The WellStyled Workshop is yet another website about how to use standards-compliant code and CSS techniques to keep code clean, readable and semantic.

Normally I’d just file this away under my del.icio.us links, but this one’s slightly different. Whilst there may not be a ton of content to look at quite yet, there’s one feature in particular which deserves a closer look – every article is in two languages.

Unlike most sites which provide the article in one language and have a simple link named “this article in French” (or whatever) somewhere on the page, wellstyled.com actually provides the full text of both language versions on the same page and uses CSS and Javascript to hide the version that’s not currently being displayed and sets a cookie so that when you start navigating around, the rest of the site is still in the language you selected.

Not only this, but each article also shows a snippet of the other-language content (or the whole thing, if it’s short) in a smaller, different-coloured font by the side of the main article. Clicking on the snippet hides the active language and reveals the article in the alternative language.

It’s a very simple trick, but wellstyled.com have pulled it off with aplomb. The design of this functionality is excellent, it’s always very obvious what to do, and it makes you wonder why it’s not been done before (which is, of course, a sure sign of a good idea).

And of course, it’s only now that I discover who the site is by – Pixy! It was following Pixy’s work about three years ago that made me interested in the web, how it works and the potential to be had but I’d unsubscribed a long time ago and forgotten all about him. Time to catch up I think.