August 2007 - Posts

• How to Win an Argument

  Those of you that know me, at all, know I'm always right.  Thus, you know I like it when I win an argument, which by your first admition, is every time I get into one. A fellow co-worker of mine for a year now, who by sending me the following admits to my prior two statements, sent me a comic today that perfectly defines my abilities to argue as well as remember exactly how arguements went down (which, by my second statement we can know without doubt that they have historically been in my favor). Sick of reading about it, want a good laugh?  Check out this comic by Scott Meyer at Basic Instructions. Thanks Kar - I appreciate you admitting the truth ;-) Posted Aug 16 2007, 03:08 PM by Digital Serenity

• VP of Sierra Nevada missing

  As of right now my plan to keep this blog mostly technicaly still stands, however there will come times where I feel something is worth mentioning.  And this is one of them ... I've noticed many geeks such as myself also find themselves enjoying a quality beer (and no, I'm not referring to Corona w/lime, or without).  One of my favorite standards is Sierra Nevada - but that's not what this is about. This morning as I was going through some of my usual blog reads, I noticed a distressing title (similar to mine above) in my feed for BeerAdvocate.com (great site, check it out).  Looks like Steve Harrison, Vice President of Sierra Nevada and Employee #1, went missing August 6th and still has not been found; latest reports suggest it might have been suicide but no final decision has been made. While I don't have much reach yet with my blog, I felt like it was my duty to relay the news - whenever someone goes missing with no explination it's a sad day, but when it's someone related to something or someone I know, it's even sader. Check the Google News cluster here and the Beer Advocate thread here for more information.  Please put Steve and his family in your thoughts and prayers. Posted Aug 15 2007, 12:35 PM by Digital Serenity

• Fluid vs Set Content Pains

  Yes, the pun is intended ... If you ever do front-end design work you have likely started to dabble in Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) - and if you haven't, you better start! One limitation I've noticed over the years is how to have a set-width left panel (i.e., menu panel) and a fluid width right panel (i.e., content).  It's virtually impossible to do this without some form of JavaScript (in fact this is how I've always done it in the past).  Problem is once you get into CSS many people become purists very quick and using JS for this kind of a problem becomes something that makes even the newest CSS developer grumble. I recently found a solution thanks to my subscription to A List Apart (if you are a front-end n00b or experienced CSS dev, I highly suggest you put their feed in your news reader).  Thanks to Rob Swan, who took the time to realize that DIVs are more flexible than we originally thought, we now have a fully CSS solution that works cross-browser (with a minor IE 5/6 only hack that still remains CSS pure). The solution?  Turns out you can set the TOP/BOTTOM LEFT/RIGHT all at once.  I, like Rob, had always assumed if you set a TOP the browser would ignore the BOTTOM and likewise on the LEFT/RIGHT.  Turns out everything but IE 5 & 6 ignore that.  However, his IE only solution is almost as simple as the cross-browser solution. Check out Rob's article Conflicting Absolute Positions where he gives a very detailed explination on how to solve the issue including code samples.  Thanks Rob! So - how have you been fighting the battle between left and right content panes? Posted Aug 07 2007, 12:37 PM by Digital Serenity Filed under: Code, CSS

• CS07 Theme: Photos Too

  Today I submitted this theme to the Community Server 2007 Theme Extravaganza - well, I submitted my updates to this, the original "Photos" theme. If you know CS Theme stuff at all you might recognize this theme as being very similar to the built in "Photos" blog-only theme; that's because it is! I made some very subtle updates to it, including softening the orange part of the color scheme, getting a more appropriate header pic for my personality (I'm a front end specialist and maybe even a designer, but not an interior designer!) and also, and more importantly, separated out each of the posts so you can more easily tell where one post ends and another begins. Like I said, subtle, but subtlty is where its at my friends. That said, I don't expect to win any grand prizes, in fact I don't even expect to qualify, I didn't update the theme enough for it to really count, IMO. But, the reason for telling you about this is so you can, if you are interested in doing so, grab my theme! Located here is the .ZIP file for the files you'll need to take my updates and install them on your CS 2007, including the image, a replacement style.css file and the import XML required ... and instructions (they're simple, really). If you like the theme and want to use it, but want to make some futher updates to it please let me know. Not for any copywriting or pride reasons, purely because I'm curious ... How would you improve this theme? Posted Aug 01 2007, 12:21 PM by Digital Serenity