technical stuff

browser support

In general, if you are running an older browser, and are not running the latest version of a standards-compliant browser, then this site may or may not look as intended. Best results are with current, modern, open web standards-compliant browsers.

Here is a list of standards-compliant browsers, with their respective layout engines listed in parenthesis:

Your browser reports user agent ostensibly as:
CCBot/1.0 (+http://www.commoncrawl.org/bot.html)

site technology

This website is brought to you by

  • Validated standards-compliant HTML 4.0 Transitional
    correctly delivered with MIME type: text/html
  • Validated standards-compliant CSS
  • UTF-8 (no BOM) text encoding with Unix linefeeds
  • PHP  5.2.9 with Zend Engine 2.2.0
  • Apache/2.2.11 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.11 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 DAV/2 mod_bwlimited/1.4 PHP/5.2.9
  • Linux 2.6.18-164.11.1.el5running on x86_64hardware

banned technology

Stuff your mama warned you about. Stuff we avoid on this site.

  • Cookies
  • Javascript (except for the Twitter® and Facebook® widgets)
  • Adobe® Flash®

tools

secret design notes

  • This site specifies the Palatino typeface for body text, with alternate Georgia, then the browser's default serif typeface. Headline typeface is specified as Optima, with alternate Arial, then default sans-serif. Arial is used for some small text here and there.
  • Text size is specified as relative, not some specific pixel size. So, that means the main text will be the default size you have chosen in your browser preferences, and large/smaller text will be rendered relative to that default size.
  • HTML entities are used throughout, for a focus on typography quality, within the constraints of current markup language and browser rendering technology.
  • Art works credits are present in the National Gallery of Art style, for example. Other copy herein loosely follows Chicago Manual of Style.
  • Original art work in JPEG format scaled with bicubic algorithm and JPEG quality set to maximum (minimum lossy compression) for fast-loading web page display.
  • HTML and CSS compression (removing white space, tabs, etc.) for quicker loading and smaller web code is done on occasion, with consistent compression in the near future.
  • Graphics are PNG and SVG for web content, JPEG for artist content.
  • Currently, to take advantage of the cutting-edge SVG and CSS3 features, WebKit-based browsers are recommended, such as Chrome and Safari.
  • Site updates and other technical information are available via the tech feed. The tech RSS feed is not burned with Feedburner like the main RSS feed. (Feedburner adds content helpful for folks not familiar with RSS. We figure if you're want to see tech update info, you know how to apply the feed link.)

handy notes for Microsoft® users

  • For the best web text appearance when viewing with any browser under Windows®, ensure the ClearType feature is switched on. See here for more details. Internet Explorer uses ClearType automatically. Depending on the Windows version, ClearType is off by default for all other programs, including other browsers, until ClearType is specifically switched on.
  • This site uses HTML4 instead of XHTML to ensure non-standards-compliant browsers, e.g. Microsoft Internet Explorer, can render the site across the board without the usual workarounds, tricks, voodoo, and magical spells. (IE chokes and dies if XHTML is correctly served with MIME type “application/xhtml+xml.” This why so many sites incorrectly serve XHTML with MIME type "text/html" as if it was HTML.)
  • Of the various IE versions, this site supports only IE8 and up. That’s because it is not until version 8 that IE supports CSS in a reasonable way. Georgetown Art Works prefers the website be rendered in the best possible way, so that means standards-compliant browsers and IE8. There’s a caveat: IE8 must be operating in the IE8 “standards” mode (IE8-is-IE8). IE8 must not be operating in the so-called “compatiblity” mode (IE8-is-IE7). IE7 and below are kicked to a handy reminder page.
  • Standards-compliant browsers will display the website icon correctly. IE’s non-standard handling of the website icon is not supported.
  • Currently, IE does not support SVG. If you want to see the future cool graphics, use a standards-compliant open web technology browser. SVG graphics on this site will be transparent to IE.
  • IE's layout engine Trident has not kept up with CSS3 like WebKit, Presto, and Gecko. This site validates for CSS3. There are some subtle and not-so-subtle differences in rendering this site related to CSS3. Cool CSS3 stuff is best seen in standards-compliant browsers. Currently, very cool CSS animation goodies are best seen (if at all) in WebKit-based browsers.
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