I strongly believe that the purpose of a Web page is to deliver information. To me, flashy backgrounds, blinking text, constantly changing font sizes, and riotous color schemes all detract from this goal.
The ACK has a simple, consistent design, evident from even a cursory glance. As one person who linked to it put it, it does have that Mosaic 1.0 look about it...but to me, that's a feature, not a bug. It's intended to allow you to gather the information I'm trying to impart quickly and easily.
I intentionally do not set any colors or fonts. I believe that the reader should be allowed to set his own preferred text presentation, and he knows better than I what is easiest for him to read. If you feel, for example, that a white background makes it easier to read the page, then by all means set your browser to default to that, and I won't interfere.
I also feel that the practice of designing a Web page to be used only, or even optimally, by one browser at the expense of others is destroying the Web. The whole basis of the Internet, and the Web that is an outgrowth of it, is that every program that performs a particular function interoperates with every other program that performs that function. By encouraging browser-specific usages, this ideal is slowly being eroded by Netscape and Microsoft in their quest for market domination. This, IMAO, sucks.
The ACK has been validated by Spyglass HTML Validator, version 1.0, as being compliant with version 3.2 of the HTML specification. With the exception of one page (the one describing the American Red Cross special issue), it is HTML 2.0 compliant as well. It uses no features or HTML tags specific to any particular browser.
I know of no current browser that does not implement the full HTML 2.0 specification. If you are running a reasonably current browser, and encounter a problem, please drop me a note.