tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240595842023-11-15T14:05:37.622+00:00antanovaI'm Jason Crosse, a <a href="http://antanova.com/">web developer</a>, and this is my blog. I'll be talking about web development, the challenges I face at work and my vision of an accessible web.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger78125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24059584.post-15771549994785314972008-11-16T14:29:00.001+00:002008-11-25T14:30:44.094+00:00Moving from Blogger to hosted Wordpress<p></p><p>I’m moving my blog from <a href="http://blogger.com/">Blogger </a>to my own site, using <a href="http://wordpress.org/"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Wordpress</span></a>. During the move, both <a href="http://antanova.blogspot.com/">my Blogger blog</a> and this one will look pretty average, because I’ll be using basic themes for both. When I’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">ve</span> settled in to this new <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Wordpressiness</span>, I’ll theme it up and I’m planning to use <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Wordpress</span> to drive my whole site.</p> <p>One problem I have had already was in importing my Blogger posts and comments to this site. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Wordpress</span> comes with an “import” function that supposedly imports from a lot of different blogging engines and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">CMSes</span>, but I found that it <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">didn</span>’t work for me.</p> <p>What I tried to do was import directly from my Blogger account, but <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Wordpress</span> kept getting stuck showing one post and one comment imported, although those posts never actually made it to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Wordpress</span>. So, after reading a couple of posts on the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Wordpress</span> support forums, I signed up for a <a href="http://wordpress.com/"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Wordpress</span>.com</a> account. Then, using the import tool on <strong>that </strong>account, I successfully imported everything from Blogger. With me so far?</p> <p>Next, I used the “export” tool from that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Wordpress</span> account, exporting a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Wordpress</span> XML file with everything in it. It was this I tried to import to my this site. I say “tried”, because that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">didn</span>’t work either. There was a problem with the permissions on my server forbidding <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Wordpress</span> from creating the folder where the XML file would be stored.</p> <p>A bit of Googling later, and I saw that this is a known WP bug. The temporary fix was to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">CHMOD</span> the uploads folder to 777 - meaning that anyone has read, write and execute permissions in that folder. Right, so that done, at last I successfully imported all my posts and comments, not forgetting to reset the permissions on the upload folder.</p> <p>And here we are.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com57tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24059584.post-48592225239577125302008-11-13T15:44:00.004+00:002008-11-13T15:49:47.051+00:00Code bits: PHP date year box script<p>Creating a warranty registration form for the proud owners of a new LCD panel should have been a very straightforward job. Well, actually it was, but that sort of interrupts the flow of this post a bit, so I’ll skim over that inconvenient fact.</p><p>For the ‘date of purchase’ field, I simply added the day and months items as <code><select></code> form controls. Then I got to the ‘year’ box, and realised that soon we’ll be leaving <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008">2008</a> behind like a piece of temporal rubbish, and embracing the glistening newborn that will be 2009. I know the client wouldn’t really appreciate having to come back to me a month after his site goes live just so I can add a new year to the form, so I decided on the only sensible course of action a <a href="http://www.antanova.com/">quality web designer</a> like me could take, and made a super-simple php script to write the year into the form.</p><p>Here’s the php function:</p>
<blockquote><pre><code>function writePurchaseYear()
{
$currentDate = getDate();
$currentYear = $currentDate['year'];
$startYear = 2008;
$output = "<option value=\"2008\">2008</option>\n";
if($currentYear - $startYear > 0)
{
for($i = $currentYear; $i >= $startYear; $i--)
{
$output = $output . "<output value=\"$i\">$i</option>\n";
}
}
echo $output;
}
</code></pre></blockquote><p>So, put that somewhere on the page that’s going to use it, and then, where you need the actual form control to be on the page, you need to put:</p><blockquote><pre><code><select name="purchaseyear" id="purchaseyear">
<option selected>----</option>
<?php writePurchaseYear();?>
</select>
</code></pre></blockquote><p>So there you have it. HTH, and all that.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24059584.post-7540521097414750612008-10-31T09:34:00.000+00:002008-10-31T09:35:25.946+00:00Off-topic: A perfect pen for left-handers<p>While hardly anything to do with web development, I thought I’d post this for the despairing left-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">handers</span> out there. I’d almost given up on finding a writing tool that I liked the feel of and that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">didn</span>’t cover the bottom edge (little finger side) of my left hand with grey. The Internet came to the rescue, as ever. I found a few recommendations for pens that dry quickly, including the highly rated Pilot G2 gel pen.</p><p>I’d tried gel pens before, but had never been that pleased with them. Whether it was the sometimes scratchy feel of the nib on the paper compared to a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">biro</span>, or the way that the ink often simply stopped coming for a few letters, I don’t know.</p><p>Encouragingly, even though there were few mentions of it online, the <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000YH8V0K?ie=UTF8&tag=antanovablog-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B000YH8V0K">Uni-Ball <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Jetstream</span></a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.co.uk/e/ir?t=antanovablog-21&l=as2&o=2&a=B000YH8V0K" alt="" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important;" border="0" height="1" width="1" /> seemed to be the answer for a left-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">hander</span>. So I gave it a try. It’s great! Now I can take notes at meetings without coming out looking like I’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">ve</span> changed the toner on all their printers. The texture’s good, too. The only catch is the price. They’re a lot more expensive than your bog-standard Bic, but worth it.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com339tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24059584.post-19512012880134470202008-09-18T13:43:00.001+01:002008-09-18T13:45:46.860+01:00IE6 bullet aligned to bottom of list-item (LI)<p>I just thought I’d jot this down for posterity as I’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">ve</span> seen it before but not often enough for me to remember the solution. Posting this <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">should</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">help</span> that, though.</p><p>When using LI in IE6, if the LI has <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">hasLayout</span> activated, then the corresponding bullet will be aligned to the <em>bottom</em> of the item instead of the top. Why the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">devs</span> writing IE6 thought that this would be useful I don’t know. Or perhaps, <em>it’s a bug</em>? The shock of it all.</p><p>The solution is to target the LI and to disable <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">hasLayout</span>. The method I used today was this:</p><pre><code><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">li</span> {zoom:0;}
</code></pre><p>This directly countermands the <code>zoom:1;</code> I had added to other elements to get the page to hang together in IE6.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com30tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24059584.post-39304063108467679822008-09-04T19:46:00.001+01:002008-09-04T19:47:27.649+01:00Google Chrome<p>As you will of course be aware, Google has released its new browser, <a href="http://www.google.com/chrome">Chrome</a>. I’ve tried it out briefly, and everything seems hunky-dory. I think I’ll use it to access Google’s own apps. As for day-to-day browsing, I think I’ll stick with <a href="http://www.mozilla.com/">Firefox</a>. After all, can I <em>really</em> trust Google not to harvest data relating to my web browsing? I don’t think so. Also, there’s no <a href="http://noscript.net/">No Script</a> available for it, without which it’s a bit difficult to block Google Analytics.</p><p>On the plus side, another browser is a good thing. It gives people another choice other than the dreadful Internet Explorers. Yes, and I mean IE7, too. Chrome uses the <a href="http://webkit.org/">Webkit</a> rendering engine, so there shouldn’t be any real surprises in rendering.</p><p>Let’s hope this comes out of beta soon, along with IE8 and we can start using some CSS3. How I long for that day.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24059584.post-16398954780999656822008-07-11T12:18:00.002+01:002008-07-11T12:26:34.322+01:00ScreenEdit Sessions<p>Well, that was a nice break. I’m sorry that I’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">ve</span> been so long in between posts again, but hey - I’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">ve</span> seen the stats and let’s face it it’s not going to make a massive difference to the server loads at Blogger, is it?</p><p>You’ll be ecstatically happy to hear that since I last posted I’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">ve</span> been on holiday to Portugal to see my best friend getting spliced to his most excellent girlfriend. It was grand to see them do that, and even better that I got to be the best man without having to give a speech! I did get one ready last-minute, but there was no call for it, so in my pocket it stays. Shame, it was bloody brilliant.</p><p>Last night I went to the <a href="http://www.screenedit.com/"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">ScreenEdit</span></a>’s <em>Sessions</em> event. It was a good event: I caught up a bit with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">somem</span> people I haven’t seen in a while, drank some free beer, and saw a couple of good talks.</p><p>The first was by two Mark and Tim from <a href="http://www.allofus.org/"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">AllofUs</span></a>. They went through some example of the work that that agency does and told us about the time they spent in Seattle working at Microsoft’s HQ as part of MS’s <em>Artist in Residence</em> programme. The second talk was by <a href="http://www.brendandawes.com/"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Brendan</span> Dawes</a> of <a href="http://www.madebymn.co.uk/"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">mN</span></a>. I’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">ve</span> seen him speak once before, at Adobe Live last year, as you may have read on this blog. He was brilliant again: he’s just got that certain charisma that you need to get the crowd on-side with you.</p><p>Brendan talked mainly about some of his personal projects and showed some of his early work for club 18–30. It was shit. Thankfully he’s improved somewhat, and talked us through some of the experiments he went through to get to his Cinema <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Redux</span> prints. These are where he processes a film and converts it into artwork. A couple of them are exhibited in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">MoMA</span> in New York. I was very impressed with that, but also slightly scratching my head. I always do that when I see project of this nature. It’s not something that is totally inaccessible: for example, you don’t need to be a fine artist or sculptor. The whole thing hinges on the <strong>idea</strong>, <em>that’s</em> the key, not the execution. The reason I’m scratching my head is because I haven’t had that idea and wonder what might be if I ever had that inspiration. Would I actually follow it through and <em>do</em> something about it, or would I just file it? Anyway, Brendan inspired as he did last time I saw him talk, so I think I should go and see him talk once a month, just to keep that energy going.</p><p>A successful night, then, it seems for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">ScreenEdit</span>. If they have more events like this, I will definitely go. I suggest you do, to.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com37tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24059584.post-69533991912976396852008-05-06T14:43:00.001+01:002008-05-06T14:45:20.011+01:00Ace service<p>I of course spend a lot of my time on a computer of one description or another, banging away at the keys, clicking and moving the mouse, and generally giving my wrists and fingers hell. This has proven to be an issue recently. I’ve started having pains across the back of my hands and in my wrists. Nothing major, but it’s a sign of potential problems to come.</p><p>I started thinking about why this was occurring. I have worked on computers for many years, and nothing of this type has happened before. I haven’t changed position even: I work at the same desk that I have for a long time. That could be part of the problem.</p><p>I did notice though that the left button on my mouse had started to resist more than before. I had to press harder to click. Even the slightest change in the force needed to click the left mouse button is enough to notice, because clicking the left button is something I do thousands of times a day.</p><p>I got in touch with <a href="http://www.logitech.com/">Logitech</a>, the makers of my mouse. They were absolutely amazing. It turns out that my mouse has a five year warranty on it, and so they would send out a replacement mouse for me. My old mouse was an MX500, and their suggested replacement was a G5 laser mouse. So, after a little exchange where I sent them a photo of my old mouse, they posted me out a new one.</p><p>Now THAT’s customer service for you. Next post: A new keyboard.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24059584.post-17636218495444571342008-05-01T19:56:00.001+01:002008-05-01T19:58:42.475+01:00A new website<p>I notice I’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">ve</span> left a pretty big gap since my last post. I don’t know the reason why. I’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">ve</span> been ticking over, and have been working on a few projects and have learnt some bits and bobs. I’ll have to reserve those for later posts.</p><p>I’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">ve</span> had a bit of trouble with my son. He’s a baby, and has been a little ill with an ear infection. Although that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">hasn</span>’t really been a burden time-wise, it’s certainly been a mental one. Thankfully now, though he’s much happier and getting better.</p><p>I launched a new version of <a href="http://antanova.com/">my website</a> last week. It’s an interim step, which is obvious if you look at it. Previously, all I had up there was a holding page with a <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">contact</span> form. Now it’s a bit better in that at least I have some blurb about what it is I offer, and some examples of work up there. It needs looking at graphically though; the logo is almost non-<span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">existent</span> among many other problems. What will probably happen, though, is that I will get a load of project work in and leave it the way it is until next year when I’ll build a totally new one.</p><p>This has been very much a non-event of a post, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">hasn</span>’t it? It’s what happens when I start writing a post with no clear idea of direction or structure.</p><p>Until next time, you stay classy.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24059584.post-76918093890682425902008-02-20T09:55:00.000+00:002008-02-20T09:56:17.975+00:00solution #2<p>It seems that there is more than one way to skin a cat. Ages ago I wrote about a mad <a href="http://antanova.blogspot.com/2006/03/ie-duplicating-text-bug.html">IE duplicating text bug</a> that would repeat bits of content lower down on the page. It had me scratching my head for a little while wondering how IE could be home to yet another bug, especially one this weird. My old friend Google came to the rescue in the end, showing me a cure.</p><p>Now though there appears to be a <a href="http://www.toastedweb.si/docs/ie_ghost_text_bug_fix.html">new and even simpler cure</a>. The problem occurs when you have two floats, and comments between them. The solution I used previously was to remove the comments, but now it appears that another fix is simply to add <code>display:inline</code> to the css rule for the floats. I pretty much do that automatically now, to avoid IE doubling the margin around floats, so it fits right in, and means I can forget about removing comments from my code.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24059584.post-19477835052920418312008-02-13T16:17:00.002+00:002008-02-20T10:05:38.322+00:00Code bits: reset / default stylesheet<p>Browser inconsistencies are something that drives a sane web developer mad. For example, last week, I was trying to shoehorn a fairly simple-looking design into some html/css code, ready to be dynamicised (yes, I did just write <em>dynamicised</em>. Sorry.) Unfortunately, what happened, as always, was that Safari used a different <code>line-height</code> to everyone else, IE used a different heading size, and Firefox was absolutely perfect, because that’s what I was doing most of my testing with.</p><p>I come across this problem all the time, as you can probably imaging, and my solution is to have a base css file that I then modify and extend for every project. Doing that largely eliminates inconsistencies, or at least makes inconsistencies consistent project after project.</p><p>Eric Meyer’s ‘CSS reset’ stylesheet has been knocking around for some time, and is a useful resource to use or just to look at and understand why he’s done what he’s done. Anyway, he’s now given it a <a href="http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/css/reset/">permanent home on his site</a>, so there’s somewhere to check back for updates.</p><p><a href="http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/css/reset/">http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/css/reset/</a></p><p>Here it is in full…</p><blockquote><pre><code>/* v1.0 | 20080212 */
html, body, div, span, applet, object, iframe,
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, blockquote, pre,
a, abbr, acronym, address, big, cite, code,
del, dfn, em, font, img, ins, kbd, q, s, samp,
small, strike, strong, sub, sup, tt, var,
b, u, i, center,
dl, dt, dd, ol, ul, li,
fieldset, form, label, legend,
table, caption, tbody, tfoot, thead, tr, th, td {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
border: 0;
outline: 0;
font-size: 100%;
vertical-align: baseline;
background: transparent;
}
body {
line-height: 1;
}
ol, ul {
list-style: none;
}
blockquote, q {
quotes: none;
}
blockquote:before, blockquote:after,
q:before, q:after {
content: '';
content: none;
}
/* remember to define focus styles! */
:focus {
outline: 0;
}
/* remember to highlight inserts somehow! */
ins {
text-decoration: none;
}
del {
text-decoration: line-through;
}
/* tables still need 'cellspacing="0"' in the markup */
table {
border-collapse: collapse;
border-spacing: 0;
}
</code></pre></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24059584.post-12267401714618763612008-02-05T14:50:00.001+00:002008-02-05T14:51:28.491+00:00I ordered the sauce<p>Having just deployed the latest release of design agency <a href="http://www.outburstcreative.com/">Outburst</a>’s website, I was again thinking about the order of source in html, and how I would put the content first in that site. I could use absolute positioning, but I don’t think that would work in cases where the font size had been increased by the user, or where the user’s display has a resolution greater than the default 96 dpi.</p><p>In a spare moment, I did a quick search and found an old but pretty <a href="http://www.usability.com.au/resources/ozewai2005/">informative presentation</a> and <a href="http://www.usability.com.au/resources/source-order.cfm">article</a> on exactly that, where they’d done a little bit of user testing. It’s so hard to find that kind of hard information I thought I’d pop a link up here.</p><p><a href="http://www.usability.com.au/resources/ozewai2005/">http://www.usability.com.au/resources/ozewai2005/</a></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24059584.post-80637046741947218632008-02-01T13:39:00.000+00:002008-02-01T13:42:01.219+00:00People problems<p>Most of the time, the people I deal with are decent individuals who just want to work and get their jobs done. Some of them are more than that: inspiring, charismatic, that extra bit of pleasure to work with. Sure, sometimes the wants of the client and the web developer don’t exactly match up, but usually these hurdles are fairly low and easily stepped over.</p><p>Now though, I come to the exception. The kind of person who’s like oil to your water. Like banana to your cod and chips. I’ve very occasionally encountered this type, and have found that although decent, honest and all the rest of it, for some reason they grate, irritate, depress, and suck you into a sullen grey world.</p><p>The big question though, is when I come upon someone who has this effect on me, how do I deal with him? I can’t answer that right now. I’m torn, between being a professional, and just working around the personal difference, and being a human, and not wanting to fill my life with stress and confusion. Thankfully, having dealt with one such person in the past, I’m able to draw a conclusion. It’s just not worth the anguish. Regretfully, of course, because who knows, I could miss out on a wonderful experience, a good contact and future work. But the risk — the risk! — when every fibre is telling me misery lies round the corner, the risk is too great to take.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24059584.post-365266824638865482008-01-29T17:29:00.000+00:002008-01-29T17:31:22.149+00:00IE7 width and min-width bug<p>After a day of plenty of swearing, I seem to have found something out that I think I should have known about before. I’m posting in the hope it will help out some other hapless web developer and prevent some nasty monitor-forehead interfacing.</p><p>For some reason, I know not why, after making a small change to an html page, IE7 stopped picking up some percentage widths (for floated elements). After a lot of swearing, I found out that sometimes, to even pick up a width, IE7 needs <em>both</em> a min-width and width. As I was using percentages that was not a hassle - so for example the rule</p><pre><code>float:left; width: 25.5%;
</code></pre><p>was having no effect: the width of the element was shrinking down to the width of its content, while on IE6, Opera, Safari and Firefox everything was fine. Adding a min-width thus</p><pre><code>float:left; width:25.5%; min-width:25.5%;
</code></pre><p>Sorted everything out. So now everything’s hunky dory. I’m sure most of you will have known about this and I’m quite surprised I haven’t come across it before. That’s part of the joy of the job, I suppose: after the frustration comes the satisfaction of learning something new and solving a problem.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24059584.post-63793453993324834222008-01-27T20:58:00.000+00:002008-01-27T21:01:09.824+00:00A night at the Opera<p><a href="http://www.mozilla.com/"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Firefox</span></a> has become over the years an <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">indispensable</span> tool for me as a web developer. Firstly, its standards support for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">css</span> is very good, even if the current stable release <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">doesn</span>’t pass the <a href="http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html">Acid2 test</a>. The extensions that are available for it are both numerous and useful, none more so than the web developers’ toolbar.</p><p>Trouble is, with all those <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">extensions</span> loaded onto it, it becomes one heavy browser. That means that when I’m off duty and just surfing around, I notice things like the pause between clicking the “new tab” icon and being able to type anything in the address bat of the new tab that just opened.</p><p>Enter <a href="http://www.opera.com/">Opera</a>, a fast, light browser that until now had been on my machine just for testing. It’s <em>so</em> quick, sometimes I’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">ve</span> finished reading a page before I’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">ve</span> even clicked the link to visit it. And the back button is the fastest I’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">ve</span> ever seen. Javascript-wise, it’s very quick too, just a tad behind <a href="http://www.apple.com/safari/">Safari</a> in my experience. Most sites work fine with it, but sometimes I find I have to fire up Safari instead, <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">although</span> that’s surprisingly rare considering its market share and my expectations.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com57tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24059584.post-83879449864862000172008-01-24T17:29:00.000+00:002008-01-24T17:33:05.385+00:00May the force be with you<p>CSS and the Force are not very alike. One of them is a dark art, taking a lifetime to master and needing super-human powers of concentration and persistence, and the other one is the Force.</p><p>Sometimes it’s frustrating to be developing a large stylesheet, only to find that part way through for some unknown reason your styles are not being picked up by a particular element. Usually, this is because it is inheriting its style from somewhere else, and it can be a quite a job to go back through the style rules and unpick what is happening.</p><p>I’ve just come across a nice little article that explains <a href="http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/archives/css_specificity_wars.html">selector specificity</a> very well, and it’s easy to remember. If you can’t, there’s even a poster you can print out to help you.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24059584.post-71622310204694108562008-01-22T23:04:00.000+00:002008-01-22T23:10:40.453+00:00... and?<p>Right, so left you there a bit didn't I? So, how to get from markdown to html? Well, I don't know how to run Perl, so using the perl on the <a href="http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/">markdown</a> website. So I cast about for another version, and found a <a href="http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/">PHP implementation</a>. This works fine: you just need to add a line at the bottom of the file - something like <code>fwrite(STDOUT, Markdown(fread(STDIN, 1048576)))</code>. Then it's good to go from the command line.</p><p>I kept looking though, and found <a href="http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/">Pandoc</a>. <strong>Now</strong> you're talking. This can output your markdown text as html, LaTeX, DocBook, and can do some conversions between those formats, too. It extends markdown with its own custom markdown too, but I think I'll leave that: the whole reason I went down this route was to avoid the all the extra work of tagging, and stick just to the creativity. So that's how I'll write for a little while until I can tell whether it's a method that works for me.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24059584.post-55551078385675777212008-01-20T19:44:00.000+00:002008-01-20T19:46:47.193+00:00Easier writing<p>I've always found that tagging blog entries with html a tedious task. I think it's something that should really be taken care of by the editor I use, but I just don't trust it to mark things up exactly how I want them to be marked up. Somehow, thinking about markup and thinking about content are two entirely separate things that interfere with each other far too much.</p>
<p>It's a problem I wasn't going to bother solving; rather I would have just left that particular dog in its basket snoozing, carrying on being slightly put off by the whole blogging process. Thankfully, while looking out for a writers' text editor for my wife to use, the answer came to me. From now on, I'll use <a href="http://www.baara.com/q10/">Q10</a> (a full-screen, absolutely minimal text editor) along with <a href="http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/">Markdown</a> (a 'humane' text markup scheme.)</p>
<p>Let's see how it goes... </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24059584.post-40595800339347513782007-12-02T19:30:00.000+00:002007-12-02T19:51:42.237+00:00Show some respect<p>One of the attitudes I run into on my rounds of agencies and what not is the idea that the end client is somehow a pus-drinking parasite, or a worthless waste of skin. It's not the top brass that has this attitude, but is more likely to be the technical people. Forgive me if you're a 'technical person' - perhaps a programmer of some persuasion, or a system administrator or anything really - I don't mean you all. I've just come across this attitude from time to time, and I think it's objectionable.</p>
<p>
I find it disagreeable on many levels. Firstly, to have that much contempt for another person who's only crime is to (brace yourselves if you're the sensitive type) <em>ask you to do something</em> shows a kind of mean-spiritedness that points to deep insecurity. Nextly, the whole point of having something you do as a profession is that you can do something that others cannot, whether it be attaching new brakes to a car, or writing <abbr title="Structured Query Language">SQL</abbr> to pull some records out of a database. The reason you're in the job is to get paid for knowledge you have that the client doesn't. That the client is ignorant in your field of expertise is obvious. If he or she weren't, you'd be unnecessary. So have a bit of respect. They pay your wages, and you don't know everything there is to know.
</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24059584.post-52274969089466748672007-12-01T19:36:00.000+00:002007-12-01T19:41:37.649+00:00Busy busy busy<p>Well, that's my excuse anyway.</p>
<p>The truth is, I've been absolutely chocca for a while, and the energy and inclination weren't there. Now, though, it's back.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24059584.post-31983145013104624152007-10-01T21:52:00.000+01:002007-10-01T22:05:05.051+01:00Export video from Flash<p>I was creating a little visual animation for a client the other day. I was using Flash, because that's what I've got, and that's what I'm familiar with. No Maya for me: I'll leave that to the pros.</p>
<p>He wanted to create a little animation to present a brand concept to a client of his, and was presenting on a Macbook, so thankfully I had the exact dimensions of the screen it would be presented on. I started out with a quarter-sized version: half the width and half the height of his screen. His screen is 1280x800, so I did a test animation 640x400. The trouble was, it was looking a bit pixellated when blown up to full screen. No problem. </p>
<p>I did the rest of the visual at the full 1280x 800. Then came the moment to export to a quicktime file, so I could email it off to him. Right, so I clicked export movie to quicktime... and that was where the problem started.</p>
<p>The exported movie was rubbish! Even on a Core 2 duo machine, it was stuttering and stalling. It wasn't the playback - but the encoding that was the problem. It was time consuming to work around the issue. I exported the movie as an image sequence. Then using ffmpeg, transcoded that image sequence into a .mov file. It worked fine. This left me feeling let down by Flash's exporter engine. Why couldn't it simply render each frame out in its own sweet time rather than just bowling along assuming that things could be encoded real-time? I don't know. All in all, it would have saved me a lot of hassle.</p>
<p>Oh, well. Lesson learnt. When creating high-def animations with motion blurs and transparency in Flash, export to frames. I wonder if that knowledge will be useful to me again? Perhaps it's useful to you.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24059584.post-35078680966784152762007-09-13T19:32:00.000+01:002007-09-13T19:47:39.747+01:00Thanks!<p>Mix UK 07 was decent. I spent most of my time in Track 4. Unsurprisingly, I suppose, because I was helping out the <a href="http://www.screenedit.com">Screenedit</a> team here and there, and that was their track.</p>
<p>I would have been in that track anyway regardless. They had some good speakers on. The ones I caught were (thinking hard):</p>
<ul><li>Tricky and Dr. Neil Roodyn</li>
<li>Hoss Gifford</li>
<li>Jason Arber and Richard May</li>
<li>Hugh MacLeod</li>
<li>Conchango</li>
<li>AllofUs</li>
<li>Seb Lee-Delisle</li></ul>
<p>I think that was all of them. As a surprise, at the end of the last session (the "sneak peeks") session previewing some of the forthcoming Microsoft bits and bobs, we were all given a copy of Vista Ultimate and Expression Web Studio! Wicked. Thanks, Microsoft!</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24059584.post-11460456556145553072007-09-10T15:50:00.000+01:002007-09-10T15:52:36.643+01:00Mix 07<p>Mmmmm... just as I though I'd miss out on all the events happening this year a last-minute opportunity came up to visit Mix 07 in the UK. I'm pretty pleased about that, I can tell you. If you're going down there on Tuesday 11th, then come over and see me: I'll be the one taking photos for the designer / developer competition. Why not enter? There are some great prizes.</p>
<p>See you there!</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24059584.post-36761704081124625112007-07-31T19:10:00.000+01:002007-07-31T19:49:04.049+01:00Improving communication<p>Hunting through the inbox got boring, so I started filing emails into folders depending on whom they were from. Now, that's all well and good, but then when trying to follow a thread of conversation, including my responses, I had to look in the 'Sent' folder. Right, so... file the sent items in folders too. So, now it's much easier to find both emails I've received, and my responses. But wait - sometimes clients ring me up and we agree work on the phone. Now what? Make notes, of course.</p>
<p>As you can see, although it doesn't present the biggest problem in the world, it's a little effort each time you need to catch up on what was said by whom and when, and you've got to remember if you've made a separate not about phone calls.</p>
<p>A solution? Well, I've been using Backpack from <a href="http://www.37signals.com/">37Signals</a> for a little while, and they offer another product that seems to be very well-received. It's called <a href="http://www.highrisehq.com/">Highrise</a>. It's a simple <abbr title="Customer Relationship Management">CRM</abbr> tool that works verey simply: just <abbr title="Blind carbon copy">BCC</abbr> a special dropbox email address when you send an email out, and forward email received and it automatically attaches it to the relevant contact. So, for example if I send an email out to John Johnson with a quote, that email is attached to John Johnson in my Highrise account. If he doesn't exist in that account, Highrise automatically creates him. Then, he replies to me, so I forward that email to Highrise. That email is attached to him too, allowing me to follow my conversation with him. I can add timed notes, and group contacts by company. Tagging functionality is included too, so it's a very versatile system. I'm going to give it a go for a little while, and see how it works for me. I'll report back later.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24059584.post-20018647972693047062007-07-17T13:13:00.000+01:002007-07-17T13:29:23.029+01:00Off-topic: Organ donation<p>I was reading the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/"><acronym title="British Broadcasting Corporation">BBC</acronym> news website</a> recently, and the <em><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6902519.stm">Everyone ‘should donate organs’</a></em> story caught my eye. It seems that while plenty of people would like to donate their organs, far fewer are actually registered to do so.</p>
<p>So I thought “Why not register,” and post on my blog in the hope that someone else may take notice? So here it is. <a href="https://www.uktransplant.org.uk/ukt/how_to_become_a_donor/how_to_become_a_donor.jsp">Register to become a donor here</a></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24059584.post-45732013453352379802007-07-02T20:41:00.000+01:002007-07-02T21:13:10.322+01:00WCAG Cheatsheet<p>While making accessible websites is accepted practice by any web devloper worth his or her salt, sometimes we need help identifying exactly how to. The <acronym title="World Wide Web Consortium">W3C</acronym>'s <acronym title="Web Content Accessibility Guidelines">WCAG</acronym> are here to help us, and our clients.</p>
<p>Trouble is, they're quite in-depth and long-winded. Thankfully now, though I found something on my travels that will help me tick as many of the accessibility boxes as possible. Remembering of course that making websites accessible is much more than just crossing off items from a list.</p>
<p>Here is is: the <a href="http://worksperfectly.net/wcag/">WCAG cheatsheet</a></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1