So it took all of about 5 minutes to increase the width of this site. Sure some of the graphics are actually repeating instead of being a nice full width but in general I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out. It only took 4+ months for me to do.
I’m tweaking my CSS to make this site a bit wider, I need to update some images and so on but all in all it’s a pretty quick fix. Look for that to happen sometime soon.
So I’m sitting here busting ass on this latest Flash project and someone sends me a URL of a site asking why it looks like crap. I look notice that it’s breaking all over the place and of course I pop open the source and see “<!– ImageReady Slices (blah-blah-blah.psd) –> After the basic explosion of rage, comments such as “This isn’t the kind of quality that our client is paying for” and so on. I started to think about it and began to wonder if it was actually “just another way to build a page”.
My take. It all comes down to what the project is. Personally I’d rather quit working in this industry then use ImageReady to generate code for me. It’s a shortcut and in my mind unprofessional.
Okay, stepping down off my soap box…
I stumbled onto Blueprint and looked into it briefly. I’ve downloaded the source and browsed through the CSS files. I’m not certain that I’d use this framework but I actually love the idea of this approach. I’ve been using a CSS “boilerplate” for about a year now, it has many of the basic styles in it and I’ve successfully used it on numerous sites. There are a few things about Blueprint that I’d like to explore more. First the way it adds styles and deal with column widths. Using multiple classes on elements you can get the effects you’re looking for.
I’ll explain more later when I have a better understanding and have had a chance to experiment. Whether using Blueprint may be a way to build better more consistent layouts or not I’m not sure, but I’m intrigued by the concept and the potential to use it in a project.
More on this later.
I’ve added a few new projects to both my portfolio on bwpdsigns.com and bryanpaulus.com. I realized I need to do a few things, such as putting things in order, getting better descriptions and the Flash needs updated also. A few things aren’t working the way I’d like. I’ll add it to my ever growing list of ToDo’s.
Did I mention that bwpdsigns.com and bryanpaulus.com were are using the same XML file and images. Sorry I say that every time I update, I’m just really happy with the fact that Flash and PHP are using the same assets to handle both portfolios. In an environment where technology takes the back seat to Creative, smart uses of technology even in little bits makes me happy.
Just a quick not about a bit from a podcast that I listen to regularly. Boagworld.com recently had a demonstration of a screen reader by Ian Lloyd. I’ve always preached that Accessibility is a major concern for web development, but this video truly is a wake up call. Take a look.
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I’m a pretty recent convert from Table Based design to Web Standards. I’ve only been table-less for a small part of my career and I admit I’ve done many “evil” table based design sins to get by. Today I’m making edits to a clients site that’s is heavily based on Tables and uses CSS in very bad ways. In about 900 lines of CSS there are so many examples of how bad CSS can be abused. Style names such as “Color3Text”, “Color90bg”. Those numbers aren’t just random they are sequential. Gotta love that. Anyway, I’m muddling through this project as quickly as possible so I can wash my hands of this mess.
A project I’m working on requires me to be able to center an image in an available area. While I’ve been striving to go “tableless” and design pure CSS layouts I also need to be able to get projects done in a relatively timely manner. After trying various techniques to try to get past this issue, vertical alignment of an image, I decided, to fall back to a simple, non CSS solution. It took all of about 3 minutes, doesn’t involve any CSS hacks or Javascript.
Basically I’m a firm believer of use CSS as much as possible, but if the use of a table for presentation is necessary to keep you from using a hack or Javascript to accomplish something. By all means use that table. In this case it’s for a persons portfolio site and it’s the display area where their sample is shown. A 6 page site, with one extremely simple table implemented in a way that solves a problem without resorting to a hack.
Don’t hate the table for presentation purposes, it can get you out of a jam quickly and in the end keep your client happy when you deliver their project on time and without going over the budget. In the mean time I’ll keep looking for a pure CSS solution, and who knows maybe the w3c will come up with a solution to something that’s a pretty common issue. Seriously if you want a technology to totally replace another technology, it needs to be able to do everything it can do easily and logically.
Please feel free to comment and if you have a vertical alignment solution for this please post it… As soon as I turn on commenting 
I’ve mentioned before that there are still quite a bit of things that need to happen to this site. It is a work in progress. I know it could be argued that all sites are a work in progress but again this site was launched a bit before it was complete.
Anyway, moving on, the point is I’ve decided to document my progress as I work on the site. The first installment will be an article following the process of building a CSS version of the sites Left Nav. Currently it’s a series of images. My goal is to convert it over to a CSS version. I started it that way when i initially began building the site but ran into issues that were a combination of a limit to my CSS experience and the time I needed to spend to get it to work right. So now I’m convinced that someone somewhere might find an article like that helpful.
Look for that to happen soon.
After being highly recommended by a few co-workers I think I’m going to pick up “CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions Paperback by Andy Budd” tonight. It’s been on my list of “to-buy” for a long time. I’ve just finished “Designing with Web Standards Paperback by Jeffrey Zeldman”. I’m completely convinced that I need to lock myself in a room for a month or two until I’ve completely removed all “spacer.gif” images from memory. Okay it may not be that easy. I’m not exactly at a pro-standards shop and the sites I build are for designers who aren’t going to understand why their text is shifting one pixel.
I’ll be back with a full review when I get through it.