What is this web developers best friend? (not counting my wife) Not my CSS Mastery book. Not the always handy PHP In A Nutshell nor MySQL In A Nutshell.

Coffee!

Lots and lots of coffee. So, to get the google indexing started I am sending a little link juice to my newest online venture. Gourmet Coffee Blogger. It all about coffee, coffee and more coffee. So go ahead SE’s start your indexing.

I want to wish a very, very happy birthday to my wife.

Melinda, you are more than I ever hoped and dreamed of in a wife. You are my best friend.

The way you live and love is an example for me and the girls to follow. I am so thankful for you and hope you are aware everyday how much I love you.

Happy Birthday!

I’ve got a lot in the way of news to chronicle regarding my current employment. A great opportunity has presented itself for which I’m very thankful.

But, even more exciting is (yet another) project I’m developing in my personal time. I’ve really been seeking God’s will and purpose for my life and immensely enjoying and learning from the wisdom in the book of Proverbs.

Thus has been born, the Proverbs Project. It’s still in an embryonic state, but being lovingly fashioned none-the-less.

I just had an ‘aha’ moment that I’m sure many others are waiting to have. I’ve used the W3C Markup Validation service for a long time. Sometimes, it can be challenging to find the little snippet of markup displayed by the validator within my html document. Although the markup validator shows a line and column number, it never jibes up with my markup in my html editor.

Tonight, while looking for a really obscure list item tag error, I had my ‘aha’ moment. While displaying the html page in Firefox, click on ‘view source’. Do it all the time, right? Well, up under the ‘EDIT’ menu is ‘Go To Line…’ (or just press Ctrl + L). Type in the line number given by the W3C validator and your there.

I tried finding a similar feature with the ‘View Source’ option on Internet Explorer 6. It, of course, opens up Note Pad. Which, doesn’t seem to have any such ‘Line Number’ option.

WOW.

I’m currently coding my heart out on what I am calling the Ultimate NASCAR Database. Everytime I try some humilty on the project I realize that it just really rocks.

The wow is about a dang, pesky bug quirk (or maybe it is just stricter adherance) with Firefox and negative margins.

Basically, I am making a 3-column, fluid CSS layout.

HTML:

<div id=”wrapper”>
<div id=”content”>My content</div><!– // eof content div –>
</div><!– // eof wrapper div –>
<div id=”sidebar”>Content on left sidebar</div><!– // eof sidebar div –>

CSS:
#wrapper {
float: right;
width: 100%;
margin: 10px 0 0 -300px;}

#content {
margin: 0 5px 0 320px;
padding: 0;}

#sidebar {
margin: 10px 0 0 5px;
float: left;
width: 295px;}

This is a well documented CSS layout beginning with Ryan Brill’s article.

The only problem was that the links on the left sidebar were broken (non-clickable) in Firefox. They looked like links, just didn’t click like links. In IE and Opera they worked.

The solution?

Add position:relative; to the #sidebar styling. All links work like they should now.

Final CSS markup:

#sidebar {
position: relative; /* fixed links not being clickable…go figure */
margin: 10px 0 0 5px;
float: left;
width: 295px;}