Results matching “css” from Ye Olde Rad Blog III

One of the most satisfying experiences a technoluster can have is becoming proficient with a new technology, especially one that's not easy to master. Geeks sometimes use the word » GROK, which basically means you 'get it'.

The term was coined by Robert Heinlein in his novel Stranger in a Strange Land (SciFi, 1961). The martian word implies you understand something (such as how a particular technology works) .. on an intuitive level, in a satorial kind of way.

The difference between possessing a working knowledge of a particular technology and 'grokking' it is difficult to describe. Grokking impies a deeper understanding .. that surpasses mere facts & figures.

It suggests you can 'see into' the inner workings and comprehend how the different elements interact.

I've been studying CSS (off-n-on) for months, applying the concepts I learned (.. cuz that's how I learn best). And today I finally 'got it'. It came in a flash .. known as the » ah-ha moment.

[ Hmmm. That's interesting » I was looking for a good article to link to the phrase » 'ah-ha moment,' when my Google search returned a page referencing CSS. Surprisingly coincidental, no? Seeing that I didn't query the term 'CSS' (only » 'ah-ha moment').

What are the odds of that occurring? Of those two concepts being found grouped together so prominently (link #2)? Of all the possible topics in the world, CSS comes up. Maybe it means something. ]

It's not like I didn't understand CSS before. I'd long been reading about and felt comfortable wielding the technology .. using it to whip up sophisticated layouts. But now it seems my insights were superficial .. that I was merely applying recipes, cookbook style, mechanically.

Today's insight came so dramatically that it felt like I'd swallowed a ball of CSS enlightenment. "I finally get it," I muttered. Incredibly satisfying experience. Accompanied by a feeling of arrival, completion, mastery.

Of course, this doesn't mean I know everything there is to know about CSS. Far from it. Gladwell says you need 10,000 hours to master a skill. But I now 'see' how it works .. on an intuitive level.

I would love to be able to plug a cable into my brain and upload a whole slew of other cool technologies (.. like they do in the Matrix). Unfortunately, that ain't how it works. Nor can you grok something by sheer force of will. (If we could, I'd be grunting loudly.) You 'get it' when you get it and not a moment before.

Tho I'm curious about what happens at that moment. I mean, I knew everything I did about CSS now in the moments before I 'got it'. I've also been studying Programming. Maybe that helped yield insight, cuz CSS in some ways resembles programming.

The experience, in retrospect, could be described as a 'breaking thru,' or a 'crashing thru,' or a 'falling thru,'. The thing you 'break thru' seems like a semi-translucent crystalline membrane .. that obscures your vision .. from seeing deeply .. into the inner-workings.

The distance traveled (knowledge-wise) was very small, yet the resulting effect was dramatic .. sort of like the view you get when cresting a big hill. The straw that broke the camel's crystalline back, you might say.

Have a special treat for you today » my Nuclear Grade Stew recipe (2 pages). I've made this stew at least 50 times over the years .. probably closer to a hundred. Now that autumn is here, and the nights are getting chilly, it's time to break out the crock pot.

For the pages that contain this recipe, I designed a new, single-sidebar layout .. another liquid-elastic hybrid. See what you think.

For previous web pages, I used a design that comprised dual-sidebars, one on each side, cuz I liked the balanced, symmetric look provided by that layout. So this feature took longer to complete than expected, cuz I first had to code the CSS from scratch.

I've made this stew for the Bug many times (cutting the veggies into smaller pieces so they fit easily in his little mouth). So it's made with lots of love. He digs it.

Been lagging on entries lately, as you mighta noticed. Been dabbling in Programming. Kinda got lost. Big subject.

On the personal side, I took the Bug kayaking last week .. out on the Newport Back Bay. (No waves there.) He later confided, "Dad, at first I was a little scared. But now I'm not scared." We stopped at a small island where he got out and searched for buried treasure.

Happy Halloween. I modified the method of placing the graphics in the header found at the top of the home page .. up where it says » RADIFIED | Nuclear Grade Technolust. There I implemented a technique known as » CSS Image Replacement, of which there exist many variations, each with its own set of pro's & con's.

The dividing-line among web designers seems to be whether or not to use a non-semantic span tag with CSS positioning, which involves a more complicated technique .. but leaves visible TEXT in place for visitors who surf the Web with STYLES turned off (primarily those using mobile devices).

I used a simpler IR technique, by changing the images you see displayed there .. from foreground images to background images.

This allowed me to replace the foreground images (contained in those heading elements) with TEXT .. which I then indented (way to your left), so it can't be seen. By moving the TEXT out of the way, this technique reveals the graphics (.. which look prettier than standard heading-text).

The advantage however, is » devices that don't render styles (such as screen readers and mobile devices) will now see a TEXT heading and tag-line displayed there, where before there existed only images. Search engines also gives more weight to TEXT than images.

Most Rad visitors will never notice the difference .. seeing most who frequent the site (fellow technolusters) browse with both images and CSS turned ON. But I'm gradually filling my webmaster toolkit with increasingly sophisticated techniques. (Learning by doing.)

After all the pages are styled however, and the markup is coded semantically, there's still no substitute for insightful content .. that is well written (.. and hopefully seasoned with a dash of personality).

This has always been the most difficult challenge .. because a stylish suit does not a charming pig make. And the ugliest person can say the profoundest things, and possess scintillating ideas. So it would seem that content trumps style .. no matter the venue (.. except maybe for those who focus on style).

Changed the underlying markup that controls the links in the blue-green sidebars on the home-page. They were previously coded as » paragraphs. I changed them to » list-items .. cuz that's what they are » a list of items (links) grouped according to category. Certainly not paragraphs .. not even sentences.

If I did this correctly, you shouldn't notice any difference. Cuz I applied the same styling to the list items .. tho this was trickier than it might sound. I nearly freaked when a single misplaced comma trashed my whole layout. Yikes!

This change represents a semantic improvement. Semantics (i.e. » 'meaning') is one of the buzz-words kicked around when thinkers discuss the Web's future.

Most surprising was that it took me so long to realize I had coded the home-page with semantically incorrect markup. It suddenly hit me (last night), when out of the blue (actually » blue-green), I thought » "Those links aren't paragraphs; they're a LIST."

Enrolled in Amazon's Affiliate program, something I probably shoulda done years ago. They claim it takes ~3 days to process an application, but I received my acceptance letter today. (Applied late last night.)

Being a n00b, I don't know much about their program yet, except that they pay a percentage whenever a visitor clicks a link on my site and makes a corresponding purchase. (How big of a percentage I'm not sure.)

I've long included links to books at the Amazon site [ in pages such as this one » Best Books for Learning the Basics of Web Site Design (XHTML & CSS), and this one » Andy Budd's Book: CSS Mastery ] without ever taking advantage of their program.

If I start making considerable cash, I'll be bummed that I didn't enroll sooner. And if I don't (earn cash), I'll be bummed too, for wasting my time with this program. So either way .. which might be why I hesitated so long.

What I like best about the Amazon program is that it allows me to monetize the site without including visible ads (.. unlike Google's AdSense program). All I need to do is add the following code to the end of each Amazon link » ?ie=UTF8&tag=radifiedcom-20. So it's virtually invisible to visitors. If I didn't tell you, you might never know.

I also like that it doesn't cost visitors anything extra when purchasing a book via a link from this site.

After establishing an 'Associate' account (and logging in to the Amazon site), a toolbar magically appears at the top of the browser window whenever I visit Amazon.com.

The Associate toolbar allows me to create targeted links to the particular book/page I'm at/on .. with a single click. Couldn't be easier. I simply paste the auto-generated code into my web page.

"Hey Rad Man!" began an email I received last week. "I'll pay $100 for a link on your Downloads page." Of course, there's no way of knowing if such offers are legit .. until the cash arrives.

 I've researched Search Engine Optimization (SEO) enough to know I don't much care for it.

Programming I enjoy, but SEO contains a seemingly endless amount of info to digest, some of which conflicts from site to site.

And the suggested techniques are often time-consuming, with dubious results that demand the patience of a saint before you start to see results. Rather focus my energies on generating original content.

Moreover, some of the techniques used to 'optimize' web pages (for higher search engine rankings) seem manipulative, if not downright dishonest. Many of the SEO sites I've visited have a 'slimy' feel to them » detailing how to trick search engines into ranking your pages higher.

I learned that links from 'ranked' pages will (in turn) yield greater 'importance' to the pages that those links aim at (point to). This is (I assume) what this person had in mind when she contacted me.

The email seemed both professional and specific. (Not slimy.) The girl was clear about what she wanted. And best of all, her proposal could be implemented minutes. (Simple.)

The problem was .. that the page they wanted a link on was created back when I knew squat about web standards (XHTML & CSS). The underlying mark-up (code) was a rat's nest of deprecated tags and coding no-no's.

Downright embarrassing .. from a webmaster's point-of-view. Miracle the page would render at all (.. even in 'quirks' mode).

Web typography. It would seem to be a fairly simple topic, no? While I was reviewing some related concepts recently, the following question popped into my head » What exactly is an em?

I've been using em's a long time, and knew they were based somehow on the letter 'M.' Wasn't sure however, if they were based on the size of the capital [M] or lower-case letter [m].

Also felt confident they were based on the horizontal measurement, but not certain. (In both cases, I was wrong.)

Trying to answer this simple question led to a surprising amount of confusion. Many sources on the web discuss ems, and detail their usage, without ever defining what exactly an em is.

Many pages are more complicated than need be. (It's not rocket science.) Finally have a handle on the topic, but my dang eyeballs are burning .. from reading so much.

First, let me answer the question I posed at the top, and therefore avoid the criticism I levied at many other sites.

An em is (drum-roll, please) » a unit of measure (.. defined by a certain number of pixels). So like inches & meters & light-years, which are also units of measure, the em is a » unit of LENGTH.

The thing that makes the em tricky is that » unlike inches or meters, or other fixed (or 'absolute') lengths, the em is a relative unit.

"Relative to what, Rad?" you might be asking. Relative to the font-sizing applied to (in pixels) its » parent element.

What this means is » the SAME font-size declaration (specified with ems) can yield DIFFERENT results (in pixels) .. when/if the parent element for each declaration specifies a different sized font. Hence, the confusion.

Made some minor style-tweaks to the home page. The text you're reading now, for example, is slightly less-bright (easier on the eyes), while the links are a little brighter .. than they were before. (Might have to refresh your browser to load the revised style sheet.)

Visited-links in the sidebars are now slightly less-bright (grayer) .. than un-visited links. Used to be no diff.

Been studying more CSS. Becoming very comfortable tweaking styles. Fine-tuning. Easier for me to determine what I don't like, than what I do.

Oh, the date is also slightly brighter (whiter) .. than the rest of the text, and has a "text-transform" property applied to make it » UPPERCASE .. via a span tag with 'date' class attribute.

Upgraded the Rad blog to the newest version (4.32), which was released a few days ago. Way easier, now that I have Linux shell skillz & a VPS. Five minutes instead of 2 hours.

Movable Type v5.0 will be coming out soon. Currently at » beta-3. I normally install NEW versions of whole-number upgrades, rather than upgrading previous installations. Keeps the number of blog-entries down for a given installation.

Currently have 167 entries on MT 4.x. Lots of entries tend to make the blog respond sluggishly (when rebuilding). That would be » Ye Olde Rad Blog IV. (Started with v2.63 .. in May 2003.)

Considering installing a wiki (software). Can't hurt. Might help. Would be a place (beside the forum) where folks could post & reference their own info/content. Might be a good learning experience, too.

I have no experience with wiki's .. other than searching Wikipedia. Not sure which one would be best. So many choices. Ideas? Saw this comparison. Nigel once recommended Dokuwiki (I think) as a well-coded (PHP-based) piece of software.

The Dokuwiki download is 1.7 MB. (Compare that with the Movable Type download, which is 4.6 MB.) An über comparison of all Wiki's and their features is posted » HERE. Meanwhile Wikipedia, the mother-of-all wiki's, uses MediaWiki, which is both free & Open Source.

Autumnal equinox today. The exact moment when the sun crosses the equator (heading south) = 9:18 PM UTC, which = 2:18 PM Pacific Daylight.

National Geo says » 5:19 AM Eastern (which = 2:19 AM PDT), so I think they type-o'ed AM, when they meant PM.

Nevertheless, it's still the best page I've seen yet on the subject .. cuz it explains why there's not (yet) 12 hours of (equal) day & night. Cool video, too.

Just noticed I used a picture of a spigot dripping water in yesterday's entry (» re: Conditional Love, near the end) ..

.. while a photo (using high-speed photography) shows a droplet hitting the surface in the entry directly below it (» New Layout Design, posted 9/15), which I used to represent LIQUID designs.

Changed the type of layout I use on the home page .. to » LIQUID-ELASTIC hybrid. If I did this correctly, you shouldn't notice any difference .. unless you change your default text-size (.. by selecting 'Text Size' from the 'View' menu in IE). Lemme know if you notice any display quirks.

There are 4 different 'types' of layout designs:

1. FIXED (column widths remain fixed, no matter what, used » here)
2. ELASTIC (column widths change with changes to your preferred font-size)
3. LIQUID (column widths change with changes to browser-window sizing, used » here)
4. HYBRID (combination of two or more of the above, used »  here)

I've long preferred LIQUID layouts (sometimes called » FLUID), which resize column widths as you resize your browser window (called the "viewport" by those in the biz). It's easier for me to understand the concept behind LIQUID layouts .. than ELASTIC.

Today however, I'm demo'ing a » HYBRID layout .. that combines elements of both LIQUID & ELASTIC. [ If you've read my SCSI guide, you know I'm a fan of hybrid config's. ]

The center section/column remains » LIQUID, while the two sidebars (blue-green colums) are now » ELASTIC. This means they will resize with changes made to your preferred font-size (e.g. » small, medium, large, gigantic, etc.). The center section will continue to change proportionally, as you resize your browser window - just like before.

Resizing your browser window will no longer affect the width of the blue-green sidebars (which are already skinny), while changing your default font-size will not affect the width of the center column/section.

The design itself of the home page has remained unchanged. Only the 'type' of layout has been modified (.. from LIQUID to » LIQUID-ELASTIC hybrid). This new type of page layout is considered more 'accessible' ..

.. especially for those who might have difficulty reading smaller text, and need to bump up their default font-size.

(Today btw, is 9-9-09 .. for all you numerologists.) Anybody who has ever used Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to style a web page has likely experienced the frustration that comes when a particular style refuses to render the way you want.

Understanding the concepts outlined here will help troubleshoot any CSS rendering problem .. much better than banging your head against the wall (.. a technique that seems to provide limited success).

Three rendering principles determine how CSS styles are applied to a web page, and which style(s) take precedence. They are:

1. The Cascade
2. Inheritance
3. Specificity

For reference sake, here's a quick review of basic CSS syntax » selector {property: value}

For example » p {color: green} .. will apply a value of 'green' to the color property for the text contained in a paragraph ('p' = paragraph selector). This is called a CSS "rule".

Here's a brief overview of the 3 rendering principles listed above that determine how CSS rules are applied to a web page:

I. THE CASCADE

Styles are applied in the following "cascading" order: External style sheet » Embedded styles » Inline styles.

A given HTML page can contain one, two, or all three (or none). Styles lower down the cascade normally supplement (add to) styles higher up the cascade. If a styling conflict exists however, styles lower down take precedence.

In other words, the last style applied wins (.. given equal specificity). Here's a brief description of each type of cascading style mentioned above.

1. External style sheets (fileName.css).

These styles can be applied to an unlimited number of HTML pages .. which link to the CSS file. Very powerful, since they allow you to change the look-n-feel of an entire site by modifying a single file. Web pages normally link to only a single external style sheet, tho it's possible to link to multiple external style sheets .. which also cascade, depending on the order they're listed. Large professional sites often use multiple external style sheets.

2. Embedded styles

They are found within the head tag of an HTML page. These styles are enclosed within the 'style' tag <style> and apply only to the HTML page in which they are found. These styles supercede any styles contained within an external style sheet that may conflict with them (.. given equal specificity).

3. Inline styles

Inline styles are applied to individual HTML elements/tags, using the "style" ATTRIBUTE. Note that this is not the same as the style ELEMENT applied to embedded styles mentioned above, tho it's spelled the same way. Inline styles supercede all others that conflict with them .. since the last style applied wins. Plus, they carry maximum specificity (which we'll discuss later).

Two concepts introduced early-on in the career of any aspiring programmer are » syntax & semantics. Syntax refers to the structure (or form) of code that a programming language specifies. Semantics refer to the meaning .. assigned to symbols, characters & words.

I first became familiar with the notion of syntax while studying Cascading Style Sheets. CSS syntax employs the following form » selector {property:value}. Simple enough, no?

This form/structure allows you to style your web pages with 'rules' such as » p {color:green} .. which will change the color ('property') of text in a paragraph ('p' = selector) to (a 'value' of) » green.

While CSS might not be an official programming language, it does contain aspects that (in some ways) resemble them. And all programming languages employ syntactic rules. BTW - here's a good CSS book.

A professor once told me that the standard form (syntax) of a sentence in the English language is » Noun-Verb-Direct Object. In other words » 'Bill hit the ball.' Or, 'Mary ran up the the hill.' ( "This does that to the other." )

Most English-speaking people would agree that this format tends to work best (to convey ideas). But it is not a hard-n-fast rule. You can easily say » 'Up the hill ran Mary,' or 'Mary up the hill ran.' People might think you weird, but they'll know what you mean.

In English, we say "black beans." But the Spanish-speaking Mexicans here in Southern California put the adjective AFTER the noun » "Frijoles negros." (Can't believe frijoles negros has its own dang Wikipedia entry.) I'm chowing on a bowl of some frijoles negros & rice right now.

Programming languages (on the other hand) have little sense of humor. Break one of their structural rules and they will not only protest, but boycott your program outright. Obviously there are reasons for this strict precision. There can be no misunderstanding.