January 2003 Archives

Different CSS border priorities

Posted at 10:10 AM

I’ve found an annoying difference between IE/Win and just about any other browser on Mac and PC when specifying different colored CSS borders to each side of an object. For instance, I have a navigation item where I’m specifying a 2px left border, and a 1px bottom and right border to create a 3D effect. This works fine on IE Mac, Chimera, Netscape Mac and PC. Example is shown below:

On IE/Win, the browser, very annoyingly, prioritizes the order of the borders by making the bottom border span across the entire width of the item, rather than making the left border the priority and having it span the entire length of the left side of the item. Example of IE/Win below:

I haven’t been able to find a workaround for this so if you happen to know any tricks, let me know.

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Bits and pieces...

Posted at 10:10 AM

Zeldman has just begun another “redesign in progress” for everyone to watch. It’s always a learning experience.

Which OS are you? I’m embarrassed to say I turned out Windows 98. Yikes. That’s horribly bad.

After some discovery, Jason Kottke asks: RSS readers misusing the referer field? This is a pretty interesting find — and will become more important if and when RSS reading becomes more popular.

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Using definition lists for site navigation?

Posted at 10:10 AM

Doug Bowman has a nice post about using unordered lists for site navigation, then using CSS to style them any way you’d like (horizontally for instance). I think it’s a good idea and makes sense, structurally, in the code. Going a step further, why not use a definition list to do the job with a <dt> of “Navigation”? This will label the list for non-styled viewers (and readers), yet it can be hidden in the styled version using #nav dl { display: none; }. I think it makes sense for navigation lists to be titled — especially when there are additional lists for sub-navigation or other header elements. This site now uses one <dl> for the nav, then hiding the definition title.

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Terry Tate Should Win an Oscar

Posted at 10:10 AM

In case you missed the Super Bowl ads, there’s an extended movie featuring Terry Tate the office linebacker up at Reebok. This might be the funniest thing I’ve seen in a while and should be an Oscar contender. The way he hacks the guy’s arm like he was rushing the passer to strip the ball… priceless.

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Cold Snap

Posted at 10:10 AM

It’s been cold. Really cold. People are referring to the unfortunate weather we’ve been bearing in the Northeast as a “cold snap”. I’ve never heard this term before, yet I’ve lived in New England my entire life. I love it when a certain word or phrase just explodes and you start seeing it everywhere. Eventually it will reach its Tipping Point and we will never refer to it again.

By the way, I know that it’s extremely cold because my jacket is frozen.

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Today's Front Pages From Around the World

Posted at 10:10 AM

Today’s Front Pages:

“‘Today’s Front Pages’ is an online version of one of the Newseum’s most popular exhibits. Every morning, more than 100 newspapers from around the world submit their front pages to the Newseum via the Internet.”

It’s amazing that this is a daily PDF archive, and it’s interesting to see what’s being featured around the world. (link via k10k)

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RSS Reading in Safari?

Posted at 10:10 AM

Dave Hyatt (lead developer for Apple’s Safari browser) is discussing the idea of adding RSS reading capabilities that are built-in to the browser. A great idea. I love applications such as NetNewsWire, but agree with Dave that it’s annoying to be switching back and forth to the web browser. If web and RSS previews were combined into one single application, we’d all have the best of both worlds. Perhaps we’ll see RSS reading integrated into future Safari releases. Dave also has some interesting ideas on stylizing feed previews. (link via shacker)

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One Click Publishing

Posted at 10:10 AM

Played around a bit with Macromedia’s Contribute today — it looks pretty promising. After 10 minutes I was editing a dummy page on a public web server, adding unordered lists, bolding, italicizing, etc and publishing it right back to where it came from via some simple FTP settings. Browse to the page you’d like to edit (it seems to use IE underneath it for previewing), click a big “Edit” button and you’re off. The beauty is that the code underneath was coming out as valid XHTML. Cool. Administrators can save the FTP settings as a clickable file that can be sent to clients, resulting in extremely simple setups.

The only mystery here is how one can lock down certain sections of a page so that editors can’t damage the sites layout. Macromedia is a bit vague about this, only suggesting that developers buy Dreamweaver as well. I’m not into that, but I’m sure hiding sections of layout is nothing more than a few extra lines of code.

All in all it looks like a great solution when building a site for someone who’d like to update it themselves. At $99, you really can’t beat it.

Other features such as Word document import and drag and drop image insertion are useful as well. I’ll post an update as I find out more about using non-Dreamweaver templates.

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Even More Cheese

Posted at 10:10 AM

I remember watching, in horror, a commerical for Pizza Hut’s Stuffed Crust pizza. Here is a food (pizza) that consists mainly of cheese. Cheese is the main ingredient here and there’s usually plenty of it. A brilliant salesman decides that pizza needs even more cheese, but is baffled by where it could be added. Bingo! inside the crust! This alone is frightening. Enter Stuffed Crust Gold. It has cheese where you’d expect it, cheese inside the crust as described earlier and (now this is insanity) more cheese on top of the crust! Unbelievable. The fact that people will buy it is even more of a mystery. Hungry?

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Dive Into XML

Posted at 10:10 AM

Mark Pilgrim has a new article up at XML.com, Parsing RSS At All Costs, which argues that the quality of RSS feeds is, in general, poor and that perhaps aggregators should accept malformed XML. Hmm. I’d like to believe he’s just making a point — that there is a problem with feed validation. Otherwise RSS could become even more of a mess than it already is. My take: put the responsibility of creating valid, well-formed XML feeds on the creators — the feed generators and content management systems.

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Kasparov vs. Deep Junior

Posted at 10:10 AM

Wired:

“Garry Kasparov, the charismatic Russian hailed by many as the best chess player the world has ever seen, will face off against Deep Junior, a brilliant, aggressive chess-playing program that is uncannily human in its style of play.”

Deep Junior is a funny name for a chess computer. Sounds more like an adult film star or something. Anyhow, it’ll be interesting to see who wins this.

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This is a Title (and not a boring date stamp)

Posted at 10:10 AM

Excellent. I know have titles working in SimplePost. No more boring date headers. More separation between multiple posts in the same day… not to mention much better when you’re reading the XML feed.

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January 21, 2003

Posted at 10:10 AM

The Noodle Incident:

“‘The Web is not Print’. This isn’t news to anyone. But the web isn’t screen either. Or more accurately it is print, and screen, and voice, and many other things.”

I just stumbled upon this brilliant article, a rant about why we should design pages with all types of devices in mind — not just popular web browsers. CSS and basic, clean, valid XHTML (or HTML) allows us to do this.

Tim Bray asks What’s Next for RSS? It’s a good little article. It’s funny to me when people refer to RSS as an XML language. It’s really just XML — with a pre-defined set of rules so that whatever reads it on the other end, be it a browser, application or whatever, knows what to expect.

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January 20, 2003

Posted at 10:10 AM

The Meaning of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday, by Coretta Scott King.

Who knew that printing a fake fly inside a urinal would lead to cleaner bathrooms?

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January 19, 2003

Posted at 10:10 AM

Played around with OmniGraffle recently while mapping out site architecture at work. What a nice piece of software, making it so simple to create flowcharts and diagrammed layouts, drag and drop shapes, add text, etc. Also impressive is the interface design.

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January 18, 2003

Posted at 10:10 AM

More on email link encoding: A reader has sent in a link to Railhead Design’s SpamStopper — an OS X application that encodes email links in a variety of HTML and Javascript methods. Haven’t tried it yet, but looks to be useful.

My mom-in-law sent over a link to some really interesting time-lapse photos of the recovery of the USS Cole. What’s amazing is the way it’s recovered — a transport ship is purposely flooded so that it can get underneath the disabled ship. Unflood and it lifts everything up.

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January 17, 2003

Posted at 10:10 AM

Worried about spam bots grabbing your email address from your site? Use the email address encoder from Dan Benjamin at Hivelogic. It uses javascript to numerically encode a mailto: link for you so that spam bots can’t read it. The browser displays the link normally. All is right with the world again.

Turn into a cabbage:

“How many times have you stared mournfully into the coleslaw and thought to yourself ‘Gee, I wish I was a cabbage.’ Well, now you can be! Activate the CABBAGE CONVERTER and you will instantly transform into a cabbage!”

Yet another gold nugget find via RWS, which was via Da1go.

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January 16, 2003

Posted at 10:10 AM

Speaking of XHTML 2.0, this guy is using it now. It’s no surprise that I get nothing, or un-marked up text. It makes a strong point though — that 2.0 is but only a working draft right now. It’s not finished, and it’ll be years before anyone can actually use it (see Zeldman). That’s decades in web time. We need to use what works now - and what makes sense as a bridge to the future. That’s why I still like the idea of XHTML 1.0.

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January 14, 2003

Posted at 10:10 AM

There’s much talk about the new XHTML 2.0 specification draft. It’s a little frightening just how much the W3C is proposing to throw out the window. All heading tags? The img tag? The href? Wow. As a result, Mark Pilgrim curses web standards, Tantek asks “Why XHTML?”, Zeldman offers smart perspective and Eric Meyer continues to just use HTML 4.01.

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January 13, 2003

Posted at 10:10 AM

I received a talking Yoda for Christmas. You squeeze his hand (or “his hand you will squeeze”) and ask him a yes or no question. He’ll answer you. He helps make decisions — not important decisions, mind you. Those are left to better methods.

iCommune:

“iCommune is a plug-in which extends Apple’s iTunes software to share music over the network. Your friends’ music libraries appear in the iTunes source list. You can browse their collections, and choose to download or stream their music. It also allows you to make your own music library available to others.”

I’ve just read Mark Pilgrim’s Dive Into Accessibility — 30 days to a more accessible web site. What a tremendous resource that anyone who builds web sites should read. Mark tells you why you should add accessibility features to your sites, who they benefit and how to implement them. It’s so clear and easy to read — none of this stuff is that complicated, you just need to the knowledge of why it’s important.

I was thinking how great it would be if the iPod was Bluetooth enabled, and there was a separate device you would plug into your stereo’s receiver to transmit the mp3s. The iPod would be like a remote control. But the iTrip is even better — an FM transmitter that plugs into your iPod, needs no batteries and transmits your music to any stereo via an FM signal. The range is apparently only 10-30 feet, but that’ll do the trick. Also great for the car.

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January 11, 2003

Posted at 10:10 AM

The Bar Monkey:

” The Bar Monkey, simply put, is a vending machine that serves mixed drinks… Using [these] 16 ingredients, a total of 188 different drinks can be made, with the included ability to add ounce increments of each ingredient to customize (or create) a drink. The drink database is easy to update and nearly infinitely expandable.”

Whoa. A drink database. That is genius.

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January 10, 2003

Posted at 10:10 AM

Spot the GIF-erence. Can you tell if the kittens are .gif or .jpg?

I don’t buy too many DVDs. I probably have about 10 total. Just the ones that I really don’t mind watching again and again. The best one so far? Hands down it’s The Fellowship of the Ring: Extended Edition. If you liked the theatrical release, you’ll be amazed at what else is included. I’m usually not one for watching the extra stuff on DVDs, but the extended version has two discs worth of PBS-quality documentaries, maps, interviews, etc. It’s incredible to see what it took for 3000(?) people over many years to pull these movies off. I never got bored and still haven’t finished watching the endless hours of stuff.

More importantly though, the extended edition of the film is fantastic. There’s about 30 additional minutes — all of which never feels forced or tacked on after the fact. It runs as smooth (or smoother) than the shorter version released in theatres. Highly recommended.

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January 9, 2003

Posted at 10:10 AM

Wired:

“Not your ordinary department-store watch, Gates’ timepiece is part of a new line of products using a technology called SPOT (small personal objects technology), has a black-and-white screen and gives wearers the time plus real-time information such as news, weather, sports scores and instant text messages.”

Sounds interesting — especially because the data is transferred through FM radio frequencies.

Dean Allen of Textism has released his own content management system called Textpattern. Looks really nice.

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January 8, 2003

Posted at 10:10 AM

Singing Flash horses.

Dave Hyatt of the Apple Safari team has a weblog and responds to some weblogger’s comments/complaints.

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January 7, 2003

Posted at 10:10 AM

More Safari stuff. Mena Trott reviews Safari and also has some great links to others who are testing with it, seeing what it can/can’t do. cederholm.org looks (screenshot) pretty good, with some minor problems. Others have posted some disappointing CSS results — but it’s still just in beta.

Lots of new Apple stuff announced at today’s MacWorld keynote speech. Most notable is the new Safari web browser. Seems pretty quick (for a beta) and supports all the usual standards (based on the Konquerer engine). Love the Google search box built-in to the interface.

Save the Dragons Campaign:

“If you’ve come here, you must be interested in saving some dragons. Follow the links to the left to join the many humans (and dragons) of the Campaign in keeping these living treasures from extinction.”

Another find courtesy of RWS.

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January 6, 2003

Posted at 10:10 AM

Tantek takes XHTML to a whole new level, by marking up his blog using no div or span tags (ok, he had to add one), but ordered and unordered lists instead. Interesting. Makes sense in a semantic way as well. A weblog is really just a big list… or a big list with little lists contained within. It’ll be interesting to see what can be done visually without the use of div or span tags. Sometimes it’s nice to limit yourself.

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January 5, 2003

Posted at 10:10 AM

XML.com posts an interesting article on how easy it is to build your own RSS reader in XSLT. It’s curious to me why there isn’t more talk about XSLT within the whole RSS/syndication/weblog topic. Being an extra layer of separation between the content and layout, it’s so darn powerful — especially when we’re already dealing with XML feeds from most publishing tools.

In response to the pros and cons of putting hidden upgrade messages on top of sites that use XHTML and CSS for layout, Zeldman has spelled out fantastic reasoning for building with web standards. At times it’s difficult to convey the importance and benifical reasoning behing going this route, but his post today will be great ammo to point to.

John’s switch to Canada:

“My name is John… and I’m a Canadian.”

A hilarious parody of the Apple switch campaign. (via da1go)

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January 4, 2003

Posted at 10:10 AM

Wired: oranges. Tired: peeling oranges.

I posted the embarrassingly simple script used for Random Web Search on the software page. It’s very stripped down and doesn’t do cool stuff like check to see if the word has already been added — that was added later on with help from a Perl guru at the office. But this initial pass is totally self working. Just drop it in your cgi-bin and add your site address to the script.

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January 3, 2003

Posted at 10:10 AM

O’Reilly, makers of wonderful technology books that feature animals on their covers, celebrates their 25th anniversary.

A few of us at work have put together a new venture. It was Daigo’s idea, with my help on the backend, we present to you: Random Web Search (DNS has hopefully found its way around the world). Basically, it’s a way to kill time. Click to generate a random word, then click again to search it on Google. You can also add your own words or phrases to the list.

Wired:

“In a bid to become the third country to send people into space, China announces plans to launch a manned rocket later this year. Other goals may include establishing moon bases and putting astronauts on Mars.”

Mars. I’m wondering if the U.S. is planning a manned mission to Mars. That would be huge. Bigger than the moon. I’m sure someone is thinking about it. I don’t follow NASA news all that much, but it seems like not much has been happening lately. Perhaps there’s something big being planned? Who knows.

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January 2, 2003

Posted at 10:10 AM

Heh heh, the 2003 Bloggies.

Happy New Year. Just finished reading The Pirate Hunter, by Richard Zacks. It’s the true story of Captain Kidd, the famed 17th century “pirate” that has had a bad rap for the past 300 years. It was an interesting book and very historical, but took me a long while to get through. I don’t think it was the book’s fault, although the pages are large and the type is small. What’s really fascinating is how part of the story takes place right here in Boston, which was a surprise. You don’t think of Boston and pirates, do you?

Next up… The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Whoa.

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