Dog Blog

The Castration of HTML Dog

This is the last ever (ever, ever) posting on the Dog Blog.

There have been good times and there have been extremely annoying times (namely dealing with more spam comments than there are planktonic organisms in the Pacific Ocean).

Thanks to everyone who has read and commented on my ramblings over the past two years - I know that it's certainly been useful and entertaining to at least a few of you out there.

HTML Dog's still in good health, it's just lost a certain part of its anatomy, which will has now been ceremonially transplanted elsewhere.

Wednesday 14 December, 2005 ( 1:41 AM GMT) | Comments (suspended) / Permanent Link

AOL Goes Elastic

AOL's new design (note that you might get a frustrating redirect if you try to go straight to aol.com from outside of the USA) has just gone live. The layout is not only table-free, it's also elastic, which is pretty funky to see (try increasing the text size). It's flawed, but then what isn't? It's still good to see one of the biggest websites from such a huge corporation pushing the web standards approach.

Thursday 21 July, 2005 ( 2:52 PM GMT) | Comments (suspended) / Permanent Link

Ooo! Shiny!

It's a Moll/Griffiths production! It's liquid! It's curvy! It's elastic! It's hack free! It's a design / accessibility orgy!

The new Vivabit design's finally live, and there's even a little colophon thingy called "Pixels, My Ass" (remember the heading... it's going to come up again in the future).

Thursday 7 July, 2005 (12:35 PM GMT) | Comments (20) / Permanent Link

Griffiths, Budd, Keith: Special Training Courses

In case you hadn't noticed the swish new buttons that have appeared across the site, I'll be doing some public training in London again in a few weeks. This is the third time I've done such public courses (and about the tenth time including private courses - I'm loving it!), but this time it's a bit different. This time it's an @media Master Class...

I'll be joining Andy Budd and Jeremy Keith for some special training courses:

Thursday 30 June, 2005 ( 2:59 PM GMT) | Comments (suspended) / Permanent Link

A Personal @media Experience

As many of you know, I'm the one to blame for the @media 2005 conference. It's all over the blogosphere like a rash right now, which I'm personally finding quite awesome. It would seem only right that I add my own itchy red blotch. Here are a few of my personal thoughts...

My presentation was sub-par. I wasn't 100% happy with it anyway (but then I am about few things) - in recent months it was neglected for other "greater" conference issues. This is no excuse though - I had a year to prepare for this. Perhaps most obviously though, with the clear competency of the audience, its general thrust was aimed too low for most of the delegates. It's a learning experience, and my presentation at next year's conference, which I already have a title for, will be much more thought-invoking.

On the experience and high skill-level of the audience, I think this should be covered in more detail in the new @media blog sometime soon. I would like to say, though, that I think it took us all by surprise. Judging by the feedback (sooo much to go through!) it wasn't actually the case for as many of the delegates as some may think, but it will be addressed, with more highbrow presentations next year.

I really, really, REALLY wish I had more time to meet people. I had a great time talking to those people I did get to meet, but there's a long list of others I'm not sure I even laid my eyes on, let alone talked to (a lot of that has something to do with not knowing what people look like though!).

I had a great time. I've not heard from anyone who didn't. Planning for @media 2006 is underway...

Tuesday 14 June, 2005 ( 3:16 PM GMT) | Comments (17) / Permanent Link

Multiple CSS Background Images

One of the biggest annoyances with CSS is the inability to apply more than one background image to a box.

I'm currently working on a site that is in particular need of this. The only way to tackle it, at the moment, is to throw an ass-load of span or div tags in the mix (or to rely on tags that are slightly more meaningful, if they're appropriate, but that's not always possible).

Here's the situation. I have a list item that needs a particular little image in it. On top of that I need curved corners. Because I want the whole thing to expand and contract regardless of the size of the content within it, that means I need a separate background image for each corner.

So the HTML inevitably looks like this:

<li><span><span><span><span>Booby</span></span></span></span></li>

Urgh.

And the CSS looks something like this:

li {
	background: url(booby.jpg) center no-repeat;
}
li span {
	background: url(corner_top_right.gif) top right no-repeat;
	display: block;
}
	li span span {
	background: url(corner_bottom_right.gif) bottom right no-repeat;
}
	li span span span {
	background: url(corner_bottom_left.gif) bottom left  no-repeat;
}
	li span span span span {
	background: url(corner_top_left.gif) top left no-repeat;
	padding: 0.5em;
}

One image for a pretty little background, and one image for each of the corners.

CSS 3's got provision for multiple backgrounds, which would be wonderful. If only it was a practical option.

Tuesday 7 June, 2005 ( 8:33 AM GMT) | Comments (33) / Permanent Link