Bad Blogger

NOTE: I just updated one of the links in the message, this is actually about a year old.

I've been a very busy busy boy, getting up to speed with two versions of Drupal (5.7 & 6.2) at ZapWorld, and moving to new digs in Santa Rosa. I redid most of the front page at zapworld.com (among many other things), but I just finished the April (May?) newsletter, which allowed me to indulge my more (but not most) creative side. I did pretty much everything in a text editor (for those CSS purists, it should be noted that few, if any, email clients display divs correctly, so I had to do my layout with tables), but I also did the two prominant banners, for the header (pictured below, with a link to the full page) and the Zapino, an electric scooter modeled on the ever-stylish Vespa. For the header banner, I even used one of the photos I took last summer in Glen Ellen (as one or two of my dedicated reader will surely recall...).

I'll post anyway. My life is still sh*t, but I just finished a site for a non-profit (pro bono, of course), and I'm in the preparation stage of developing a website for Santa Rosa Free Clinic (pro bono, at least initially). For the first project I modified a (collectively) previously decided-upon logo and built a site around it, using PHP and CSS (edge-y) to make it easy to update.

Read more...

I don't have a bunch of interesting adventures to talk about; mostly I've been working on my web-building skills. Yesterday I did a semi-major revamp of my design site: glassangel.com.

Read more...

I've been working really hard on layouts using as much CSS as will display properly across browsers, and I've been trying to go for a very clean, polished look. I'm not always successful, so I decided to see how they did their layout at, say... the NY Times (I mean, these people have several fonts named after them fergodssake... so they must know something about layout & design, right?)

OK, so I check them out, and downloaded their two main stylesheets, and lookie what I found at the bottom of http://graphics8.nytimes.com/css/common/global.css: (for those following along at home, scroll to the verry bottom of the page, and check out the webmaster's comments:

/* move this crap to section front if needed, what a mess... - James

ul, ol {
padding-left: 0px;
margin-left: 18px;
_margin-left: 22px;
}

*/

Now, far from criticising, I actually find it refreshing that someone, at this level of their profession, can find it frustrating to deal with the demands of a high-powered client who wants things to be a certain way... regardless of whether it will work with the unyielding demands of the technical environment.

Anyway, you can go to the URL listed above & download the stylesheet for yourself (and you might as well download the HTML file and this stylesheet while you're at it.

Enjoy

"Never trust a newspaper that doesn't have a comics page."

Just moved into a 2 bedroom townhouse in Santa Rosa a couple of days ago. I have an internet connection in the place, but no router, so as soon as I get that hooked up (oh, and a desk...), then... I'll probably never leave home. Anyway, I've got to find a new job to pay for all this, so I'll be keeping this short (so I can cut out of here quickly & run).

Bla Bla Bla...

Worked on some CSS last night, trying to pare down a 3 column layout to the barest essentials. Because the

I have a pretty good 3 column layout that works consistantly in the three major Windows browsers, so I'm going to be working on some sample sites soon.