Archive for the ‘Projects’ Category

HTML Tutorial

Saturday, March 3rd, 2007

I’m afraid that due to issues with my host, the HTML Tutorial may not be availiable for a while. I will endevor to get it back up and running (improved too!), but don’t expect it to be instant. I have school among other things that I need to deal with first. For those of you who viewed it, thank you. For those who came back, thank you very much. I hope to have it up again so that many people can continue to learn from it.

Browser Compatibility and Standards Compliance

Wednesday, February 14th, 2007

Something we all would like, love even… but we don’t have it. And from the looks of it, may never get it. Currently there are no browsers that are fully standards compliant and there is not a single one that is fully compatible with any other browser. Some come close to being standards compliant, Firefox and Opera are two… but they’re still a long ways from being fully compliant. But besides all that… Browser compatibility is really starting to piss me off… Take a look at the following screenshots.

Internet Explorer 6 Internet Explorer 7

Firefox 2 Opera 9.5

Look at all four screenshots. They all use the same code, the same images. But look at the difference between them… Not a single one looks or functions the same. They should, the code is standards compliant and in the ideal situation shouldn’t have a problem with any standards compliant browser… Firefox works as intended, Opera has a problem with a conditional comment added for IE 6 & 7, but neither IE 6 or 7 works as intended. IE 6 has a problem with alpha transparency in png images. Both IE 6 & 7 are unable to correctly interpret the CSS, which leaves several elements of the page rendering incorrectly.

Overall this has been very frustrating and I hope something is eventually done about it. Sooner rather than later hopefully… Until then… We’ll be stuck in a world that makes it incredibly difficult to code websites.

IE and CSS

Wednesday, February 14th, 2007

So I’m working on the website for the Indiana Eta chapter of Sigma Phi Epsilon. I’m doing a complete redesign of the site using XHTML and CSS. I’m aiming for standards complience while maintaining a consitant look and function through the 3 main “modern” web browsers (Internet Explorer 7, Firefox, and Opera). However, IE is not playing nice. Several small issues have shown up in the menu. One I cannot show with a screenshot because of the nature of the issue. The other however, I can.

IE Menu Bug

Internet Explorer 7 shows up on the right, Firefox 2 on the left. Notice the gap between the main level of the menu and the submenu on IE7. This does not show up in any other browser.

So far I have yet to find a fix for this. As soon as I do however, I will post it here.

Atomic Wallpaper Cycler… and other Atomic software….

Sunday, February 11th, 2007

So I’ve been playing around with the idea of writing a few peices of software and making them publicly available… The first peice of software I have in the works is called “Atomic Wallpaper Cylcer”

I suppose by the name it’s fairly obvious as to what it does. Basically it takes a list of images (jpg, gif, png, etc) and cycles through them setting them as the desktop wallpaper. You can set the interval between cycles, positioning of the wallpaper, even whether you want to just go straight through the list, or randomize it.

I’m sure this has been done before (110% positive at that) but I figured I could just throw another option out there.

Anyway, I’ll post it here… “When It’s Done”

So I’m Working on this Website….

Saturday, February 10th, 2007

And It’s giving me a huge headache. Sometimes I wonder if the person who wrote the original code for it knew a damn thing… The code is worse than most WYSIWYG editors generate… Here, take a look:

Bad Code

So yeah… For all you coders, web designers, or even someone who is maintaining a website. PLEASE, for the SANITY of anyone else who may be working on the website after you, learn how to code, make your code clean and readable… It saves us all a shitload of trouble in the long run.

(For the record, the above code is after 2 1/2 hours of cleaning it up)