After two nights of no sleep I think I finally got Anita's site hooked up and ready to go. We grabbed all the old content that had never been crawled by search engines and posted it as blog articles. This is my first site using nothing more that blogger and google components (widgets). Unfortunately I am not able to use the Blogger Page Layout feature because I host the site via ftp... Not ready to give my wife's site to blogspot yet.

I learned quite a bit about how blogger pulls in the widgets and how all the Blogger tags output to html pages. This is not as easy as it first appears. While you may be able to use one of the readymade templates with out too much issue - there is very little room to modify the information. Since this is Anita's site I decided to use Blogger as a Content Management system for her. So the limitations didn't seem as though the would effect the site too much.

I chose Blogger over WordPress because of the ease of use with Google widgets and since Blogger is owned by Google it stands to reason that they would play nicely with one another. They do work together pretty darn good - definitely room for improvement but solid integration all around. I found myself involved with all sorts of possibilities (calendars, custom search, youtube and more). I will probably work in additional widgets and components as time goes on.

There were a few Blogger Hacks needed along the way and a lot of trial and error. I did not sleep or eat Friday night to Saturday afternoon... In the zone you know.... After a power nap (4 hrs) it was back to work and making improvements as I went along. I did go to bed Sunday morning at 4:30am. Spent some time with the family Sunday morning and back to it Sunday afternoon. The layout was done the template was working but post positioning and linking wasn't working real well. Not to mention the gallery and contact form being out side the blogger format.

In order to get the Flash component of the Gallery to display always at the top I had to be very creative with the code. Not sure I would call it a hack but it works and validates. Basically I wanted to include a swf file only on the photogallery page (which I created with the Label/Tagging system in Blogger). I tried an iframe which was a suggestion from a blogger forum... Not a fan of iframes... just felt wrong and not as clean as it should be. Next was a virtual include which would have worked except I didn't want the blog to be shtml or php for search engine purposes. Almost gave up and just made the entire thing php. Then at about 10pm Monday night while watching Indianapolis destroy Jacksonville it hit me. Javascript could probably do what I wanted with out too much overhead. After a couple of hours of research and 3 samples of javascript that did parts of what I wanted to achieve... I wrote my very own javascript solution:


Please note I am not a programmer and this took me a lot longer than it probably should have but I haven't really found a downside to this solution as of yet. The script is small - at most 3k... I know that has to load on every page but 3k is not enough for me to worry over. I know some hard core coders are shaking there heads right about now. Give me a better solution with out using php or virtual includes and I will take it under consideration. Maybe a nudge to Blogger to implement some features for those of us who choose not to host our sites on the blogger servers. I am too new at this to start making demands to Blogger.... give me a week to kick the tires.... Did I mention I am also a usability tester :)

Some of you may have noticed that my site recently got overhauled... I decided to build a better mousetrap of sorts and clean up my css and xhtml to show off my abilities a bit and drive traffic to associate sites (Inclind Inc., June Jam, DE Jazz & Blues etc.). I wasn't sure if it would help but knew it couldn't hurt. Since I have redesigned this site it has been featured on several sites (screenalicious, designsnack, w3csites.com , proWebArt, MostInspired ... )and seems to be spreading. While not quite the digg effect it is still driving a lot of traffic to my site and therefore increasing the exposure of my associates and other sites I have done.

I am in the process of redoing my wife's site now so stay tuned to www.anitasgarden.com. We are deciding now what will be on the site but the design is already established and approaching roll out status. It too will be laid out to the current industry standards including css 3 and xhtml. So all you IE6 users be forewarned - upgrade, switch to Firefox or suffer.

Since I am on the subject of Microsoft products - I thought I would take a look at the microsoft.com site and see how it matches up with the current industry CSS and XHTML standards. I plugged their url into the w3c validator and guess what happened.... it failed!




You know mac folks get a bad wrap - PC users see us a zealots and think that we think we are a better class of computer users.... they simply have now idea of what it is like to have an OS and applications dedicated to exceeding industry standards. We as users are no better than our fellow man - we are just betted equipped.

Labels: CSS standards, DesignSnack, Screenalicious, Valid XHTML

Anyone who knows me - well knows we love the Pennsylvania Renaissance Fair, Wine, Music and parties! This past weekend we put them all together and had a blast. The entire family traveled the 4 hour hike to sample the wine and hear Albannach play. Yup, 4 hours.... We were less than a mile away from the entrance and traffic stopped for 45 minutes. We though there may have been an accident and traffic was being diverted. No such luck. This was the largest crowd I have ever witnessed at the Renaissance Faire. It too us 45 minutes to basically get into the parking area. Crazy.

When we entered the Faire we could hear the music of Albannach -

"Albannach - (Jamesie Johnston, Jacquie Holland, Donnie MacNeill, Kyle Gray, Aya Thorne, Davey “Ramone” Morrison) Born and bred in Scotland, Albannach is far, far from just another Scottish Pipes & Drum band. Their style of music is exciting, energetic and driving and promises to leave you begging for more!"

It is nearly impossible to sit still while this band plays live. You may say but its bagpipes and drums... All I can say is that if you enjoy music and have any primal blood in you - you will be moved. This band is high energy on stage - jumping around with a huge base drum strapped to you is very impressive. They are all extremely talented and worth a listen but if you can I would highly recommend seeing them preform live.

Wine was a plenty but long lines and crowds of people kept us sober most of the day. We did enjoy a glass while walking the grounds. Many grape/wine oriented events this year but we found ourselves just enjoying the atmosphere for the most part. It was a beautiful day to be outside and with friends and family.

We stopped several time to see our good friend Albert Alfaro - Master Puppet Maker from www.imaginariumgalleries.com but each time the shop was full to the hilt. We will catch up with him next time I am sure. This was our first time coming home without a new puppet.... we have over 30 so I guess we have reached a limit of sorts. My wife was looking at a few but we left empty handed. We will be back Albert no worries:)

While there I approached the resident walking stick authority and he seemed genuinely impressed with my attempt at a walking stick. He asked me how much I would sell it for and of course I said I would not sell it. The he asked how much I thought it was worth, how many hours I had tied up in the carving, etc. He then suggested that the true value of my time and effort was in the neighborhood of $400. I never stopped to think of the value while I was carving my wine harvest walking stick. I just enjoyed the time with my daughter and solitude. Being able to focus on one thing without any outside expectations. I will probably be doing another sometime soon.

We stayed for the Finale in Song for the first time and might I say.... WOW! We will stay for this from now on. All the characters from the day come together for a show stopping extravaganza. Worth the price of admission by itself.

The final 3 weekends will be "Halloween Daze & Spooky Knights". May I recommend packing up the family and heading to the Shire?

Labels: day trip, family, renaissance fair, vacation, Wine

As a web designer I constantly am running in to compliance issues with Internet Explorer 6. It has been over a year since IE 7 was released and still there is a large percentage of people using IE6. Why? Is it the sheer lack of trust of yet another piece of MS Software... or that there are so many illegal copies of windows running that the new Windows authentication system scares people away. Either way people need to speed up the death of IE6 so designers and developers can move on with cutting edge design and code.

Any where you look on the web you will find site with 2 sets of code: One for IE6 (containing hacks and fixes) and one for the real browsers. Implementing a dynamic site using css2.1+ with png's and positioning that actually work doesn't sound difficult. But by the time you fix the 3px jog, use the htc file to make IE6 display png files correctly, not to mention fixing the position and ability to have mouse overs on div and li tags, you just wasted half a day!

If you are looking to get your site redesigned or build a new site for that matter. The first step in keeping your cost down would be to assist in the demise of Internet Explorer 6 by upgrading you browser. To the designers and developers it really doesn't matter what you upgrade to FireFox, IE7, Opera, or even Safari (relative new comer but built on current standards). Once IE6 falls below 5% there will be no need to continue the madness it is currently above 30%. Take the time to improve your browsing experience and the web designers and developers will make it worth you while.W3 keeps track of browser statistics... lets watch the slow roll together :)

The standards are changing and IE6 is failing more and more. We would love to move forward with CSS3 and have cleaner code (takes less time to load for the end user) so more people can browse quickly and easily.

I am a Mac guy so I have been without Internet Explore for some time now. There really are better solutions. Go get you browsers NOW save money in the future!

Labels: browser, CSS standards, CSS3, FireFox, IE6, Internet Explorer, web design, web developmet