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aqTree 3
Stuart has released aqTree3, an upgrade to previous aqTree versions which takes in to account some of the best ideas from both Eric Meyer’s pure CSS menus and Dave Lindquist’s recently released drop-down / expandable trees. aqTree’s great strength is that it requires no additional markup at all on top of the nested lists, other than a class definition which the script will pick up via the DOM. All presentation and positioning is now controlled with CSS applied to the list structure (previous versions of aqTree used the DOM to transform the list in to DIVs) and Stuart has included an extra script, aqdd, to handle drop down menus as well. The article includes a mini-essay on how elegant DHTML should be implemented, which is well worth reading.
CMS roundup
It seems CMS news is like buses—nothing for weeks, then three items come along at once. Jeremy Zawodny has been very impressed by Bricolage, an Open Source CMS built on mod_perl, the HTML::Mason template system and PostgreSQL. Meanwhile, Scott Andrew has been praising liveSTORYBOARD on the WaSP site. liveSTORYBOARD is a hosted solution which promises ease of use through a web based interface and fully standards compliant output (hence the plug on WaSP). Finally, Think Secret have broken the news that Macromedia are soon to announce Contribute, a new CMS built on top of their popular Dreamweaver WYSIWYG editor (via webgraphics).
Hide Mozilla Flash ads
Michel: How to hide Flash banner ads in Mozilla using a few lines of CSS added to the userContent.css file. A great example of CSS2 selectors at work.
Funky new use for CSS backgrounds
Jeffrey Zeldman points to the newly redesigned v-2 Organisation site, which features a clever technique whereby a large background image is displayed “widescreen” style with different amounts of the photo visible depending on the resolution / width of your browser. Try doing that with standard tables ;) The (unaltered) colours in the photograph cleverly match the colours of the site itself.
Asilomar Institute
The Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture—very promising organisation, great site but I have to admit I’m not too keen on the name (though I’m sure it will grow on me). The highlight of the site for me has to be the 25 Theses, which provide an excellent condensed description of what IA is and why it is necessary. The site lead me to make my first impulse buy in quite a while, so with a bit of luck from Amazon Christina Wodtke’s Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web should be with me in the morning.
Partner as a case study
I’ve been helping my partner Natalie Downe recreate her site using CSS and structural markup. She’s new to web design and has been taking to CSS like a duck to water—as a veteran of Microsoft Word globally defined styles come to her naturally and she took very little time to cotton on to the importance of seperating presentation from content. I’ve shown her tables as well but she isn’t really interested as she sees CSS as a much better solution for general presentation. I’m hoping to help run an HTML/XHTML/CSS training course at the University early next year with a heavy emphasis on structural markup, standards compliance and accessibility so it’s great to have a guinea pig to play with :)
[... 203 words]Blogroll with a twist
Spotted in my referrals today: ReadingEd.com. A promising new blog, well worth checking out for the innovative “Outside Reading” panel which uses the DOM and some very funky javascript to pull in the RSS feed (via a PHP proxy) of the selected blog and load it in to a panel which appears on the left hand side. Browsers lacking in DOM support are served up standard links to the blog in question. The feature is explained in a bit more depth here.
Zend re-design... terrible!
Zend (the commercial company behind the PHP scripting language) have launched a redesign of Zend.com. My verdict on the new design ... terrible.
[... 161 words]OperaShow
It’s been a while since I last looked at 30 Days to becoming an Opera Lover so it was a nice surprise to see that not only is the series now complete but Tim has started up blog to continue the momentum. Flicking through the days I hadn’t read before the single feature that impressed me most was OperaShow, described on Day 17. OperaShow is a variant of the full screen mode present in IE and Mozilla, but with the added ability to run PowerPoint style presentations. This is implemented using CSS and the projection media type, in conjunction with the page-break-before : always; CSS property. Opera defaults to rendering the page normally (with whatever screen/all stylesheet the page author has provided) but as soon as you press F11 the projection style sheet comes in to effect. PgDown / PgUp can be used to cycle through the “slides” and the whole thing works just like a PowerPoint presentation.
Inline XML
Inline XML explains how different XML languages can be embedded in XHTML documents using namespaces, and how they can then by styled using CSS.
Joe Gillespie does CSS
Joe Gillespie has been introducing CSS to the readers of Web Page Design for Designers.
[... 210 words]Sexy DHTML
The trend for DHTML using structural markup and the DOM continues with Using Lists for DHTML Menus. Dave Lindquist uses identical XHTML markup combined with two different sets of JavaScript and CSS to implement both a set of dropdown menus and an expandable, tree style menu. The code is standards compliant and remarkably lightweight (menuExpandable.js weighs in at less than 20 lines) and fully accessible thanks to intelligent use of the accesskey attribute.
[... 99 words]Excellent introduction to XSLT
Rescuing XSLT from Niche Status is A Gentle Introduction to XSLT through HTML Templates
. It is something of a hybrid article, consisting of a discussion of the problems involved with both teaching and learning XSLT followed by an excellent (if somewhat brief) tutorial covering the most important XSLT tags and concepts and how they can be used to convert a simple XML document in to XHTML.
JSP bits and pieces
I’ve been reading up on the Jakarta Struts MVC framework, courtesy of Simon Brunning. Struts, an open-source MVC implementation is a great starting point, and the ONJava JSP/JSTL series (also found via Simon) were very informative as well.
Doc’s thoughts on Linux Lunacy
Doc Searls is back from the Linux Lunacy cruise, and has been talking about the future of the software industry in What I learned on Linux Lunacy:
[... 161 words]Phoenix usurps Mozilla
Phoenix 0.4 is out, and it’s so good it has replaced Mozilla as my default browser. Type Ahead Find makes browsing links and searching pages a dream (I’ve really come round to it after my initial whinge) but my favourite feature is the Google “I’m Feeling Lucky” integration built right in to the address bar. Type in a single word and Phoenix will try word.com (and possible word.org/word.net) before passing it on to Google and redirecting to the first search result. Type in multiple words and I’m Feeling Lucky is invoked straight away. Normal Google searches can be run from the smaller Google field to the right of the address bar. It all adds up to a virtually seamless browsing experience, especially now that I’ve memorised the Google URLs of most of my favourite sites.
Linux Gazette Python articles
Linux Gazette has a couple of interesting Python articles at the moment. Dealing with User Input in Python is a beginners guide to validating user input, while Pl/Python and Cursors in Pl/Pgsql for PostgreSQL explains how Python can be used to write stored procedures in PostgreSQL.
Pull quotes and page titles
Adrian Holovaty has followed up his discussion of page titles on news article pages with a look at the oft-abused pull-quote. Adrian points out how pull quotes can lead to poor accessibility for text browsers and screen readers, and suggests that providing a “skip quote” link could help improve things. Adrian’s comments section attracts a number of professional web deverlopers working on all kinds of news sites so the discussion is likely to be well worth watching over the next few days.
RSS validator uses my CSS
I just noticed that the RSS validator is using my numbered code listing CSS experiment :)
CSS roundup
Jeffrey Zeldman has resolved his niggling CSS bugs, and posted the workarounds for all to see. What’s amazing and unprecedented about CSS layout is that it’s completely abstracted from the data it presents.
he muses. Dorothea Salo points out that the publishing industry has been doing this for hundreds of years. Meanwhile, Todd Dominey has overhauled his CSS to get rid of the javascript browser detection and Mark Pilgrim and Scott Andrew have both posted funky Halloween CSS makeovers.
Trade by Bumbers
Craig Saila has launched his latest project, Trade by Numbers, which uses valid code and (Netscape 4 friendly) CSS for layout. The CSS code is worth looking over for the intelligent use of browser hacks, all commented. Writing Netscape 4 compatible CSS is still something of a mysterious art form, but documentation is steadily increasing with useful resources such as Craig’s list of NS4 CSS layouts and Mark Newhouse’s Real World Style. The tips on NS4 compatibility in Cascading Style Sheets: Separating Content from Presentation are also invaluable for anyone who is serious about CSS but still has to support legacy browsers. I have yet to produce a NS4 compatible CSS layout but I’m beginning to realise that it’s not quite as impossible as many people make out.
Disadvantages of TMTOWTDI
Slashdot have a story up linking to the Yahoo PHP presentation (mentioned earlier). The comments are pretty much an all out lanuage holy war, but the following comment explaining why Perl’s “There’s more than one way to do it” is a disadvantage when trying to write maintainable code caught my eye:
[... 102 words]ebook rants
Dorothea has posted two more excellent rants on the subject of ebooks, archiving and the importance of a single standard for master files (as opposed to a single standard for end user files which is a lot less important).
Comment spam and game theory
Mark Pilgrim has posted another of his signature in depth explanations, this time concerning the recent worries over blog comment spam. He points out that all of the proposed solutions are Club solutions, not Lojack solutions, meaning they directly help those who implement them, possibly at the expense of others who do not
. He then ties this in to game theory and the classic Prioner’s Dilemma problem.
Validator warning
As Scott Andrew has noted, the W3C’s beta validator is now returning the following warning as part of it’s XML output:
[... 85 words]Cashets
Roll on the micropayment revolution! Cashets are designed specifically for the small purchases—$1 (or less)—that you ordinarily can’t make on the Internet because sellers have a minimum
. The smallest amount you can charge using the system is 2 cents, of which 1 cent will go to Cashets and 1 cent will go to you, the seller. The 1 cent is a flat rate for sales up the a dollar, then it’s 2 cents for sales up to 2 dollars and so on up the maxiumum charge of 5 dollars. The company is owned by MasterCard founder Michael Phillips and two unnamed partners who are “computer professionals”. The site is atrocious (the text on the front page is a big gif with no alt text ffs) but the business model looks like it could just be the thing small-to-medium web sites have been waiting for.