We are obviously very happy to receive input. Input means suggestions as to how the existing code base can be patched to work as well as possible. Input does not (normally) mean replacing the existing work with any other work.
As we've went along, I've been trying to present, openly and clearly, the facts and the options to everyone. That way I've tried to stop words and works from being wasted. All of us know that unorganized work is likely to be wasted in a project such as this.
That said, in our overloaded situation with migration and apd work, we've been very poor at responding to individual input from you guys. We've always taken your suggestions into consideration, though. In most cases we've just implemented your input, end of story. In some cases we've decided not to implement, and failed to inform you of our motives for doing so. That's bad.
Torben, your design does not look correct (it does not correspond to the design blueprint that won the vote). Those who tell you that it's consistent in different browsers are wrong. There is no reason to believe that we cannot modify the existing code to look more browser consistent than your alternative code does. You can help us with that.
Carl, the sandbox site you point us to is not consistent in different browsers and the design elements are not as flexible as ours need to be (their boxes and side gifs have been expanded to a fixed pixel height). Your latest header suggestion hasn't been implemented (yet) because it didn't really solve anything (it's still too low for NN4.x Linux). Plus its asymmetry between the blue and gray rows and its extremely thin white separating line is a step away from the blueprint.
When we've delivered our final code we'll disclaim responsibility for its further development. Anyone who gets trusted to do so will then be able to revise the work to any extent. But as long as the design implementation project is under our supervision and we're not getting paid to do otherwise we will follow our judgment and that of the community as a whole.
The judgment is:
Go ahead with CSS until we've made the site look perfect in the majority of the browsers and acceptable in the rest. Thus we're not going to make the site look equally disperfect in all browsers (which is the underlying logic of the "base your code on NN4.x" method).
