Catartis

W3C's AWOL CSS Validator

I am being reminded how much we rely on W3C and their services to all of those who design and attempt to navigate web pages.

The W3C CSS validation service has been offline for over twenty-four hours now. Since I have not been able to find any information on this outage, my best guess is that there is maintenance or upgrading in the works.

Needless to say, some of our students who had planned to work on coding/styling assignments over the extended holiday weekend are in a bit of a holding pattern. They have come to rely on those W3C validation services as an extra set of eyes to assist them with cleaning up pages and learning the proper way to write codes and styles.

Some might call the validators crutches. I see them as extremely useful tools and hope the CSS service will be operational again soon.

But then, purrrrhaps it is the angels who watch over coders and designers stepping in and saying that we all need a break at times. Now go and enjoy the weekend!

Happy Memorial Day Weekend, everyone!

Farron
[& THAT _^..^_ ]

There's No Need to Fear.
UnderFrog is Here!

No need to fear unless you are a snail or a slug. This is one snail crunching, slug sucking toad!

Yes, I was corrected, UnderFrog is a toad. We were crushed, UnderToad just doesn't have the same ring to it. Google to the rescue!

I have discovered in my old age that you can prove almost any angle of an argument with Google. [Does that make it the Bible of the internet? Shame on me!! *wink*]

Here is one of several articles I spotted which commented that, "all toads are frogs, but not all frogs are toads."

Please note, there were four snails on his lunch plate a very few minutes ago. I think he's doing a wee bit of digesting before tackling the last one for dessert.

By the way, do frogs/toads/froads burp? Something to ponder while watching this little beastie out the window instead of doing something sensible.

That's all for now,

Farron
[and an indifferent, napping _^..^_ ]

P.S. There is a slightly larger version of the photo hiding behind this little one if you click it.

It's Pink!!!!

Ahahaha,

Becky finally put it online!!!

Here is her tribute to the latest Eric Meyer workbook, "More Eric Meyer on CSS."

Check it out...Now!

Farron

P.S. Beckster, this now means you can't move that page. nanner nanner

Thank You to pMachine/ExpressionEngine!

A huge thank you to the folks at pMachine. I just received word this afternoon that I am one of the lucky winners of a shiny, new ExpressionEngine.

I'm ready to drop everything and give it a spin. Too bad the *real world* keeps calling me away. Soon, soon.

I just have to say that someone over there has an excellent feel for PR. Some other companies might do well to learn from them. What a wonderful amount of good will they have created toward their company in the last few days. The Master Cat and I will be testing out that new tool very soon.

And while I am here....

I was over on the FireFox extension page checking something for a student and noticed a goodie I hadn't spotted before. Small screen rendering for FF.

Grabbed it on the spot. It's been working like a charm over here.

Dinner time....gotta go!

Farron
[and one hungry _^..^_]

Frog Alert!!!!

Oh Wow! I could have sworn I saw a frog over by the ewes yesterday and I talked myself out of it. Nah! No frogs here. That despite the fact that we saw a teeny pinkie sized baby on the fence the other night. Tony and I both thought it was just a fluke. That the little guy had gotten lost somehow. Well now I think we must be starting a froggie family on the patio. I certainly hope they don't cook when the temperatures start to rise and the rain dries. [It's well on the way to drying out and being a warm sunny day.]

This shot is right next to the water meter and under the edge of a dwarf aquilegia that is just starting to bloom again after the shock of being recently transplanted.

And I believe the little guy is safe from Tchaikovsky the Mighty Hunter. It's hard to see the tiny froggie in this second shot, so I've added an arrow pointing to his location.

Now look where Mr. T is looking for him. Do you think he missed his mark by a bit? HaHaHa

I had originally started to head out to check the progress of my purple pea sprouts. [hyacinth bean vines to be exact] Right as I was heading out the door, I spotted movement under one of the hollies. In looking closely, I spotted the little guy hidden in the mulch. He's a trusting soul. Even let me pick him up. Does that mean I will soon be covered in warts? Nah, don't think so.

Speaking of purple pea plants, Butzi started hers a bit earlier than I did out in the desert heat and sun. She sent pictures of the sprouts yesterday and then again today...check the difference between May 13th & May 14th!

http://ddhconsulting.home.mindspring.com/beans2.html

Yah! They are doing great. Soon they will be taking over her patio...seriously!

And Butzi, now you can NOT remove that page. It has to stay in place or you will mess up this goofy entry. *grin*

Time to head back to my regular day. Whatever that might bring.

TaTa for Now,

Farron
[and the Mighty Hunter _^..^_]

The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition

Humm,

It seems that the profit grabbing Ferengi would be howling that MT has broken one of the all important [aka Ferengi Bible] Rules of Acquisition today, or errrr, yesterday since I see it's after midnight now:

Rule #57:
"Good customers are as rare as latinum -- treasure them."

Although the new licensing and pricing structure does not affect me purrrrsonally at this time, it is interesting that I just became involved in a workshop which, among other things, will probably be testing some assorted blogging tools and CMS. Good timing?

At this moment, I remain interested and watching from the sidelines, but the vast amount of negative response floating around the web and in Mena's Corner at MT right now makes me immensely grateful that I am not part of the Six Apart team.

I will be curious to see their response. WordPress has already issued a little congratulatory message to them and is probably dancing a bit of a jig.

Sweet Dreams,

Farron [and a sleepy _^..^_]

A New Look for the Daily Report

I am sitting here on hold waiting for a plumber's phone call to meet him at a property for repairs. [tap, tap, tap]

Rather than starting something I will only have to put down to run across town, I am catching up on surfing some of my favorite blogs and informational sites for new goodies. Not a bad way to fiddle away a morning. Not bad at all.

I just noticed the new look that has been given to Jeffery Zeldman's personal blog, the Daily Report. No more orange. It's spring green. Lookin' good over there!

Here is a link to the page that comments on the redesign:

http://www.zeldman.com/daily/0504a.shtml

One of these days, I will get a-round-tuit and create a new look for my little corner of the blogging world. I've already added it to that neverending "Summer List." Near the top of the list of priorities is to remove these annoying, default pop-up windows for comments.

Soon, soon.....

Farron & THAT _^..^_ [Who is afraid my morning stirrings might indicate a trip to the V-E-T. He's trying his best to stay off my radar and lay low.]

First Rose, First Color!!

And winner of "which rose has color first," is my sweet, old fashioned climber, Blaze. She's showing color in about four spots today. I see her smirking at the whites on either side of her and the sweet little raspberry colored fellow who hangs in with his sherbert colored blooms and bright, bushy, yellow centers. Old time bush or climber varieties. Those cutting roses are way too fussy for me. Besides, they look pretty in a vase, but I think they are scraggly in the yard.

I should amend that *sweet* comment. This lady has a habit of biting me on a regular basis, but she's delivering the goods, so I forgive her.

The star jasmine is getting ready to go wild as well. A very few buds started opening yesterday. Soon the enclosed patio will be heavy with jasmine scent. Some find it heavy, but Tony and I love it dearly. It's so nice floating on the breeze.

Fingers crossed for those purple peas to sprout. And I am way overdue to try out those seeds from last year's score of *naughty* pepper seeds. Get going, woman. Plant those seeds! Back to play in the mud a bit.

Later....

Farron
[_^..^_ is sleeping in the sun and doesn't care]

Pondering Monster Font Size

I have run into an interesting font sizing issue regarding people who need very large text size. It sounds like a bug caused by piggybacking AOL off of IE6 when IE is set to largest.

A student commented to me that it was uncomfortable to read pages I have setup in an extremely simple two column sort of style to be able to include a right side link sidebar. She commented that, at the large text size she uses it read like a ticker tape down the page.

I did some testing and, yes, my page and just about any page in a column setup [including Zeldman's blog, the WaSP site, etc] were uncomfortable to read if you were running in absolutely gigantic text. Some broke and overlapped in any straight text resize offered by browsers. Opera definitely handled the issue better than others with the zoom of the entire page rather than singling out the text as the only element to enlarge. Many horizontal scrolls were evident, but page layouts were left much closer to the designer's intent.

After getting a bit more information from the student, it seems she is running an older version of AOL. Seven. She also has five or six other browsers on her system but prefers using AOsmelL because she likes the way it handles Favorites. She keeps IE6 set to largest text size under the view menu. But then she heads to AOL, which picks up her IE6 settings but then seems to double the "largest" text by applying one of it's own. There is no view control in that version of the browser that she can find so she is stuck with it unless she goes back to IE and redoes her settings there.

From the description I was getting from it, it sounds like the size she is seeing would be roughly equivalent to clicking the enlarge text option 4 to 5 times above normal in Firefox, or at least 200% in Opera's zoom. [The view, though messy in Opera is handled more elegantly than the others.]

I think her situation is rather a fluke and I have had her looking at options in other browsers. She says she thinks Firefox does the best job, but still wants to use AOL. [Go figure.] Since IE does not resize fixed size fonts, it does not seem to be an issue for locked in text size on pages, but then she would be stuck with text that is not large enough to read.

The whole thing has me thinking about column layouts and people who require huge text due to visual problems. I am thinking the best policy to try to please more of the people more of the time may be a built in style swapper on column layouts. Something offering an option that deletes the columns completely, but purrrrhaps a bit more attractive than a totally unstyled page. Just a few touches.

That does not address people with javascript disabled, but it might help a larger audience.

Just musing and thinking here. I may experiment with my lesson styles over summer break when there is plenty of fiddle time [she says] and see if I can hit on a workable solution.

Try surfing around at an absolutely huge text size. Don't do it in Opera, try another browser. FF maybe? Hit some blogs and column layout pages at a size roughly double what IE would call *largest*. It's a miserable experience. But if it was my only option due to visual problems, I would probably be wading through it as well.

Back to a sunny Saturday.

Later,

Farron and That _^..^_