Standards
Standards? W3C tries, but even supposedly standards compliant browsers only support some of the standards. Sadly, the designer has to design so that their site degrades gracefully in the majority of browsers that frequent the site. IE still dominates the browsers used. Look at the most recent browser stats at W3C, even a techie centric site has a surprising number of non-compliant browser users. In the "real world" it seems that really old technology is everywhere. I still see a surprising number of Netscape versions. It's enough to give even the most conscientious designer nightmares.
Microsoft web servers may be increasing their visibility in large corporations, but Apache is still the most common server platform in use.
I feel your pain with small print, but that is easily overcome in most browsers. It is rare that I visit a site that breaks when my browser's style sheet defaults to a larger, easier on my eyes font and size.
