Entries Tagged 'CSS' ↓

I’m now diving into XCode 3, thanks in no small part to my new black MacBook! One thing I had been looking forward to is the syntax highlighting that shows you the scope of the function or method or code block. Beautiful stuff. I had envisioned it myself several years ago, when I first learned CSS. (I’m sure I’m not the first and obviously not the only…)

Now that XCode 3 finally has code folding, though not as slick as TextMate’s code folding, it will flash the scope depth highlighting colors. But it goes away quickly. Here is how to turn it on to stay (it isn’t obvious or self-apparent).

View>Code Folding>Focus Follows Selection

Or a picture …

CSS3 is on the way and support is coming at a more rapid pace these days. Safar/WebKit/Konqueror/KHTML and Mozilla/Firefox are pushing the envelope big time.

IE7 probably doesn’t support it. Why would you expect that? And I can’t and don’t want to test IE anything anymore.

So without more ado, here’s the beef: Continue reading →

The excellent WestCiv company, out of Australia, is ahead of the game as usual. They have an up-to-date list of CSS3 support. Glaringly lacking is a listing for Konqueror/KHTML, though arguably, it should have at least as much support as Safari 3 since both share the same WebKit code base.

Clearly, the WebKit group is working hard to implement CSS3 as we speak. This is no small undertaking and it explains why some sites are able to display things that I don’t expect to see, such as the appearance property for form buttons and menu-lists.

Way to go WestCiv! Keep up the good work.

This article by Bruce Eckel, acclaimed author of Thinking in C++ and Thinking in Java, shows why programmers make bad designers. Continue reading →

So you’re learning or using Ruby on Rails, or even just using Ruby with a database. The ActiveRecord component of Rails provides one way to work with databases through Ruby. ActiveRecord applies a concept called ORM (Object Relational Mapping) to quite literally map object oriented programming constructs to relational database constructs.

What’s that mean? It means it you can write Ruby in a fairly Ruby way (to be fair to purists, a Rails way) when working with databases. Most folks will be using an SQL-based relational database, such as MySQL, PostreSQL or SQLite3. Others are possible, but MySQL is certainly the most common and probably best supported.

Specifically, Rails uses an approach called database migrations to substitute for writing SQL directly. Migrations make things pretty easy, indeed. You can learn plenty about using migrations with the main book for Rails, Agile Web Development With Rails. However, I encourage everyone to also take a look to the book, Ruby for Rails.

The general approach of Ruby for Rails is to get you to know how the magic works, and help you develop a better understanding of the underlying technology so you can do more with it. This is really a key thing. You’re not going to be good at Rails without learning Ruby itself, much less CSS, XHTML, and perhaps Javascript, and definitely a little SQL.

What?! Yeah. That’s right, you do need to know about the details. Perhaps not intimately, but well enough to understand what it is you’re really doing. SQL is a big subject. Lucky for you, database-driven web sites tend to do a lot of the same kinds of things in most situations. Therefore, you don’t need to be a master of SQL but you need to experience it and understand how it works. Particularly MySQL’s version (and if you’re a programmer, consider SQLite as well)

SQL isn’t that hard, but it is fairly different from most other programming languages. (yes, I think it IS a programming language.) But I don’t just want you to know SQL a little, I want you to know a little database design too. This is what is important so you will have some concept of what it is migrations is doing for you. When you have this in your head, you will then also know what migrations may not be able to do for you.

Google Analytics was previously semi-useful as a web site traffic analysis tool. The previous incarnation was often confusing and had many non-intuitive mystery features coupled with terrible organization and absurdly missing features (delete an “account”? how?).

From a user standpoint it’s just gotten worse with the added AJAX. More pretty line graphs and distracting tool-tip style mouseOver events, less explanation of what the hell I’m seeing! To make matters worse, the stuff has been re-organized, or I should say, further disorganized in a truly Microsoft manner.

I guess Google really is actually in competition with Microsoft. Google makes a great search engine, but they make lousy interfaces. They made themselves famous with the orginal Google search engine page’s simplicity. But everything else they produce just seems to out-do Yahoo! and go head-to-head with Microsoft for making hard to use web sites. Only Adobe makes more difficult to use web sites, but they make them very pretty.

Apple. Oh, Apple… where for art thou?

When will AJAX just die? Only a few years ago JavaScript had gone away quietly to the graveyard of annoying technologies. Flash is/was on its way there. Now there is a renewed irrational exuberrance for all things overly animated.

Oh, and Google, my dear, the Beta forever thing is getting old. Keep it up and desperate SONY might sue for trademark infringement just to make some cash.

Here are a couple of interesting wordpress themes that resemble
unix/linux command line
and
Comodore 64
of course these are done in PHP but I’d like to see these done in Ruby or Rails and perhaps one that looks like irb. Oh wait, _why has already half done that…

eRuby means embedded ruby; embedded in xhtml, that is. The result is often a file with the .rhtml extension, Continue reading →

Data formats are important. Choosing how to structure data is the first thing one might do with it. Deciding how to present information is equally important. Web sites need to stop using PDF and Word documents as the ONLY option for available information. It’s Continue reading →

OK. You want to make web sites. If you’re worth your salt, you know typography on the web is impossible to control but possible to influence. Sizes are pretty much by suggestion only. As are all typographic factors. But the biggest question of all is Continue reading →