CSS — Page 4

I’m in deep juggler mode

March 13, 2001 by Michael Boyle

at the moment, which is a really fun spot to be in. In theory I’m looking for work as a product/project manager for a web concern or something like that. In fact, I haven’t been looking much – I’ve been waiting by the phone for an offer that I will take. And in the interim – I’m learning, playing, and developing projects at a fever pitch.

I’m doing a lot of playing around with CSS box-properties layouts, which has been good, if a little frustrating. As well, Aaron and Luke pretty much convinced me to roll my own tools to manage content for montrealstories.org (although an interim solution will be deployed sooner) – so I’m playing with XML, PHP and some other stuff to get that going. I have a bit of a background in scripting, though with a different kind of tool, so I’m feeling pretty confident.

As well, though, I’ve just now figured out the next project, which could be pretty neat. I’m not going to say more so I don’t jinx it, but it would be a different sort of thing, and terribly interesting to develop.

Bottom line: what I really need isn’t a job but a patron, sort of like a renaissance-era painter, or maybe a poet in Paris in the 20s. All that said, I am still excited about the job on the horizon too. It’ll just cut into my personal research time

So, prompted by such

March 9, 2001 by Michael Boyle

pleasant folks as Zeldman, eric costello, and Owen Briggs, I’ve been experimenting extensively with CSS-only layouts. I started working on a new project, but decided that since it wasn’t “fixed” it was too easy just to change what I wanted to do if I couldn’t get something to go just how I wanted.

So I started converting this yellow monstrosity instead. With a model to work to, it brought a lot more discipline. In any case, I got the whole thing converted in no time flat (thanks to the people that are following this stuff closely and writing about it) – except for one thing – I can’t seem to pin the right hand yellow panel to the side of the browser window. As well, the three columns just end when they end – I can’t extend the left and right to the bottom of the browser window. I’ve tried every combination of margin: 0px and whatnot I can think of.

When I do get it together I think I’m going to move to the new style of code for this site. It’s much simpler, much smaller, more fluid and easier to work with. Even if NS 4 people can’t participate on an equal footing – I’m 90% sure it’s worth it.

Comments?

Earlier tonight I finished

March 8, 2001 by Michael Boyle

the initial run at a new layout I’m doing for another project (you can see it soon, don’t worry). It’s pretty simple, really, but it does rely on positioning a minimum number of things exactly in the right spot. If they’re not there the whole idea breaks down. Anyhow – even though I did it in plain old tables, same as always, it still took a while to get it right – and it’s still not perfect in NS 4.7x. So it occurs to me that I could do the site entirely in CSS, perhaps – make the best of a learning opportunity. Lo and behold, Eric Costello has been following the work people are doing in this regard very closely! So I’m going to give it a try. The problem I foresee is that all of the layouts/designs I’ve seen are very airy and light. That’s great – but for this project it’s not exactly the vibe I’m after. So it’ll be a bit of a different kind of challenge, I think. Chunkier.

O’Reilly Network: Using CSS as a Diagnostic Tool

October 4, 2000 by Michael Boyle

O’Reilly Network: Using CSS as a Diagnostic Tool

Do you think

October 3, 2000 by Michael Boyle

you will ever be able to do super- or subscript in html without totally screwing up the leading of a line of text in a graf? We publish medical materials, in which there a lot of super- and subscript elements in a line. And unless we ^totally fudge it there’s no way to do this well in html. With or _without CSS. I held out hope that the line-height attribute would be smart enough to allow it to work. But of course it isn’t.