October 28, 2004
The Magic Dragonfly Award goes to ...
I have to crow over my dear buddy, Lisa! Her incredible new "Cafe Lisa" blog design is gaining recognition in all sorts of interesting places:
Web Standards Awards
(Thursday October 28th, 2004)
CSS Beauty
(Monday, October 25th, 2004)
and the site is listed in this month's Noteworthy Category at CSS Vault.
We of the Cathouse are now declaring her the first and only winner of the Magic Dragonfly Award. She and that lovely dragonfly are certainly flying high this week!!
The scruffy old _^..^_ and I are going take this out-of-date blog we still have not redesigned and hide under the bed now. Someday.... Someday.... [wink]
Sweet Dreams!
Farron
October 26, 2004
The Flora-Bama: Hold That Thought!
Ahaha,
Long Live the Flora-Bama! Developers may be licking their chops and circling the Gulf Shores/Orange Beach area like a bunch of vultures hoping to increase the generic, concrete wall of high rises along the beach, sell them and run to ruin yet another scenic and interesting spot in the world, but some remain determined to hang on to a bit of eclectic character.
A quote from and article dated, Sunday, October 17, 2004 in "The Birmingham News" from one of the co-owners of the legendary Flora-Bama Lounge is interviewed.:
"Equally determined to stay put, although in a more sin-loving kind of way, are the owners of the Flora-Bama Lounge.
Ivan knocked down much of the building, although the hurricane's 120 mph winds weren't strong enough to blow the cigarette smoke smell out of the remaining walls.
Joe Gilchrist, a Birmingham-native and Flora-Bama co-owner, said owners are still trying to figure out how much of the original building, if anything, can be salvaged. Gilchrist said not to worry, though. The rebuilt 'Bama, home of the Mullet Toss festival, will never blend in with the sleek condos taking over the beachfront.
'It will not be made of pink stucco with a purple roof,' Gilchrist said. 'Whatever we do, it will be done in just as poor taste as everything we've always done. We will be true to our original concept of trashy modern.'."
Hang in there guys! When you are ready for us to return, we will be back to visit your Hi-Tack mecca to consume some of the best royal reds and oysters on the Alabama shore!
Farron
October 25, 2004
Print Styles: Are We Control Freaks?
Earlier this afternoon, I was kicked back nibbling the last of the homemade soup from this weekend’s batch and mindlessly [mindfully?] surfing around some blog links to see where they might lead.
It has struck me that, in the last few days, I have been falling into more than my usual share of articles dealing with print in one form or fashion.
This article from The Man in Blue blog:
CSS, printing and user expectation
got me thinking in this direction again. I have read similar comments about the average user looking for and expecting a “Printer Friendly” link or icon, or both. Some might actually want to print out the little messes with graphics and sidebars and such that we display on the screen.
Maybe we are trying to snatch too much control back from our users. Usability is about choices for the person who accesses our web pages, not for us.
None of us want to go back to having to maintain two pages, one for print and one for onscreen display. Having to create .pdf files manually adds extra maintenance for the web designer, as well.
Printable .pdf's also add another twist for Susie Surfer who has never heard of the Adobe Reader and suddenly has that “deer in the headlights” look when it is suggested that she download a program from the web. Didn't that fellow who just charged her an arm and a leg to clean wicked viruses off her system warn her never, ever to do that? Surely Adobe is just sitting there waiting for her to do that so they can add something to her system that will cause her to crash and burn, again! [Someone please tell Susie that Adobe is only interested in draining her wallet, not infecting her machine. ;^]
Several alternatives are discussed in the article and following comments including one which is slightly off-topic, but interesting, on including logos in your print style.
Shortly after reading this article and having this thought replanted in my brain, I ran across this printing solution using a small snippet of PHP at maratz.com:
Ten Minutes to a Printer Friendly Page
This one spawned some debate on the accuracy of the PHP and bandwidth use, but it sounds like it might be worth testing and forming our own opinions of the results.
Speaking of more user friendly pages, I suppose I need to get myself out of the habit of “breaking the back button,” on external links even if I do it with a little script that does not break valid coding. Hey, if users would move out of that clunky, horrid, outdated browser [you know the one I mean] , they would have tabbed browsing and external links would be unnecessary to keep from losing the original website. *sigh*
If you are interested in finding a few of the other articles vaguely related to print, among other things, that I have wandered into lately, check that del.icio.us link down in the resource links in the sidebar on this page.
Farron
[who’s off to feed a hungry _^..^_ ]
October 23, 2004
Blogging Workshop
IT Kitchen has a two week clinic on blogging and related topics starting this Monday, October 25th. It runs through Friday, November 5th.
Clinic Overview:
http://wiki.itkitchen.info/Clinic:Overview
Clinic Schedule:
http://wiki.itkitchen.info/Clinic:Schedule
Sounds like an event that might well be worth checking out!
Farron
[ & _^..^_ who heard it was a feline approved event ]
October 21, 2004
View Page Structure Tool
I just ran across a slick toy for looking at the structure of a page:
http://www.ilovejackdaniels.com/resources/view-page-structure/
Yes, I know there are other ways to check structure, but run your mouse over this one for ease of viewing and display.
Fun and helpful for a fast peek under the hood of pages. I've added the bookmarklet to my toolbar for snooping.... errr studying? ..... layouts that interest me. Also helpful for quick troubleshooting of inheritance issues in your own pages, which I believe is it's intended use.
Farron
[ _^..^_ is ignoring this post. no food involved ]
October 09, 2004
Someday in Gulf Shores
I don't know exactly when or how, but someday [hopefully sooner, rather than later] I will be in Gulf Shores, even if it is only as a part time resident at first.
It's not in the cards to actually move there at this point in time, but I am remaining ever the delusional optimist and making plans:
*Grin*
Farron
[& Skeptical _^..^_ ]
October 07, 2004
Gallery2, Planes, Cars and Fish Tales
Mornin' All,
_^..^_ and I were testing Gallery2/Alpha-3 last night. From the looks of what I had seen on their forums, it appeared that it might be worth a try at this point.
Installing was easy. Very close to the same as G1. The main (not clearly noted) difference was that the /setup directory is now called /install. That wasn't hard to spot though. The step-by-step setup is extremely clear.
I haven't diddled with the styles or many of the underpinning yet, but I have to say, it creates some lovely codes. Hit it with the validator, gang. That's what's generated automatically by G2. Yah!
The only visual change I have made so far is to slap a font fish and Tony's name in the corner where the Gallery heading that was nothing more than an ad banner was hiding. That I couldn't stand for more than five seconds. I simply added a same size quickie replacement for the testing page.
There is a nasty little hack in the styles that is said to be for IE5/Mac. It rips at the style validity. I need to go dig around and find where exactly that style sheet links to the pages so I can see how easy it would be to edit the link to nuke codes for IE5/Mac completely. As far as I am concerned, that needs to be sent to the annoyances corner with NN4.x, but the page does need to remain usable. It's day is done, so let's let the sun set on it quickly. Pull those styles to encourage a move, gang!
As it stands now, G2 is very plain jane both out in public view and behind the scenes. The user interface is extremely limited and not very intuitive. But what do you expect from an alpha release?
I know there will probably not be a route to migrate this alpha to the next generation, and it will have to be deleted rather than moved. It is noted that there will probably not be a good upgrade path until the Beta releases. There were also suggestions about saving a duplicate in G1 and importing your data that way. Might be worth a look.
I have attempted to set up so information can be reset at least fairly easily. There is one issue with that though, the upload is the slowest thing I have seen in years! Picture a GeoCities file manager handling a full sized image on dial-up. That's about where it stands. Possible even slower. Ugh!
If I dig around, I think there may be a way to mass upload. If there is not, surely there will be soon. A max of four images at a time or 2MG, whichever is smaller is the pits!
Oh! Did you want to peek? The look is a yawn and since I don't know what captions or titles would be wanted, I have to hold on that, along with the styles since I think *the boys at the office* may be peeking today, so I don't want to be breaking it apart right now. (Yes, dT, this is a time working on Apache locally might be handy. ;^)
Here ya go:
http://tonyb-ict.com/gallery2/main.php
Butzi, the plane you wanted to see is there, so are those Mustangs I never put anywhere. I'm more of a toes in the sand kinda girl than someone who plays with that mechanical stuff.
Images for slide show are sized down to 400x300 since Tony (and most of the guys in his office?) still run on 800x600. Wanted them to be able to see the images in one screen. They can be enlarged to 640x480 or original monster size for details. Humm, that's another thing I wanted to look at... if you change to 640x480 size, is there a way to keep the slideshow running at that size? And max size nukes tall images down to small in that option. Lots of diddling needed, but this is finally a quick gallery that doesn't have codes I am not only humiliated to put on a page, but codes that I absolutely refuse to use. Definitely a beginning in the right direction for the Gallery guys. Three cheers to them from...
... Farron and That _^..^_
P.S. I have some little notes that I will pull together and post over on the Wiki.
October 05, 2004
Like My New Tag Toy?
This vehicle and it's owner may be physically landlocked in Tennessee, but their hearts and souls cannot be found there. They are lost somewhere on the northwest shores of the Gulf of Mexico.
Signed,
404@daBeach!
October 01, 2004
Chicken and the Bungalow
Becky, remember I told you about the giant chicken [amend to rooster] who sits right at the Tennessee/Alabama border and next door to the Boobie Bungalow?
Here he is! Thought he might be a great hot date for a Hen like you. [ducking rotten egg thrown at my head from MN].
He's the last thing we saw on the way out of the state and to the beach Tuesday night. Lovely, huh? I do live in a *classy* state. SNORT!
Farron