Sneak peek #5

So what the FRIG is the hold up? I am a cow to the paying gigs, that's what! It's sad to say but I rarely get time to continue with this side project. It's good to be busy I guess. It means I am doing my job right.

So this sneak peek is a dead giveaway to what the project actually is (not that there was much wonder anyhow). I have six more pages to get through, more or less, and I am done! Let's cross our fingers for a summer roll out?

Center... float... IE... they don't mix!

I am about to drop a metric butt-load of geekiness on you right now. I have had a LONG standing issue with certain types of navigation menus that float list items (still block elements) in order to apply graphics and dimension to anchors that are made block level (which is inline by default)... the problem lies in positioning the list itself. Because the list items have been floated the entire list itself wants to float that way and no amount of dickering with the code can convince it otherwise.

What I would really like to do is center that list and for years this has baffled me. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of styles of navigation that can be centered, but this very specific one, one which allows for all sorts of graphical hover states, active states, etc... I have spent hours trying to solve this puzzle.

Out of nothing more than absolute desperation I thought to try applying inline-block to the <ul>. inline-block, however is so poorly supported that it has made it a nearly useless function of CSS 2.1, so applying it here would have done little more than satisfy my curiosity. And what would you know... it worked... In Safari!

Well I am that much closer but there are two more issues now; Firefox has nothing more than wet dreams about supporting inline-block and IE only supports inline-block on inline elements (which a list is not). The fix for Firefox is not all that tough since they have a proprietary display state, display: -moz-inline-box; that works... sometimes. IE, on the other hand, had me stumped. That's when I found this website who credits the genius of this guy for coming up with a brilliant solution.

I won't get into the full course meal here (you can read that for yourself) but what it came down to for me was this;

• overcome IE's has-layout bug which can be done with either height: 1%; or the proprietary zoom: 1; (I had to use the latter since the former defeated the layout I needed in this instance)
• Next I needed to tell IE that the block element that I turned into inline-block was actually inline... confusing? Anyhow, not wanting anyone else to see this I have to precede it with a star, like this *display:inline;
• so the end result was this:
  

  ul#myList {
   display: -moz-inline-box; /* for Mozilla*/
   display: inline-block; /* for real browsers */
   zoom:1; /* fix for IE has-layout bug */
   *display:inline; /* IE thinks a block is inline */
  }

So what does this mean for me? Well I have a few themes out there that will get an update soon to take advantage of my new centering ability and a few that I have been holding off making because of the former limitation. And one theme that is about to be released... :)

Here lies the empty shell of a blog post that once was

This was the place where I happily showed you a website for a big company that I was contracted to write code for on behalf of another company. One company (which one, I don't know) failed to notify me of any NDA's or otherwise useful contract agreements that may have made light of the fact that I may not promote myself as a "provider" of the bigger of the two companies (for which I feel I did not do).

There are two things at play here:

1. Uh... yes I can. In Canada we live through intolerable copyright laws that do nothing to protect the original author or creator of creative works and instead, protect he/she who commissions that work. However, there is a nifty little piece of the copyright law that covers the moral rights to said works that, under most normal circumstances, entitles the author or creator of said work to be associated with their work if they so choose:

   from Kerr and Nadeau; Barristors and Solicitors, Patent and Trademark agents:
   
   "Moral rights are closely related to copyright, and are also protected under Canadian law. These provide the author of a work with the right to the integrity of the work, and the right, where reasonable in the circumstances, to be associated with the work as its author by name or pseudonym, as well as the right to remain anonymous. Moral rights may be waived by the author, but such waiver must be express. It is important to remember that an assignment of copyright does not, in and of itself, waive moral rights."

2. And that brings me to my second point. Never take on work without a written contract. I took down this blog post for the good of the business relationship, but I didn't have to. I didn't have a contract, nor was I informed of inclusion in a contract between company A and company B, that waived any such rights so my own moral rights are still intact.

What is the lesson? Never chew gum while eating rice; it does nothing for the flavour.

Sneak peek #4 and more

So the bulk of all of the boring work is done on this project. Now I am getting into the super sexy stuff, the money making stuff... I must say that even the boring stuff looks goooood though.

And also...

So I have another project due out this Tuesday. I can't give any details but it's for a heavy hitting client of PUMP Communications. It should have been a fairly simple one but there were a few hang-ups in the beginning (design by committee sort of hang-ups) and in the end I don't think anyone was taking me seriously when I said the French translation might take up to a week or more (which it did).

Anyhow, with a few days to spare I managed to get the project up and fine tuned ready for release this coming Tuesday. Look for more on it then.

But wait...

Some time ago I worked for a lab in the automative industry and to shorten the story some, they recently needed a website, a place to download some of their docs. So in record time (less than a day) I pumped out this site. I mean it's not ground breaking but it's better than a kick in the ass for a day's worth of coding.

Sneak peek #3

I just wrote a new php function today that looks at the directory of the current page, extracts each folder name and then parse that information into a functioning breadcrumb trail. It's not as truncated as I would like it to be, but I just can't wrap my head around the problem enough to make the script smaller than it is.

So far everything but the header images on this new project is served up dynamically depending on the page you are on. But the really sexy part of this whole project is the skin! This thing is put together like... WOW! I can't wait to show you more.

Sneak peek #2

Oh it's coming along so nice. Did I say Easter? Well, yeah, I guess that's probably a realistic goal, but I just feel at times that it could be so much sooner. If it weren't for all these paying gigs getting in the way... hehe.

So I'm stoked about ExpanDrive, have you heard of it?Man, this little app is a gem! I am going to get more in depth on NutMac but I can tell you this much; developing php and mysql on a local machine is all fine and good, but there comes a time when you just have to move it live. ExpanDrive is making continued live development a dream, like it's still local, but with the power of the web server behind it.

Did I say Easter?

Sneak peek #1

I have an ever so slight break in my schedule where I find I have an hour or two of free time on hand and as the saying goes, idle hands make great websites... er... or something like that.

Anyhow, I have got something completely awesome in the works, a little some-some for me, a little self love. So I thought I would start a little easter egg hunt (since that's probably around the time I'll finish, LOL), and give you a little piece of the puzzle every week or so, depending on what I get done in that time.

So here is the first little nugget for you. It's not much yet, but let me tell it's part of a bigger, cooler whole.