this is mikel.org

Michael Boyle's weblog

So with a fresh approach

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So with a fresh approach

I managed to get the new mikel dot org design working, more or less. But really more or less. It appears perfectly in both IE5/Mac and IE 5.5 Win. It appears OK in Netscape 6.2. The whole thing is very weird though. It started working when I commented out all the margin variables and nested the bottom two divs inside the div containing the top content (the title graphic etc.). Then I used top and left positioning to put up the main text div. Fair enough. The positioning worked OK at the top and left.

Now the funny part. I didn’t want to specify a width for the main text div, as I want the site to be perfectly fluid. When I set a right position it worked perfectly in IE 5.5/Win. It didn’t work at all in IE5/Mac. So just for kicks I put in a “margin-right” as well. Suddenly it worked perfectly in IE on both platforms (which I don’t think it should do). Only Netscape does things as I would expect, which is to start the margin x pixels over from where the right edge is supposed to be (from where “right: #px” tells it to start counting).

Anyhow, it validates as valid CSS now, and the content is very readable on the platforms that I’ve tested it on, so I’m going to implement it in the next few days. If anyone can set me straight on my CSS foibles, however, I would really appreciate it.

Open call for help

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Open call for help

: I have been working on a substantial redesign for this site, using code that will validate as HTML 4.01 Transitional with valid CSS as well. Both the HTML and the CSS validate pretty well. And it looks just as I want it to in Mac IE 5.1.3 and Netscape 6.2.1. Trouble is in Win IE 5.5, it looks like hell. The right margin isn’t being respected, so the links div is superimposed on the main text area. I have checked both Eric Costello‘s and Owen Briggs‘ sites for a leg up, but to no avail. Any assistance will be rewarded with everlasting appreciation and respect!

Updates here have been

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sporadic due to a great deal of busy-ness, but also because I’ve been working on a new design and playing around with Moveable Type, the new micro-CMS on the market.

The new design is going to be pretty nice, I think (if I do say so myself), but I’m having trouble rendering it using no-tables techniques. My current thinking is that the world should progress in that direction ultimately, and for extremely simple pages it is much more efficient to work with than tables are. Trouble is, there are just as many fudges and workarounds required as there were using tables, which pretty much makes the whole endeavour beside the point. So I’m going to have to make a decision – and right now, I’m leaning towards using tables. The point of all-CSS design is to dispense with workarounds and browser silliness (at least one of the points is to do so). If I can’t do that, I don’t see the point in making the switch.

Ummm, it’s about both

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. The Talking Moose waded out of the mud and into the fire with his piece yesterday. It’s the most ridiculous thing the Moose, who has otherwise been a very interesting read, has ever published.

The poor Moose clearly doesn’t understand what web designers, as opposed to code monkeys or integrators, do for a living. He seems to think they need or want to code every page or something inane like that. On personal sites that may be true, but that’s just for fun.

You can’t do content management properly – or even do it at all – without a damn good designer figuring out how to make it look, and with a damn good coder to make that design work with the content management system, and without a damn good architect to make sure that it fits together well through time.

I’m just old school enough to think that all of those roles – designer, coder, and architect – are best done by a single person. But none of those interests are antithetical to using a content management system to actually make it all happen on a day-to-day basis. In fact, a CMS can’t be implemented efficiently unless those folks do good work first – otherwise, the benefit of the CMS is lost in a miasma of snippets and included code and exception-fixing.

Of course the irony is that the Talking Moose site itself is a good example of this fact. Bryan Bell couldn’t have casually changed the design of the Moose had his code (made up of HTML and CSS) not been clean and useful to begin with. Likewise, had Dave and the gang at Userland not built a weblog architecture whose function enabled the weblog form (with the calendar-based navigation etc.), Bell’s work would have been useless. And the “design” (defined strictly) would be a secondary concern had both of those things not been done well for the task at hand.

It’s absolutely about design and the kind of work people like Zeldman do and it’s all about integrating content management systems as closely as possible to the writers and other “content people” who are doing the publishing. There’s no fight here, though the Moose seems to have wanted to stir one up.

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