Latest things from Aaron Swartz
A few more cool things from Aaron Swartz… (the teenage wiz kid who co-wrote RSS 1.0) … Now there is web.py and a cool new wiki-blog-diff-thing called InfoGami
Archive for March, 2006
CSS - Three Column Layout Agony
It’s Monday morning. I took a few aspirin for my back pain, but the CSS three column layout thing is still bugging me. So I did a little more reading over at saila.com, on the topic of CSS and HTML standards (eg. Tables vs. CSS) in web designs that actually work in real-world browsers, and pass (x)HTML validation and CSS validation tests. Craig Saila provides some HTML layout templates, CSS examples, and analysis of how they perform with various browsers. Craig also has nice annotated version of his v2 layout with discussion of browser quirks and hacks.
So, after doing a little more reading, my confidence level is up that my design goals will be achievable. And I hope to begin implementing my vvn.net homepage makeover using the new PHP templates I am creating.
Tags: CSS, HTML, layout, php, templates, validation, Web Standards, XHTML
CSS - Three Column Layouts
Still looking for the perfect 3 column layout done correctly with web standards and CSS? Bob Easton has compiled a list of CSS based 3 column layouts, and provides some analysis. The CSS Discussion Group and Wiki (hosted by Incutio) has tons of great CSS information if you are getting serious about CSS (like I am trying to do.)
Boy am I on a goose chase today… and I hope I catch the one that lays the golden eggs! This research about CSS lead me over to Big John Gallant and Alex Robinson and the Position Is Everything website. Big John has a link over to a tool that generates a layout based on what you want and how you specify it. Alex and John talk about a lot of CSS bugs, and quirks in various browsers, as well as pitfalls to avoid as you continue in Search of the One True Layout.
Mark Newhouse has a nice three column layout (CSS and html design pattern) that also iplements a header and footer. (Wow - looks like he wrote this article back in 2002.) I have been doing layouts like this for years with tables, inside of tables, inside of tables… (Sounds like I am confessing my sins again — for not following web standards.) With the advent of Firefox 1.5, Opera 9, MS-IE 7, and NN7 - these things are changing.
Mark has not updated his Real World Style blog since May 5, 2005 — but as of this writing, most of the material is way ahead of where most people are at anyway.
Hey, a bunch of you lurkers are laughing at me, but when are you going to update your old web pages that have all that crufty old html junk, styles, and design patterns from 1995?
Tags: 3 column layout, CSS, design, HTML, style, templates, XHTML
rawdog - RSS aggregator - python source
rawdog is an RSS feed aggregator… I looked at a few PHP based RSS libraries this morning and loaded a few of them up to try them out. Then found this Python based tool set which looks a little more powerful.
The project write-up says: rawdog is an RSS Aggregator Without Delusions Of Grandeur. Written in Python, it uses Mark Pilgrim’s feed parser to read RSS 0.9, 1.0, 2.0, CDF and Atom feeds. It runs from cron, collects articles from a number of feeds, and generates a static HTML page listing the newest articles in date order. It supports per-feed customisable update times, and uses ETags, Last-Modified, and gzip compression to minimise network bandwidth usage.
Tags: aggregator, feed, parser, Python, RSS
Re-tooling my homepage with cool CSS hacks
This morning, I was looking at some cool multi-column CSS hacks over on glish.com. One of the articles talked about a makeover the author did for Noah Grey. I’ve been reading about the concept of doing a CSS and web-standards makeover since reading how Wired magazine did their makover about 4 years ago… So this is not a new concept for me. I really like the concept of following web standards. Normally I follow web standards for simple layouts… but then I fall back to using tables if some shlocky old browser will not behave… It’s just that everytime I try it, it works great for one or two browsers, and then some other browser really messes up the layout. (Feels like I am confessing my sins.) So over the past few years, I have studied the concepts of cascading style sheets ( CSS1 and CSS2 ) and web standards, and tried to find the perfect layout techniques to do 3-column layout — without tables inside of tables and all that old cruft.
I enjoyed the CSS articles from glish and I really like the new Noah Grey web-site because it is a really clean page layout and I think his music page is interesting (but I have never listened to any of the music, so can’t recommend it.) [Note: J.V. says be careful what you recommend.]
This also led to a couple nice articles and example layouts over at bluerobot.com, and the cool 3 column layout example.
So I’m getting ready to re-tool my vvn.net homepage with some cool new CSS tricks — but I also need to fix some broken RSS feeds and test with some more browsers. I’ll let you know when the major upgrade is complete.
Tags: 3 column layout, CSS, hacks, HTML, layout, Web Standards, XHTML
Pilgrims Progress Grow Group
I started a “Pilgrim’s Progress Grow Group” a couple weeks ago. We are reading and discussing the book Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. It is an email news group — that is kind of slow moving right now. That’s nice because you can go at your own pace. Check out the pil-pro-gro-group here.
You can read the book on-line from several sources. Go ahead and read a few pages — and ask the group any questions you might have.
The RSS 2.0 feed for Pilgrim’s Progress is here.
Tags: book, discussion group, spiritual life
Word Press Rolls On
Jeffrey Zeldman announced yesterday that he retooled his site (zeldman.com) with WordPress 2.0 Of course Matt Mullenweg was real excited about Zeldman switching.
Tamba2 has a nice WordPress help page.