I just updated my links over there on the right. After I did that I decided to check Alex Russell's blog, and he happened to have a nice rant about CSS's box model:
Once upon a time (as I was graduating from high school), the W3C CSS working group published the CSS 2 box model, which the WinIE team blithely ignored. Whatever the reason, the fact that MSIE calculated boxes one way while better browsers followed the spec to the letter caused web developers no end of sleepless nights. The answer seeemd easy: just get Microsoft to change their errant ways, and then the problem would be solved for good!
What no one bothered to mention at the time was that the box model that MSIE had been implementing was vastly simpler to use, required less head-tiling and forhead-to-desk banging. It was, in a word, better. But instead of pushing to get the spec changed, the web standards community pushed to get the browsers changed, and mostly succeeded. The mountain had been moved, but the new location wasn't much better than the old one.
The whole article can be read at http://alex.netwindows.org/2005/03/on-box-models.shtml.
