Archive for April, 2008

As of recently, I’ve had a particular layout for my gallery section that just wasn’t working for me. Well, it was probably OK, and I generally approved of it–since I designed it at some point–but I always thought it felt awkward.

I’ve had the thought running through my head for a few weeks now that it would probably be a good idea to adjust the layout; perhaps to spice it up, or make it a little more pleasing to my eye. Maybe this is perfectionism kicking in, but I really enjoy making these adjustments and experimenting in how I go about completing them.

What I initially decided to do was adjust the teaser image size by widening all of them to fill the entire 9 column width–which is the size of my primary content section (I have designed this site based on a 24 column, 936px wide grid). Because of that adjustment, I have had to change the way I display each project’s summary information. There are still many adjustments to be made, but so far so good.

What I’m most proud of in all of this change, however, has nothing to do with what is ultimately displayed. No, what is most impressive lies underneath it all. That’s right, I’ve gone and done something completely unnecessary–albeit, very cool–in the gallery display options I currently possess.

I initially didn’t want to commit to the larger size, so I created a bunch of backups of my CSS files and various source code files just in case I wanted to switch back, but why the hell was I doing that when I could write a bunch of functions that would do it for me?

On my workpage, in order to display the gallery, I include a file that possesses all of the appropriate php; in this way, if I need to make an adjustment, it’s pretty easy to go through and change whatever code I need. But there was one part in particular that became a bit of a hassle to adjust. Whenever I needed make a quick layout adjustment, I had to wade through three different files to do it–chalk it up to my inexperience I guess.

To alleviate the mess, I took that section and turned it into a function that would produce that section for me; now I could separate it from that file and consolidate everything, putting it all into one central location for quick adjustment action.

In the file that contains my primary functions and controls page numbers and gallery categories, I included the newly created function (small layout size) and created another (large layout size) that I would use based on a couple of different settings variables. I also set it up so my CSS file is created on the fly–that is the one that would determine which CSS files to @import.

Because of this simple little setup, I’m able to switch between those two different layouts in about five seconds, plus any adjustments in the future will be a matter of adjusting a couple of functions.

That’s just easy.

Update: 4/28/2008 – I’ve managed to fix a few of the IE6 problems I’ve described by simply adjusting the gallery layout; this isn’t the ideal solution for me, but whatever I can do to ensure it works in that lovely browser, I’ll go ahead and do it for now.

I’ve done quite a bit of work in the past two weeks on my site; in that entire time it has never occurred to me that I needed to test in Internet Explorer 6 or 7. Why?
Because the site has rendered (somewhat) perfectly in those browsers in the past.

Not this time. I had been stuck for several hours trying to solve a couple of different rendering issues, with one still in queue. The first issue was similar to the notorious IE6 peek-a-boo bug, in which floated content appears and disappears randomly when a link is hovered over. In my case, a background image appeared to be duplicating itself rather oddly when links were hovered.

The second, very fun and exciting issue, was a pretty simple fix. In all versions of IE, my descenders were disappearing on the larger font-size bits of text. Those were mostly block level elements, so I just had to set proper margins for IE to display the entire descender. That didn’t hurt my layout, and probably ended up improving the typography.

The last two issues I’m dealing with are quite bothersome. One is a strange behavior in IE6, dealing with the rendering of a couple of floating divs, and the other is IE’s need to render extra margin space after a cleared element.

Argg.

Slow adoption rates? Bah. Why am I bothering to fix this thing for IE6? Because it’s highly possible that some users will take a look at my site using that browser.

When I set out to work on the current version of my website and portfolio, I initially displayed my work in much the same way as I displayed it in the last version. All of my pieces were in smaller thumbnail versions and each one (about 30 at the time) were displayed on one page; I had pagination ready to rock and roll, but with the format the thumbnails were in and the lack of real information being displayed about every piece, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to use it.

Moving forward on this design was pretty straightforward, but I stuck with the old way initially because I had built a pretty intricate system to handle my portfolio. Not that it was difficult to adjust, just that it would take me a little time to swap things out.

When it came down to it, though, my final design on the portfolio on this version required something a little more sophisticated than what I had set up. I needed to be able to adjust how everything functioned, and quickly. I also wanted it to be quickly and easily customizable.

A quick run down of what I wanted to do:

1. I wanted to be able to use the system I had already built to add, edit, and delete portfolio pieces quickly and easily.
2. I wanted to use the information in the database that I had never displayed before but had built into the system.
3. I wanted to be able to display all of the pieces by their project type.
4. Finally, I wanted to utilize pagination for the overall portfolio, and for each category of project.

All of this could be accomplished, but it was going to require a whole lot more than I was truly prepared for, because I’m not much of a programmer. I knew some things, in php, and I knew how to accomplish those things with some very basic straightforward programming. This time, though, I needed to make some custom functions. This was going to be the only way to make this work. It might not be necessary, or accurate, but I was going to try my hand at OOP (something that isn’t really needed for this application, but something I did anyway).
Prepare, programmers, to be unimpressed.

Read the rest of this entry »

What exactly is going on with these Democratic primaries? While I have absolutely very little experience or knowledge of their operation due to my relative lack of age, I have to wonder whether or not the candidates have always been this venomous, vile, and voracious in attacking each other–and I’m not referring to an attack on an opposing party’s candidate.

At the beginning of this process I found myself in support of Barack Obama and his run at the democratic nomination (and perhaps as President), but these constant mainstream news and media organization provoked attacks between him and Hillary Clinton are getting out of control; by all appearances, Hillary will not get the nomination, but she remains in the race and threatens to divide the party to the point of detrimentally affecting the Democratic party in the fall.

In addition to that wonderful mess, this primary has created a sense of disillusionment for many (well, at least for me) in the political process; I do not wish to see a SuperDelegate™ selected nominee for any office. This is especially true in a process that claims to be seeking the will of the people; Super delegates be damned!

I’ve been turned off by the Barack Obamas of this world. What I have truly enjoyed about the man has been his ability to unite a large swath of the populace; it has not mattered what demographic category an individual has been from, they loved him. What I have been turned off by has been his lack of knowledge. A lack of knowledge in basic economics; a lack of regard for the economic standing of millions of Americans; and a lack of concern for the truly impoverished: the middle class.

Neither candidate has a real grasp on what is important to scores of Americans: absolutely no new taxes (and in my case, the dissolution of the Federal income tax–lets bring the tax money back home to the states). Instead they tout “plans” to fund all sorts of socially responsible programs. Programs like universal health care. Funded. By. Increasing. Taxes. To ensure that those of use who make all of this crazy phat cash pay our share of the burden.

No. Sir.