Lately, I’ve decided to switch themes on a few of my blogs. So I started looking around for some themes that are nice and simple enough. I found about five (5) candidates and that were nice, simple and not too loud. To my surprise none of these themes worked in Internet Explorer 6.0. It seems that, lately, blog theme designers are saying a big old “screw you IE 6.0″ and I don’t blame them.
Now, I’m having mixed emotions about this. On one hand, I’m happy that people are finally putting the nail in IE 6.0’s coffin. However, I’m slightly pissed that I can’t use these themes. I, more than anyone, should know the reasons why we should abaondon IE 6.0 and move on to better, more productive web development and enjoyment. But, the purist in me still doesn’t want to leave the poor saps who are trapped behind the veil (whether is by software contraints or ignorance) of Internet Explorer 6.0 behind.
Browser statistics show that IE 6 still maintains between 26% and 37% of the web browser market. Right now, that’s just too many people to ignore.
Posted in General.
Tagged with ie, internet explorer.
By Kevin Lloyd
– July 26, 2008
So here’s another common Internet Explorer CSS hack that’s pretty popular and not too ugly.
Here’s The Problem
ie-css-min-height-hack
This is how normal people horizontally center block elements using CSS: You slap on a width (I mean, that should be obvious enough right?). Then you set the left and right margins to auto, and Voilà , centered!
[sourcecode language='css']
body #box {
margin: 0 auto;
width: 780px;
}
[/sourcecode]
Well except in Internet Explorer and some older browsers.
Fixing The Problem
This one is a bit nicer than the CSS min-height hack. You need to use the text-align property to center for the element above, because Internet Explorer sucks and doesn’t understand the auto margin. Now too fix this, you need to reset the text-align to left.
[sourcecode language='css']
body {
text-align: center;
}
body #box {
margin: 0 auto;
padding: 56px 0 20px;
width: 780px;
text-align: left;
}
[/sourcecode]
That’s it folks!
Posted in CSS.
Tagged with CSS, ie, internet explorer.
By Kevin Lloyd
– June 9, 2008
Now it’s not surprise to anyone out there that I hate Internet Explorer. No I mean I really hate it! One of the reasons that I hate it so much is that it’s buggy. Call it whatever you want, maybe it’s too forgiving on bad HTML or CSS, but whatever their intentions are (forgiving sloppy code or just too lazy to interpret code right) it causes tons of problems.
The Min-Height Problem
I know a lot of you have had this problem in the past. It’s gotten so bad for me that, at one point, I’ve just stopped using them. Bottom line, Internet Explorer pretends it doesn’t see the min-height property. It uses the regular height property as a min-height. Confused? Let me make it a bit simpler:
Firefox
The height property is a fixed size. It doesn’t shrink and it doesn’t expand with content.
The min-height property is exactly what it says: it gives the element a minimum height, but it still expands with the content of the element. It’s perfect for if you have an element that will just look totally ugly if you it’s empty.
Internet Explorer
The height property is interpreted as a minimum height, funny enough. Doesn’t that suck?
Posted in CSS.
Tagged with CSS, firefox, ie, internet explorer.
By Kevin Lloyd
– May 30, 2008
So here we have the timely battle that PHP faces. Frankly, I’m getting sick and tired of this. All in all, I’d have to agree with Jeff on this one, to a certain extent.
They Say PHP Sucks
You’ll hear the same claims every single time: “Google PHP Sucks you’ll see how much PHP sucks”. Oh please! This is some of what the haters usually use for the argument:
- “There are too many functions“
- PHP Isn’t OOP
- Everything is strung together – This claim usually talks about the interaction between PHP and/or SQL
In Defense of PHP
The number one claim is that everything in PHP feels like it’s clunky and may fall apart at any time. Granted, I’ll be the first to admit that I hate boring SQL queries. Keyword here is boring. Within the past year, I’ve really gotten to see that SQL has a lot of power. Learning of all of awesome power, just makes me hate writing crap like:
[sourcecode language='sql']
select title, body, post_date from posts where id = 32
[/sourcecode]
Posted in General.
Tagged with CakePHP, design.
By Kevin Lloyd
– May 28, 2008
It’s not news that Bindable Behavior has saved countless lives in terms of functionality.
As of Changeset 6918 this has now been integrated into the CakePHP core. So, we’ll have something to look forward to in the official release of CakePHP 1.2. Mind you, there may be a lot of other hidden gems in there, I just haven’t been paying attention lately 
.
Most of the functionality is as we remember, with a few exceptions:
- $this->Article->restrict(‘Comment’) now becomes
$this->Article->contain(‘Comment’)
- $this->Article->find(‘all’, array(‘restrict’ => array(‘User’))); turns into
$this->Article->find(‘all’, array(‘contain’ => array(‘User’)));
For a complete list of the differences and changes you can check out the
Containable Test Cases for excellent examples of how to use this to it’s full potential.
Posted in General.
By Kevin Lloyd
– May 23, 2008
So, you’ve been reading this blog for a while and you’re (hopefully) picking up very valuable tips on website and web application design. But just like all other do-it-yourself (DIY) projects, no amount of tips or tutorials in isolation is going to make you an expert. So you throw your hands up in say “I’m done with this web design crap!” But, you still need a website. So what do you do?
[Shameless Plug]
Enter 3HN Designs.com
3HN Designs comprises of a group of, you guessed it, three (3) developers that have a common goal: to provide quality designs at an affordable price.
Services Provided include:
- Website Design
- Web Application Development
- Logos
- Search Engine Optimization
- etc.
They offer static web design, along with a custom CMS approach and other forum, gallery, and shopping cart scripts.
Under The Hood
So what does the finished product comprise of? Well it depends on what you pay for. At the base price of $500.00, you’ll come away with a nice, fresh looking XHTML/CSS web site that you can mangle to your hearts content.
Posted in General, Resources.
Tagged with CakePHP, design.
By Kevin Lloyd
– May 19, 2008
One of the big things you’ll hear about Ruby on Rails is that it’s hard to scale. In my opinion, that’s not really an issue that one should be addressing on the framework level. Scaling, in my opinion, should be something reserved for backend databases and servers. From what I’ve read, you should be able to slap on a MySQL proxy and an Apache load balancer in front of multiple mongrel servers, but I digress.
With all the Twitter Rails scaling issues, it’s funny to see this headline from TechCrunch. Guys over at Twitter have renounced this claim though.
Will this make me abandon my quest for learning Ruby on Rails? I highly doubt it. Scaling becomes an issue on extremely high traffic sites. And a lot of the issues that come into play with such a high traffic site, can be easily remedied by things like optimizing queries and caching.
Source: Twitter Said To Be Abandoning Ruby on Rails [TechCrunch]
Posted in General.
By Kevin Lloyd
– May 3, 2008
Somehow I don’t think most people understood what my bias comparison of CakePHP vs Ruby on rails meant. The last few visitors to comments seem to have been Rails fans. One of them seems to think that I shouldn’t touch Ruby on Rails with a ten foot pole and should stick with CakePHP. He doesn’t want someone like me in their community. The other comment, I get the opposite vibe from. He strikes me as a PHP fan, who thinks I’m too lazy for the PHP community.
To all the folks that haven’t seem to understand my whole objective, let me help you guys out. I have general interests in a lot of areas and I also work a 9 to 5 job. So I don’t really have the time and dedication required to poor my heart and sole into everything that comes along. I do a brief overview of something before I spend tons of time delving into it. People are pissed that I’m comparing CakePHP to Ruby on Rails and haven’t even tried it yet. This is where the brief overview comes in; I took a quick look and realized that for what I was doing at the time, Ruby on Rails would have been more trouble that it was worth.
Posted in General.
Tagged with CakePHP, ruby on rails, time.
By Kevin Lloyd
– April 16, 2008
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