The web developers at CBC want to save me from an “older version of Internet Explorer”. That’s nice and all, but I’m on a Mac, using Firefox 10. Part of me blames Daniel Alfredsson, this is the kind of stunt he would pull.
Updated January 16, 2012
New frontiers come with unexpected challenges. I like using the hCard microformat in websites to make it easy for people to add contact information to their address books. I also like building websites in HTML5 for the semantics and am confident it is the way forward. Tools like Modernizr make browser support less of an issue with the new tags.
The hCard format is great for publishing contact info in HTML, but to turn it into a vCard that can be downloaded and added to your address book, something has to do the conversion for you. (more…)
I love using QR Codes for what I believe their intended purpose is — to transfer a short string of data to somebody’s smart phone. Specifically, a URL for a responsively designed web site. Single-purpose mobile optimized web pages are ok in some circumstances too, but that’s a topic for another post.
There is no more efficient way to get a person to open a specific web page on their smart phone from the physical world. In fact, nothing else comes close. Not augmented reality. Not Google Goggles Search. Nothing can touch QR Codes for sending a person to a specific web page on their smart phone from outside their smart phone.
If you are reading this, you know the gist of “!important” is to counter-act the normal application of CSS rules based on selector specificity. One way to look at this is that it’s a shortcut to make up for another rule’s selector that is too broad. Another way would be to describe it as getting things done and moving on. We can argue both ways depending on how much time/budget you have — but more importantly — how many places a given CSS file will be used.
(more…)
WordPress developers take note — somewhere between version 3.1.3 and version 3.2.1 there is a change related to custom themes and body classes that might break your CSS in some certain scenarios.
If you have custom templates with underscores in their names, updating to WordPress 3.2.1 can break your CSS. For example a template file called “template-my_custom_template.php” used to produce body class names *without* underscores prior to verison 3.2.1
<body class="template-mycustomtemplate">
As of version 3.2.1 that body class is now generated with the underscores in place:
<body class="template-my_custom_template">
This is actually the way it should have always been, but can cause havoc if you’ve got any CSS rules that use the old model.
Forgotten lesson: always run a SVN status check before commits/renames/deletes, or you risk wasting time and wishing you had.
Had a stunned look on my face for a while after trying to rename a folder in a subversion repository: (more…)
This was fun painful.
On the new ablesense.com website design, I had foolishly applied some styles to the <html> element — specifically my font stack for the website. The particular selection of fonts was very important in making this mistake obscure:
html { font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; }
The fonts all looked fine in Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Internet Explorer (Helvetica on Mac, and Arial on PC). This lines up with the CSS rule above, so it seemed like everything was fine — but it was not. (more…)
According to Google Analytics, one of the websites I’m involved with has a 105,200.00% increase in visits. I imagine the meeting at Google went something like this:
Q: Should we just leave % Change blank until after 30 days of data?
A: Nah, it will make people feel good to see a really huge, albeit inaccurate number for the first month. (more…)
From time to time when a web page renders strangely I’ll take a quick peak at the HTML source to see what kinds of extra scripts and remotely hosted resources are part of the page. The usual stuff (Google Analytics, Flickr Slideshows, Banner Ads, Facebook, Twitter, etc) never stands out to me, but today I saw something that made me take notice.
The snippet below is the last few lines of a page on a major newspaper’s website. Now, for the record, I’m only 99.9% certain that this markup is broken:
</body> </html><img width='0' height='0' border='0' src='/counter?uid=123'/>
Maybe this kind of markup after the closing HTML tag is not an issue in any browser. Maybe. I would be interested to know if the placement of the “counter” image is on purpose or just a temporary quirk of the publishing system. I can’t think of any reason to not put a dimensionless tracking image inside the closing body tag — especially when it’s being requested from the same host as the document.
Please chime in with a comment if I’m missing something here.
Called “The Survey For People Who Make Websites” this is one for people like me to participate in. I’ve completed 2008 and 2009 surveys as well and actually enjoy thinking about the questions the folks at ALA have compiled. The results are always interesting when released too.
If you also make websites, why not complete the 2010 edition and check out the findings from 2009.
