Here is a paragraph from HTML: The Definitive Guide, by Musciano & Kennedy, second edition published by O’Reilly in 1997:
Yield to the browser. Let it format your document in whatever way it deems best. Recognize that the browser’s job is to present your documents to the user in a consistent, usable way. Your job, in turn, is to use HTML effectively to mark up your documents so that the browser can do its job effectively. Spend less time trying to achieve format-oriented goals. Instead, focus your efforts on creating the actual document content and adding the HTML tags to structure that content effectively.
Who now remembers such quaint old notions?
Not the folks at Extropy, that’s for sure – whom I expected to show more concern for content over form. As for me, Extropy will have to wait until either I get Mozilla (or NS6) configured properly or Max sees fit to allow me to read it in a typeface bigger than 7 pixels.