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After Douglas Bowman's first presentation at @media 2005 ended, I was left with the feeling that something was missing. I slowly approached him at his presentation booth while trying to put words to this. What followed was a series of events with a very interesting lunch with Mr. Bowman.

During his slides, Douglas explained how at first when he was introduced to CSS, he didn't like it one bit. "It'll never work!" were some of his exclamations from all those years ago, displaying his anger towards CSS's deficiencies and shortcomings, mostly the environment around it (i.e. browsers being totally nerve-wrecking when using CSS).

Moments later, however, Douglas tells us how he was at Adaptive Path and kept telling them about how cool CSS really was. That's right, a total opposite of how he was, years before that. But what happened to the part in the middle? There was a gap, and I realized that Douglas hadn't explained how he went from hating CSS to loving CSS during his entire presentation. Aghast!

Off I went to ask him about this and as I got to the booth, I first introduced myself. I told him a bit about my site, what I was doing, then told him about my Javascript/CSS slideshow and wham! Suddenly he remembered seeing my site recently, following a link from god-knows-where. "Neat," I thought, Douglas being my biggest source of inspiration for doing great things on the web and all. There are so many great people doing great things for the web, but Douglas' work has an elegance, an inner and outer beauty and a finishing touch that just blows me away each time.

Moving on from my site to the reason I was standing there whilst everyone was off getting food, I asked Douglas about the gap in his history talk. "That's a good one," was his initial response. "I, well... it was mostly a continuing process." Already this sounded familiar to me, but I asked him to explain. I don't remember his exact words (at all) anymore, but I remember just fine the essence of what he said next.

"After disliking CSS, I was eventually looking into it again at a later point. It had gotten some attention from people online so I gave it another try. Looking into it further, I discovered how easy it was to change things around with CSS. This was amazing, I thought, `I don't have to change the HTML to completely change the look!`

"I started using it more and more, and every so often I would discover something new, a new technique to get something done in CSS rather than the way I'd done it all these years. Every time that happened I would get more excited about it again, telling everybody I knew about this cool new thing I'd learned.

"Over time, I slowly migrated from using old-school presentational markup to CSS-only websites, getting excited about the process each time something new came around in the world of CSS."

While he spoke, I nodded and agreed constantly. His little speech described precisely the process that I myself had gone through when I first learned about CSS layouts. I, too, got introduced to it bit by bit, getting more excited each time I would find out about a new cool technique.

I told Douglas about this and how I figured that most people will probably have gone through the same experience, and he agreed completely. We then noticed our stomachs rumbling and he suggested we go get some food. Sounded good to me, so we walked upstairs to the buffet, all the while getting back to my projects and my Javascript/CSS slideshow. I explained to him what I wanted to do with it once I was done with my redesign, which is mostly just making one static showcase page with the design and then the Javascript slideshow will not only visually display each step of the process, but it will also show the actual CSS rules for each step as the content. Anyway, this isn't finished yet now, so let's get back on track.

We put a bunch of food on our plates and looked around the lunchroom, hoping to spot an empty table. Seeing none, I suggested we look downstairs, as I'd seen some more tables there on our way up. We managed our way down and found Andy Clarke (aka Malarkey) and Derek Featherstone sipping drinks after having just finished their lunch. Their table still had two available chairs, giving us a chance to sit down for our lunch after all. I was most surprised when Andy expressed his happiness about my being there at @media - I honestly did not know that Malarkey already knew me.

Derek teased Douglas about his presentation: "Man, you were talking about the beauty of CSS with so much passion and emotion, we thought you were gonna cry!" All in good fun, of course, as all four of us heartily laughed.

We had some fun chat while Doug and I mostly just ate our lunch, but eventually Andy and Derek took off as they were called away by someone, leaving Doug and myself getting back to our chat. It was then that Douglas wanted to tell me a little story that helped convince him once and for all of the incredible importance of web standards and accessibility. I forget whether this story happened to someone Douglas knows himself, or someone that a friend of Douglas knows. I also had to paraphrase this story as I was eating lunch and didn't have time to jot anything down until the next session had started. Anyway, true story:

A few years ago, there was a 60-year old, blind man who had a 7-year old daughter. The mother had sadly passed away, and the man was having difficulty connecting with his daughter. Being blind, he couldn't see the things she made or did, and she could explain to him what kept her busy but, thanks to the big age difference, he had no idea what she was talking about.

Then one day, he picked up that she was fond of collecting Pokémon cards. He decided that this could be his way of getting closer to his daughter again, so he went online in hopes of finding out more. Pretty soon, however, he got frustrated. Every site he found was an inaccessible mess, and he just couldn't figure out how to even spell "Pokémon" - keep in mind that it's not spelled the way it is pronounced.

After having spent many, many hours in pure frustration, the man finally came to a site that was accessible, built with XHTML and CSS. It was the site of a little online shop that imported Pokémon cards straight from Japan. He still didn't know what Pokémon really was, but he managed to order a set of collector's cards for his daughter through that site, all thanks to the accessible nature of the site.

When finally the cards arrived in the mail, he gave them to his daughter as a surprise gift. She was ecstatic, deliriously happy. Turns out, the cards he ordered were a special set that you could only order online and not buy in any stores. The next day, the daughter came home and told him all about how she showed off her cards at school, being the only kid with the unique, Japanese set. She was very excited and thankful for the cards, and he was very happy because the cards had brought the two of them closer together again.

Web standards and accessibility? They can completely change people's lives for the better.

After the story, we discussed some more web-related things that have been going round lately. One of them was sIFR, (co-)produced by a friend of mine, Mark Wubben, who wasn't there at @media but he met up with Douglas later that week during Reboot 7.

Douglas and I share the same idea on sIFR: it's a great technology and it's great that people are coming up with such things to enrich the overall Web, but neither of us would use it ourselves. "It relies on too many technologies: Javascript, Flash and CSS." Graceful degredation is great, of course, but even then. There are other factors, too, such as how it simply doesn't behave like normal text, still.

At this point, the lunch break was over and it was time to get back to the conference room, so Douglas and I headed back for Patrick Griffith's presentation, with me feeling very satisfied - and not just because of the food.

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