mysiteonline™ - Web Development

Browsers and minimum CSS overflow on Windows XP

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 13:47:11 -0400

The title of this post is a bit misleading; I was trying to stuff it for SEO keywords without it being too long.

I ran into an issue with regard to the CSS property of "overflow" that I had set to "auto". When I set some test text of about 100 or so continuous "Hello " words, the scroll bars worked just fine. I then tweaked my node's height, and text and continued, but... The scroll bars weren't showing up, and my text was outside the bounds of the box (and therefore clipped)! Oh no! Tragedy of tragedies!

Through a little experimentation (in the end, this took me about 30 minutes to track down, and then test in all the browsers), I was able to determine what the problem was.
Continue reading "Browsers and minimum CSS overflow on Windows XP"

Keep your account info handy...

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:43:27 -0400

So here I was trying to do some work on my domains this weekend and into today, thinking that my host had problems with the server on the weekend... "Oh, it's up again today," I thought...so I proceeded to try to login again today. Well, apparently I forgot my password somehow and so I locked myself out from my own websites from two separate IP ranges. Awesome! At least my own place isn't blacklisted (visited my parents this weekend and was at work earlier today during my lunch break).

Ha! Oops... I still don't know what my password is for cPanel, but the regular account login still works.

mod_rewrite, can't live with ya, can't live without ya!

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 00:46:37 -0400

I spent more than half the day today (24 hour day) thinking and trying to find a way to get a mod_rewrite call to work properly. I felt so dumb, retarded, and plain uneducated in my attempts. I left work a little bit early so I could concentrate (no distractions, no phone calls, no "how do I send an attachment", no nothing). Even after that, I kept running into a stumbling roadblock. My friend was trying his hardest to help me out (no idea why other than possibly a sheer curiosity - it's now almost 1:00am).

What I wanted to do:
http://example.com/contacts/form/recipients/bKozlowski/
...transformed to...
http://example.com/contacts/form/index.php?contact=bkozlowski

Sounds easy, right? Yeah, I thought so too when I first started. I tried every iteration of something that looked so darned simple and could only be done just so many ways... The eventual problem?

I needed to use: RewriteBase /
I have no idea what this directive does. I have no idea why my pattern now matches and works. The RewriteLog really wasn't helpful at all except to tell me that it wasn't working...something I could have figured out without a log, obviously. Anyway, if anyone really cares, the following is the actual end result:

I both love and loathe mod_rewrite.

(Special thanks to the people over at SitePoint Forums for their immediate response!)

Compare your Minimized JavaScript

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 11:51:55 -0500

For the new website I've been developing and finishing up some "final touches" on the design to make the experience just a little bit better (before I can delve into the out-dated content after launch), one of the last things that was needed was to speed up the efficiency and download of assets - this included CSS and JavaScript files for the most part. I made the sIFR flash files as small as possible and my PNG images were compressed (and fixed for IE color rendering) using PNGGauntlet (which uses PNGOut). Until I can figure out ETags, a proper time for an Expires header, and GZip to work on CSS/JS files on our hosted server, this should suffice. It loads amazingly quick on my iPod Touch.

Continue reading "Compare your Minimized JavaScript"

Simple Solution for Encapsulating a Floated Image

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 12:49:39 -0500

I know I've read this article about 10 times over, and yet I always seem to keep forgetting about it. Everyone always suggests, "in order to keep a floated image from floating over its containing box, add a 1px DIV, or BR tag that uses a style of clear:both". This is what I always remember, simply because it's the most prevalent solution.

However, thanks to my CSS love in Paul O'Brien at SitePoint, there's a much, much simpler solution. Apply overflow:auto; to the containing element. That's all there is to it. I love that man!

Source: http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2005/02/26/simple-clearing-of-floats/
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Internet Marketing - Horribly "wRonG".

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 16:39:54 -0400

It's mind boggling to me how often I see simple errors on prominently displayed advertisements for a web-based (or other) firm.

Now, although I can possibly understand why the text in the bottom blue area isn't centered in a symmetrical manner, how rushed could it have been to completely miss a spelling error? Even for a one-man operation, which I would imagine this is not, for something as important as an image that's to be shown across the world, wouldn't you check and double check everything? Obviously some time went in to the design of the art, so why sloppily supply the text within the graphic? Sheesh...

What do you do?

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 20:51:01 -0400

What do you do to get yourself over a hump? I develop web applications as a hobby when I'm not working and at home. But as with any application, there are portions that are much less desirable to work on than others that still need to be done (such as documentation). How can you get yourself over the hump when there's little to no incentive other than being able to continue on with the project? I'd rather go run...10 miles...and I usually only do 2 miles, so, yeah...

I can't seem to make myself do it, I keep procrastinating. There always seems to be something else just slightly more interesting that I "will only spend x minutes on and get right back to the project". Just looking for what you more experienced people do when you come to these things.

Need some inspiration for a logo design?

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 20:58:19 -0400

I've found that when I need to be inspired when coming up for an organization's (or website's) logo graphic design, it's hard to find examples. Going from site to site simply looking at how each website integrates their site with a graphic can in fact be inspirational, but only to a point. It's somewhat confining in the broad spectrum of things. Like the web design review websites, it's great to have an overview of hand-picked websites for their sheer brilliance in design, color coordination and artistic balance and symmetry...and it looks good too.

Thankfully, there is a website that does this, although since typography and logo design are a little obscure nowadays in favor of total website design (although typography is making a comeback as of late), I only know of one. The downside is that we must accept their professional wisdom without any second opinions. The upside is that we don't have to visit multiple sites to get some great inspiration.

Logo Lounge's Logo Trends is a yearly roundup of logos from the world-wide-web that attempts to see what the current trend in overall logo design is for the year. There are archives going back to 2003, and are current (as of this writing) to 2007. Each year's archive contains a decently sized showing of fascinating, trendy, and colorful marketing imagery to help you on your way. Keep in mind though, whilst getting inspiration, don't mimic too deeply! We are all artists afterall, and should use our own ingenuity and imagination to power our creations.

Safari 3 Beta - Now Available for Windows!

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 23:11:29 -0400

Using third party application websites (browsershots, for example), VirtualMachines, or a full blown Macintosh to test your websites in Safari's WebKit rendering engine while you code on Windows? FRET NO MORE! Apple has released the Beta 3 of their browser, Safari, with a release for Microsoft Windows' users...get this...using the OSX theme and style, as well as OSX embedded fonts! Although it's still pretty buggy, the fact that it's on the horizon and will have less bugs than Swift (as it's corporation-based, rather than single developer based), I'm extremely happy! Plus, it'd be interesting to see how Apple's font rendering compares to Microsoft's. It's a pretty small download to boot!

Although I've only tried this once (directly after installing) and had a problem with the embedded fonts not showing up, I should probably log off or restart the computer to see if changes are needed to take effect first. Either way, this'll make testing much, much nicer.

Now let's just hope it's not the MacIE5 episode, but in reverse.

Complete Reinstallation

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Sun, 27 May 2007 22:17:55 -0400

I completely reinstalled this blog software from scratch. There were some issues I was having with the continuous upgrading that needed to be purged from the database, but I was unaware which settings were causing problems, so...to be sure it all worked, I did a fresh install and manually inserted all of the posts/comments information back in. The largest problem that was fixed was that email addresses are no longer listed with comment authors as was the case with the last few upgrades. It wasn't listed as an actual email, but many harvesters can still read the barely obfuscated name [at] example [dot] com type of email...and that bothered me to no end.

"So why didn't you do this sooner?!"
I had moderately modified the theme I was using at the time for certain functionality and I knew that if I cleaned everything out, I would lose all those modifications again, so I've been testing some plugins I created to carry these changes over from theme to theme, rather than modifying them all the time. In other words, I needed to finish working on the plugins before doing this -- sorry about that!

I'm currently using one of the famous Andreas Viklund themes which was ported to Serendipity; I may, at some point in time, update the CSS to be a semi-fluid layout rather than fixed. Also, I should be releasing one of my plugins once I fix some CSS specific issues (a markup plugin, dp.SyntaxHighlighter, a JavaScript-based alternative to GeSHi).

Styling CSS Form Buttons - Cross Browser

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Wed, 23 May 2007 20:27:26 -0400

It's interesting how you'll sometimes find things accidentally that you really needed to know only a few days before, but still helps now! I love great timing.

Thanks to Kevin Yank over at Sitepoint, and his News Wire linkage, I was re-introduced to the BUTTON element; that all-forgotten element that was used a long time ago in certain JavaScript ONLY enabled pages. This element has certain characteristics that make it much more versatile than the standard submit button of an INPUT element. You'll be better off reading on the source than listening to me blab:
Styling the Button Element

Also, if anyone's even slightly interested in OpenID (and if you're a developer, you should be), you'll want to check out Dan Webb's introductory article in to implementing OpenID in your own applications. (Update...) In terms of PHP, Sara Goleman also pointed out some more cool stuff, although I like the discussion in the comments better.

IE and hasLayout without Setting Dimensions

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Mon, 14 May 2007 11:18:38 -0400

If you're unfamiliar with hasLayout and IE's CSS difficulties surrounding this mysterious camel-cased word, you'll want to read the article that covers the majority of it all. If there's one thing I dislike about Internet Explorer...ok, I probably honestly couldn't choose just one thing about IE that disturbed me, but when dealing with CSS, IE's internal hasLayout property is definitely one of those that I never remember to be aware of. Recently, I had a problem with list-items that were not being properly styled. The problem? After getting help on a forum, someone suggested hasLayout; stunned, bewildered, and in denial (both that it could solve the problem, and that I had forgotten about hasLayout itself), after 20 seconds, I found the problem, and the one who helped was right.

Well, ok...so how do we set the hasLayout property to true? There are a number of different ways.
Continue reading "IE and hasLayout without Setting Dimensions"

Highschool Reunions

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Thu, 10 May 2007 21:24:42 -0400

What do you do when you have less than 2 years before your 10-year highschool reunion, never had a 5-year reunion, and then realize that you won't have one unless someone who traditionally does not set one up takes the initiative?

I've decided to create a website meeting place for just such an occasion. I, unlike many people I know, actually thoroughly enjoyed highschool! I do have a basic idea of what would be needed, but I'd still like to know what people might find useful. So, to my beloved readers, friends, and whomever else may come across this blog entry...

What would you want in a reunion site?
What would be most important to you?
What type of information would you want to know about your old classmates?
Are there any reunion websites (specific to a graduating class) that you can link me to (to check out the competitors)? This does not include classmates.com or reunion.com...

Please, feel free to comment!

CSSVista Updated

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 21:45:00 -0400

A couple years ago, Salted, the brains behind SiteVista, created an application to ease the pain of working with the compatibility differences in developing CSS-based websites between the two major browsers: Firefox and Internet Explorer. There were a few noted problems with that version, but it was still usable if you knew how to get around it all. But, now we don't have to deal with those problems anymore!
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My Dumbified Web Design Theory

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 23:43:00 -0400

I don't pretend to know what I'm talking about when discussing (web) design theory. I know a few things that were taught to me back in my (very) early years of art class where I got to finger paint, but as far as actual theory - I'm acutely lacking. However, I do understand that I have this imbalance and need to strengthen myself in this regard, which is why I'm taking steps to try and understand it all.

Someone (Hi, Jon!) asked about my grid system that I was going on about in my earlier post, The Golden Section, wondering how I used it (and probably wondering what the heck I was going on about). Well, hopefully I'll clear some of that up in this blog post. I may repeat some of the things I discussed earlier so be prepared for a little monotony (presuming you read the other article).
Continue reading "My Dumbified Web Design Theory"