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;}

Happy days. Internet Explorer has its own Developer Toolbar.

I use the Firefox Web Developer Toolbar extensively. Now Internet Explorer has one too.

I just downloaded it and shot over here to spread the news. Two very cool features I see so far are:

• View Dom. Lets you navigate through the page nodes. A visual flashing border displays which node your in.
• Outline > Div Elements. Outlines all the <div> elements on the page. Very nice.

This will be nice to have when I’m exploring Internet Explorer bugs and wish I had the previously mentioned Firefox Web Developer Toolbar along for the journey. Now if they just had an on-the-fly CSS Editor built into it, you could squash the bugs as you go.

I just wrapped up my beta version of a Lorem Ipsum generator to provide quick access to filler text while laying out a design.

What makes this Lorem ipsum generator unique is that it gives you filler text formatted in HTML. You don’t have to wrap the filler text in <h1>, <p> or <ul><li> tags. It’s already done for you. You can even specify what and how much you want.

Comments are encouraged, so I can tweak it to be most useful.

I recently upgraded my local testing server to php5. Right off the bat I experienced two differences from my previous php4 setup.

First, for the ‘I need a solution quick’ people.

• Don’t use $PHP_SELF in your forms & links. Use $_SERVER[’PHP_SELF’]
• To get error reporting back on. Search your php.ini for the ‘Error handling and logging’ section and uncomment (by removing the semi-colon) the type of error reporting you want. (eg. error_reporting = E_ALL)

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve had conversations with clients, friends and even strangers about the Mozilla Firefox browser.

Barring the ones who love Firefox, the general conception is that Firefox is inferior to Internet Explorer. I’ve stopped evangelizing people on what I believe is an incorrect hypothesis. I’ll carry on designing in Firefox and fixing it for Internet Explorer. The fight for marketshare, I’ll leave to bigger boys than me.

Firefox doesn’t work right

Basically, the gist of these conversations is ‘I tried Firefox, but am back to using Internet Explorer’.

Why?
Read the rest of this entry »