Archives for November 2010

There have been quite a few instances in the past months where I’ve had to explain the difference between a category and a tag to several people. I thought I’d share my definition and explanation of categories and tags to see if anyone else has a better definition.

Here are my definitions:
1) Tags are metadata (keywords?) for content. They describe the content itself and useful when searching a site.

2) Categories are used for navigation and represent different sections of a site where similar content is grouped. In most cases, categories are the sites navigation. Categories also had a hierarchy to a site. Even the word category can be used to describe categories. They categorize.

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via the rut.

I haven’t done a list in awhile but I’m trying to pick it up again.

7 Essential Guidelines For Functional Design

Linkification

Control-Tab: A New Feature for Firefox

Coping With Internet Explorer’s Mishandling of Buttons

Wanted: IE8 Beta Testers

Mining the SitePoint CSS Reference

Content Migrations: Options, Strategies and Faux Pas

Closed question response categories

12 Best Practices for UX in an Agile Environment - Part 1

12 Best Practices for UX in an Agile Environment - Part 2

Essential WordPress plugins

Using Social Media (Ning) to Manage a Social Project - KETC and the Mortgage Crisis

Passionates

PixelPerfect

A Brave New alt in {HTML5}

<select> Something New, Part 1

Build a Simple RSS reader for the iPhone

ARIA in Gmail #1: Alerts

via WSG

I was just looking at the CSS 2.1 spec and I remembered something about floated elements. When you float an element, the element is made a block element.

This property specifies whether a box should float to the left, right, or not at all. It may be set for any element, but only applies to elements that generate boxes that are not absolutely positioned. The values of this property have the following meanings:

left
The element generates a block box that is floated to the left. Content flows on the right side of the box, starting at the top (subject to the ‘clear’ property).

right
Similar to ‘left’, except the box is floated to the right, and content flows on the left side of the box, starting at the top.

What this means is if you have an inline element like a link and you float it, you can give the element properites the same as you would a block element. You won’t have to explicity declare a display of block to give an element width, height, margins, etc.

Example: This block of code

a.btn {
display:block;
float:left;
width:100px;
height:50px;
margin:-top:10px;
}

Achieves the same effect same as this block:

a.btn {
float:left;
width:100px;
height:50px;
margin-top:10px;
}

The float rule is why using display:inline fixes the double float margin bug in IE6. Even though in the css you put display:inline to remove the double margin, IE6 still makes the element a block element since it is floated.

This is a good step towards making your CSS as optimized as possible. It might seem really small not having to use one line, but think of how many times you make a link a block element so you that you can use a background image instead of text.

Today I read an article that talks about how a certain unnamed cellular provider has given unlimited access to their network to the FBI.

Pasdar discovered evidence of the backdoor when he was part of a rapid deployment team that was brought in to facilitate a large-scale network security hardware migration for the mobile carrier. During the migration, Pasdar was instructed not to migrate the traffic for one particular DS-3, which was referred to as the "Quantico Circuit" by consultants who worked closely with the carrier (the FBI Academy is based in Quantico, Virginia).

This is insane. I understand the need for the FBI to have access to the cellular network but there needs to be some kind of oversight. The Founding Fathers of the USA put checks and balances into the government for a reason; so one branch or division of the government could have so much power. Plus, a system is already in place for the FBI to listen on someone's phone calls. It's called a warrant, and it is there to protect citizens. If the FBI needs to monitor someone then they need to have a reason and some kind of evidence. They shouldn't be allowed to monitor anyone at will.

Now the FBI will say they need this type of access to help fight domestic terrorism or some other scary catch phrases. Anyone that believes that is lying to themselves. It's a false sense of security. Just because the FBI can listen to a farmer on his tractor in the middle of Kanas or a business man in Chicago does not make you safer. If you believe that it does please explain to me and provide evidence of how it does. I have yet to hear a government agency like the FBI or DHS explain how if they had more power my life would be safer. Do you realize you are more likely to die in an automobile accident or from a heart attach then from a terrorist attack?

Now you might be saying, "It's the FBI. I can trust them." Well if you trust the FBI not abuse it's power then you really need to pay more attention to the news. Perhaps you should start with this article where lawmakers found the FBI abusing their expanded powers granted to the FBI by The USA Patriot Act. Here's another great article about a couple of activists that were bombed by someone. The FBI later arrested the couple, branded them eco-terrorists, illegally searched their homes, and started a slanderous PR campaign against the couple. Then there's the instances of the FBI losing laptops with sensitive information on them. The FBI even has problems paying phone bills because it's employees are embezzling money.

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If you have upgraded to Firefox 2.0.0.12 you might have noticed that the Firebug extension no longer will inspect anchor tags or the elements inside anchor tags. This is a very annoying issue and not being able to inspect a link that is misbehaving can slow down development. Luckily this issue can be easily fixed. You have two options:

1. Downgrade back to Firefox 2.0.0.11. To do that replace the “os” value with either win for Windows or osx for Mac OS.
   Mac OS X
   Windows
2. Install Firebug 1.1 Beta

I have tried Firebug 1.1 and it definitely fixes the not inspecting link elements issue.

There's also a couple of new features I like. For example:

eval() debugging,
Javascript code sent to eval() shows up in Script as a new source file. Code can be debugged as other source.

browser-generated event handler debugging,
Firefox generates event handler code that is normally invisible to programmers. 1.1 shows these handlers in the Script panel and they can be breakpointed etc.
Option: "Decompile Script for Source": disable to event handler debugging to avoid FF2 crash
** Internal: as eval() debugging.

The ability to use external editors now as well looks interesting. See the release notes for the complete list of changes and fixes.

Firebug is one of the best extensions for Firefox and no one that works on web sites should be without it.

Here at work I'm always starting discussions on code standards and theories. I've decided I should also be posting it here.

The old method of placing anchors on the page, <a name="anchorThis"></a>, should be thrown out the window and forgotten about. Modern day browers can use the id attribute of an element as a reference to jump too.

The beauty of the new method is that any element on a page with an ID attribute can be an anchor point on a page. Here's a really simple example:

<a href="#anchorPoint" 
title="Jump to the anchor">Jump Down</a>

a bunch of content and code before your anchor point

<div id="anchorPoint">Hey, 
that was a nice jump! Great job!</div>

When you click on the link in the above example code, you'll jump to the div element on the page. The #anchorPoint will also be appended to the URL in the browser's location bar. The div used above is just an example and any element on a page could be considered a valid anchor point as long as it has an ID attribute such as a paragraph, list item, or even an image.

If you have a link on a page that you want to anchor to a specific element on a completely different page, simply use the same code as the example above but add the URL to the new page before the hash mark.

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The other night Nicole and I got into a small accident. We were driving to her Dad’s house, and we hit a raccoon. By the time I saw it, there was no way for me to stop or swerve out of the way. As soon as I saw the raccoon, it was literally right in front of us. It was a huge raccoon. It went under the left side and I could feel the left side car come off the ground. The sound for me was the worst. I still feel bad about the whole thing. The insurance guy said if it wasn’t me then it would have been a wolf or a coyote. That kind of thinking doesn’t really mean anything to me because at least the raccoon being killed by a coyote is a part of nature. Me running over the raccoon with my car has nothing to do with nature.

I took my car to the same dealership where I purchased the car. They fixed it really fast and did a great job. The whole process was painless from submitting the claim to the insurance company to the dealership only taking three days to fix it, thanks AAA. The damage was actually extensive. The cost of the repairs totaled about $1,952 and included a new bumper. I had a big scratch on the other side of the bumper so that got fixed too. Thank goodness I have just a $100 deductible. I wish the dealer would have removed the hair that is lodged into the frame underneath my car though.

See the pictures below to see how much damage a raccoon can do to a low profile car. If a raccoon could do almost $2,000 worth of damage to my car, I can’t imagine how bad it would be if I hit something bigger like another car. In one of the pictures you can even see fur embedded into the paint on the bumper.

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