Author: Tim Jarrett

More killer CSS resources

I’m very taken with A List Apart. They really have the sweet spot between coding and development—and between what the CSS spec says and how it is implemented. One complaint: there’s a lot of value in their series on transitioning to CSS from older forms of design (tables), but it was written in 1999 and a lot of the practical issues they mention have evolved with Netscape and IE 6 on the table.

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Yesterday: Heads down in CSS

I spent all yesterday (when I wasn’t in class) working on the CSS redesign of the site. I was about ready to give up on being able to view it in Netscape 4 until I found this site, which offers a free stylesheet for a fluid three-column layout (fluid meaning it resizes to fill the available browser width).

I had to tweak it a bit because of the Manila calendar. Manila automatically renders the calendar as a table, so it doesn’t resize. This is a problem with small browser width as it extends past the edge of the navigation div. I had to make the left navigation fixed width to solve the problem. This in turn meant the middle and right divs overlap at some smaller browser widths. I’ll do some work in 800×600 today to see if I can isolate the problem.

But most of the structural work is done. Now I can move on to aesthetics — colors, border widths, font leading — oh yeah, you can do leading, aka line height, in CSS. This old digital typographer is thrilled.

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New Applescript Studio in beta

A new version of AppleScript Studio appears to be available for developers at the Apple Developer Connection (register free). Still in beta, but it appears to address some really significant issues, including native support for the User Defaults framework in Cocoa and some other stuff…

Today’s CSS learnings

Working on the redesign in earnest today. I’m teaching myself CSS from trial and error and the specs, so I don’t have a lot of authority, but I thought I’d share what I’m learning anyway.

CSS Learning #1: When trying to display a border around a <div>, you must specify the border color, size, and style (or have specified them as a default somewhere) or the border will not display.

CSS Learning #2: CSS allows you to specify dimensions of elements in a number of ways, including ems (an em is approximately equal to the width of a capital letter M in the font being used). Distance measurements in ems are great when you’re just working with type. However, when mixing images (fixed size in pixels) and type, ems may cause problems. The cause: slightly differing type dimensions across platforms, or different fonts installed in the user’s system.

CSS Learning #3: Float is your friend. The float attribute of a <div> around an image allows you to wrap text around that image.

Mergers no cure for Enron/Andersen nightmare

Infoworld: Troubled Andersen close to finding a buyer. Bad news for Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. What are they hoping to get out of this, anyway? “Economies of scale?” I like the random quotation from Larry Lipsher of Lipsher Accountancy Corp, based in China: “The larger and larger the accounting firms get, the more they’re going to come up with the sort of esoteric tripe that caused things like this.” A-yup.
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Welcome aboard, George

Welcome to my friend George, who is just starting his blog. George, welcome to the blogging life. It’s more fun and more engrossing than you think.

Confession: I found George’s blog by looking at my referral logs. OK, so I’m happy with my writing again and looking at my referers. But I’m not obsessive about it. I’m only obsessive about my news page on Radio.
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Other people’s water, and new readers

Just finished a gig with the Sloan E-52s for admitted MBAs at a lunch at MIT Sloan. I sing harmony with the soloist on one of the songs, REM’s “Superman,” and I got a chance today to do something I’ve always wanted to do. There’s a section in the song where the soloist is by himself for four measures while I lay out after hitting a couple high notes in a row. Today, after the second high note I leaned over to the table to my left, asked “Is anyone drinking this?”, took a big sip, and got back in time to make my next entrance. Look on the soloist’s face: Priceless.

After the gig, I had my first face to face meeting with a new reader to whom I’m not related. One of the admits introduced himself and said he found my site while searching for weblogs by Sloan students. (As far as I know, I’m the only one.) He’s a Seattleite who’s “99.9% sure” he’ll be at Sloan in the fall. He’s also introduced his fiancée to blogging, but his own blog is currently in design paralysis and he hasn’t written anything yet. Well, here’s your public push: Get writing! A weblog isn’t a weblog without content!!

You can avoid Congress, but not the civil service

New York Times: Landscapes Under Siege. The administrative review board for the Interior Department has halted oil exploration in Utah’s Dome Plateau, and “suggested that the bureau had ‘capriciously’ ignored environmental reviews mandated by federal law.” The editorial concludes:

Nobody expects the administration to retreat from its basic theology that aggressive exploration of the public domain is necessary to achieve independence from the energy-producing nations of the Persian Gulf. Perhaps, though, as part of the larger debate over a national energy strategy, the Senate will force the administration to proceed with much greater care.

Yeah, somehow I doubt that the administration that doesn’t even invite the Democratic leadership of Congress to national security meetings will pay much heed to the Senate. I think that the best chance we have for protection against the strong-arm anti-environmental tactics of the Bush administration is the civil servants who have to carry out the policy. Based on this action, they have shown they can do the job.
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