bloated CSS documents instead of streamlining the process. And when it comes to @document I believe that the authors are trying to make CSS solve problems it wasn’t intended for.

Look, if you’re trying to get your CSS to be flexibly supported across different browsers and devices, I recommend checking out Ethan’s Responsive Web Design, or at least actually using your skullmeat instead of slapping shoddy shortcuts into your CSS. Capiche?

Today’s comic finishes (finally) the An Event Apart “storyline” that starts here, and has part #2 here. It features AEA speakers Andy Clarke, Nicole Sullivan and Ethan Marcotte. It also features Naepalm, the chinchilla alter-ego of Janae, one of my fellow Mindfly Web Studio designers. The comic also has a brief cameo by everyone’s favorite archaic browser complication: the dreaded hasLayout.

It’s been a long journey to crank out these three comics, which highlight some very important points. First, continuity in a web-design commentary webcomic is difficult at best. Second, that cheese tidal waves represent the best of all possible worlds. Finally, that An Event Apart: Seattle was an awesome extravaganza and Janae and I are still trying to squeeze out all the drops of precious information we absorbed into Mindfly’s waiting arms.

One of my favorite presentations was Ethan’s Dao of Flexibility, which discussed adaptive layouts and fluid grids in detail, opening my eyes to the real power of the world of media queries. I’ve been tinkering away in my acorn-filled lair since the conference, working away at a new design for this site that harnesses these arcane techniques for my own dark purposes. From time to time, I have to pause and laugh with evil glee.

Thanks, AEA.

We’ll now return to my regular schedule of making fun of HTML5 politics and Opera.

Today’s comic features a gruesome shootout between Ethan Marcotte, Andy Budd, Ian Lloyd, Eric Meyer, Jeffrey Zeldman and the duo of Elliot Jay Stocks and the squirrel. Jeff Croft also makes an important appearance. Cast in the light of a rather enjoyable action film, the sequence mimics the spirit of a Twitter throwdown that Mr. Stocks ignited this February with one simple tweet: “Honestly, I’m shocked that in 2010 I’m still coming across ‘web designers’ who can’t code their own designs. No excuse.”

As you can imagine, this sort of statement created a charged atmosphere in the web designer tweet zone. People had opinions, they shared them. Those were just a few examples. In general, things got a bit tense. It’s rather reminiscent of the last time I saw this topic come up during October ’09 (I’d joined in with a post about it which you can read here).

Should web designers know how to code in order to be taken seriously?

Jeff Croft’s response to the reignited brawl is to the point (warning – profanity-laced): You can read it here.

It’s always a very fascinating argument when this topic comes up. I’d like to hear your thoughts on it: Should web designers know code? (Elliot later discussed the topic himself in more detail here. Take a gander.)

Today’s comic features a rather large cast of web designers (Eric Meyer, Ethan Marcotte, Dan Cederholm, Elliot Jay Stocks and Jeremy Keith) doing nothing involving the web. Rather, each of them has traveled to the Pilcrow Public House for a tall drink and a leisurely respite.

Although I’m deeply in love with the Internet and its delicious offerings, I find that the 21st century is running at a pace that is accelerating and doesn’t allow for much leisure, even during your leisure time. My own plate is rather full, even outside my work hours, with various online and offline activities that result in my bitter laughter when someone asks what I’m doing with my spare time this week.

If, as a web developer, I were to fashion a pub, I’d probably call it the Pilcrow. I’m blaming all the typography nuts that are in my feed reader. Hence it plays stage for a look at what I imagine leisure would be like in the middle of nowhere, preferably without any wifi or 3G signals, leaving you with no choice but to put down the phone and look at who’s next to you.

True to the premise of slowing down, this comic was inspired by some older posts on the blogs of the notables above. When Dan Cederholm updated the design of SimpleBits, he spoke briefly in his post Woodpress about his desire to start writing posts more often, and not for search engines or tutorials, but for conversation.

Ethan Marcotte picked up the thread in an entry by the same name, complimenting Dan’s redesign and realizing that his “quasi-tumblog” wasn’t entirely cracked up as he wanted it to be.  He then quoted a sentence from this post by Merlin Mann that really hit me where it counts: Jesus, I miss paragraphs.

Amen to that. I love Twitter. It’s a great way to get an idea out quickly, to share links and views among peers when time is short or when dealing with a keyboard the size of my thumb. But sometimes I feel like I’ve lost the ability to take my time and write at length because of that need to get the ideas out quickly.

The clincher for me was Elliot Jay Stocks’ contribution to 24ways.org (the web designer’s advent calender) entitled A Pet Project is For Life, Not Just For Christmas. It’s a great read, discussing the need for our own pet projects as a form of relieving work pressure, collaborating with friends, and improving our quality of life. I couldn’t agree more. CSSquirrel is in essence a pet project, but lacks that collaborative nature that can be so addicting. I need to find some quality geeks and a wacky idea and get rolling. To me, these sort of projects are an equivalent the fixer-uppers in the garages of our fathers. They’re there for some peace and the opportunity to play with your toolset.

So I don’t know about you, but one of my New Year’s Resolutions is to find a way to slow down where it counts, and tinker more where it doesn’t. Or the reverse of that. I’m not sure which.

(Regarding Meyer and Keith’s presence in the comic: Eric Meyer wrote on Twitter about applying to truck-driver’s school on a day off. Fictitious or real, I found it hilarious. I also recently re-discovered the Salter Cane website, featuring a band including one Jeremy Keith on bouzouki. I’ve found the music rather enjoyable, and may have to purchase one of their albums.)

Today’s comic, which features a massive ensemble cast of Jeffrey Zeldman, Dan Cederholm, Jeremy Keith, Eric Meyer, Ethan Marcotte, Tantek Çelik, Nicole Sullivan and Wendy Chisholm (guest starring Chris Wilson astride a unicorn), is something like gloss and candy. It’s not tackling a serious issue. Rather, it’s tackling a humorous name created by a group of great people who are themselves tackling a serious issue.

As this photo conclusively proves, the people above (minus Chris Wilson and the unicorn) gathered in the recent past to discuss something very vital. Contrary to popular rumor, it was not the secret location of the Holy Grail or harnessing the power of cold fusion. Nay, they were instead talking about HTML5. More importantly, they were talking about HTML5 as “authors”. For pretty much anyone who reads this blog and doesn’t work for a browser manufacturer, that means you, or your son (if your my parents. Hi mom! Hi dad!)

Like the Hardy Boys, these people were industriously searching for clues, especially clues along the line of “what the hell is HTML5 anyway, and how does it apply to a web designer?” After spelunking the depths of the spec, they surfaced with two things: Firstly, they declared that it was good. Secondly, (and for my purposes, more importantly) they chose  an identity to bind them: The HTML5  Super Friends.

Today’s comic is comedic salute to their bravery and choice of identity. They’ve already done us a great deal of good by recommending alterations to the footer element (which was already a source of annoyance to yours truly) which has now come to pass.

Keep up the noble work, dear heroes.

(And in case you wanted to know, Chris Wilson’s appearance was due to his tweet here regarding the presence of the unicorn on the HTML5 Super Friends page.)