gregdoolittle.com

About time, isn’t it? The beta release of Intel-Mac Photoshop CS3* is finally here. If you work on a Windows machine, you can still get excited about new features in this release, such as non-destructive filters, an improved release of vanishing point, and a new version of camera raw. Time to get out my piggy bank and head down to the Mac store, for a new laptop. Then I can download the whopping 750MB of the beta release with a valid CS2 serial number.

*not to be confused with CSS3 (from the W3C), or CSS Advisor beta (also from Adobe), since these are entirely separate things.

(a not quite technology-related post…)
I haven’t updated in a while, mostly because school has been so busy. I’m almost finished with my final project for PHP, and I just have one more test for Perl.

Things are finally winding down, and soon I’ll have time to set up my first functional online store at www.patdoolittle.com. it’s going to be tricky to set up everything with the bank, and figuring out all the legal issues. I’ll have to call up my friend arin and buy him a burrito in exchange for some small business consulting. I’m also going to set up a CMS to allow for easy inventory management. Somehow in between that project, work, and shopping for Christmas presents, I’m also looking for a new job. Hopefully something will turn up soon. I think I might be better off looking after the holidays.

I was thinking about taking the advanced course in PHP (Web Services), along with an overview of AJAX next semester. Six months ago I wanted to complete the web certificate as quickly as possible, but now I’m debating whether or not to take my last class in the web programming sequence (Database theory), or if I should just postpone it, and take these other more interesting, and probably more useful courses. There’s also the possibility of taking all three at once. It’s tough to do 7 units of school on top of 40 hours of work, as I learned this semester, but doing these three classes next semester adds up to 9 units. I’ll probably end up postponing the Database theory class until summer, so that I can take these other two classes. That’s the plan for now…

two more features I’ve noticed since downloading Firefox 2.0:
resume last session: when you quit Firefox, you can leave your tabs open, and the next time you start up the application, it prompts you to find out if you’d like to open all the tabs you previously had open.
ESP: whenever you use a search box, Firefox provides a drop-down list of possible matches. pretty handy.

i had an idea a while back. basically i wanted to include variables in my CSS. the point was to extend the ease of updating a site’s style.

in a CSS document you usually use the same color value for multiple elements. when you want to update the color scheme of your site’s design, you have to do a find-and-replace for all occurrences of the old color, swapping it out with the new color. instead of updating every instance of a color, an image URL, or a typeface, imagine how easy it would be to do if you could just update your variables which you had declared at the top of your document.

i thought i had a great original idea. i had even tried implementing it with JavaScript, but to no avail. tonight i was brushing up on the SiFR type technique, when i came across “my idea”, implemented and documented by Shaun Inman. basically, he’s figured out how to do exactly what i thought i invented, and named it: CSS-SSC.

this is the basic syntax:


@server constants {
constantName1: constantValue1;
constantName2: constantValue2;
}

selector {
property1: constantName1;
property2: constantName2;
}

you can also import the constants from an external file:

@server url(constants.css);


if this interests you, read the full article. it looks like in addition to using this syntax for variables, you will also need to add a special PHP script to your CSS directory, and tell your server to parse your CSS files using the PHP interpreter by modifying the .htaccess file.

New version of Firefox just came out… Looks good so far… no major changes. I’d bet it’s more of a retaliation to Microsoft’s IE7 than anything else, (which was just released with the beta of Vista). IE finally added tabbed browsing. Firefox went along and one-upped IE7’s tabbed browsing with a tab-index for all the tabs in a given window (meta-tabbing?). Also when you open new tabs in Firefox, the browser keeps track of the order in which they were opened. So when you close each tab, the browser goes to the next freshest tab (instead of following a basic pattern of right to left). Basically, the tabbing system is much improved. There’s also a nice little dynamic spell-checker that automatically checks everything you type into any text field on any web page. Sort of the WWII in terms of browser-wars, but this time they’re not screwing things up for the people writing the code with proprietary html element support; they’re just racing to add designer/user features to their browsers.

They both have loads of security updates, so you might as well update if you can spare 2 minutes.
get firefox 2.0 (and some nifty plugins to go along with it)
get IE7

I got this ad from my webhost in my email:

Millions of people have the potential to visit your Web site from their mobile devices – are you ready for them? With NEW .MOBI, the world’s first mobile-optimized domain, you can reach out to an entirely new, high-tech audience that’s waiting to connect with you.

I’ve heard about .mobi before, but I really don’t get it. First of all, why would you need a mobile domain for your site? Who will remember that it’s .mobi and not .com? You’re going to have to register .com anyway! And since you’re going to have a .com address, you can just have a mobile stylesheet or use browser detection to redirect cell-phone users to a mobile-friendly version of your page.

secondly, unless you have a blackberry or a sidekick, i find internet on the phone to be completely annoying! the tiny screen, the numeric keypad… basically, surfing the web on a mobile phone is a pain in the neck. it’s also ridiculously expensive. if you can afford a cell-phone you can probably afford internet access at home. there are a few ocassions where you might need to surf the web on a cell phone: 1. to check your email on your boring commute home (but can’t you read a magazine, or just wait until you get home!), 2. to look up someone’s phone number (which is probably the ocassion where the price of internet on your phone is worth it, given the ridiculous rates that directory services charge. 3. to check the traffic on say, sfbaytraffic.info. but on that site you really need to have a mouse to get all the information. calling 511 is cheaper.

so there you go. thank you monolithic phone industry. i might sound like a crotchity old man, but i just don’t see the point of mobile-web-surfing. i’m sure there are plenty of gadget-dependent type A personalities out there, plenty to make a profit off of… maybe it’s time i learned some WML. i’m sure it would straighten out a lot of my confusion.

I don’t use Dreamweaver. I’m not really a fan of wysiwyg editors. I write all my code either by hand, or using syntax highlighting with GNU Emacs (hooray for open source!). But interestingly, today I heard from the PWD Podcast that Microsoft is coming out with their own version of Dreamweaver: Expression. I’m hoping for a browser-war-style contest where both sides of the force push each other to creating some neat new technologies. It’s good to see some competition with heavy-weights such as Adobe, even if it is competition from Microsoft.

The beta of MS-Expression is currently downloadable for free, but only exists for people running Windows XP. I use a Mac, so this won’t even affect me, I’m just passing the word along. I suppose I’ll keep using good ‘ole emacs for now…

Last week I finished my class in JavaScript. My final programming assignment wasn’t too exciting. Basically had to create a user registration login system. So… in a nutshell, the class covered all the basics of JavaScript: a healthy dosage of html review, writing good code in JavaScript, variable scope, functions with parameters, math functions, decimal formatting, the date object, arrays, loops, conditionals, recursive functions, dhtml and DOM scripting, event handlers, IE special effects, status bars, pattern matching and regular expressions, and cookies.
There were a few chapters in our book that we missed, and I really want to go back and learn the stuff before I look for jobs: the drag-and-drop feature, dynamic content, and the node tree.

Tonight I had my first day of Perl. The teacher seems a little rusty (I’m being very polite by only calling him “rusty”), and hopefully he’ll get get his groove back soon. I had to remind him that JavaScript does not run on the server, but Java does. Yikes! That was a bad sign. I’m sure he’ll get back into the swing of things soon enough. For the time being, I’m just keeping my fingers crossed, hoping I won’t drown. I read the intro to my book “Learning Perl” by Randal Schwartz & Tom Christiansen, and the Perl intro documentation through my terminal. We’re covering roughly two chapters a week, so it’s gonna go quick. So for the next ten weeks, if I haven’t updated, you’ll know why.

i needed a place to put my content. i’d asked around to see if anyone i knew had any suggestions for webhosts, and someone asked me: “why don’t you just set up your own server?”. i’ve always had a sort of nerd-fantasy of doing that, but after careful consideration, the logistics just didn’t add up. paying someone else to host my site is way cheaper than setting up a server, and a lot less to worry about for my small scale projects. i would have to set up a higher-bandwidth package from comcast, as well as buy a machine to act as a server. then there’s the whole installing apache and configuring the server, which would undoubtedly be a good learning experience (and i’m confident it’s something i could do), but i just don’t have the time or resources to do it right now.

i went with a host called bluehost.com. they’ll be hosting cssfoundry.com for me. the main benefits of bluehost: 1. no ads (godaddy.com tried to put ads on my site!) 2. i can ssh into my account. 3. can host up to 6 domain names on the same account. 4. free sub-domains. 5. free MySQL tables. the weird things that are annoying: (there really isn’t a whole lot to complain about!) 1. price is higher (but seems worth it so far), 2. the favicon doesn’t carry through to subdirectories of the site… um.. aside from that it’s pretty good… (remind me to update this after using bluehost for a few weeks, i’m sure i’ll have a real complaint or deeper opinion by then).

i recently finished reading a book for css design, by Dave Shea and Molly Holzschlag. i’ve never done a book review, so this is a first attempt:
the title is rather cheesy (the zen of css design), but the book is fantastic. if you’ve never heard of the “css Zen Garden” it is definately a site worth checking out. Started by Dave Shea in 2001, the site demonstrates the promise of CSS’s ability to control all design aspects in a remote document. Designers are given an HTML file which they cannot modify, and are asked to create a .css file that stylizes every element on the page. The best entries are featured on the site (sort of the “prize” for winning). The book goes through about 40 different css zen garden proposals and dissects the code and techniques that underly. The book starts from an art theory perspective and ends with some technical hacks for getting around different browsers. Quite a good mix of content. You can read the book from cover to cover. Two thumbs up.

it happened three times. godaddy took down my site. i followed up by calling them to ask why they took it down, and the first two times, the said they weren’t sure, and put the site back up. this last time, they took it down for good (i presume), and sent me this email:

Dear Sir/Madam,

It has been brought to our attention that your scripting for cssfoundry.com is blocking the advertisements that are placed on our free hosting accounts. Our Abuse department has suspended your account as this is a violation of our Terms of Service.

Thank you for your understanding in this matter.

Regards,
Advanced Hosting Support

so, the tug-of-war between me and godaddy.com is over. and while i still believe my fight was worth fighting, i can’t help but feel a bit humiliated by my defeat. i’ve officially breached the terms of service with my workaround that disabled their ads. i feel like a petty criminal.

hopefully, this will all be fixed when i find a new web host.

Victory is mine.

After spending quite some time on the phone with GoDaddy.com’s customer service reps, complaining about what I thought was a mistake on their part, I realized I had not read every word in the fine print.

It all started when they sent me yet another a promotional email last week; the subject was: “Exclusive Savings - .COM just $6.95/year”, and the fine print said something about a free web-hosting package if you signed up this weekend, valued at $96.00. Since I had known GoDaddy to occasionally have absurd offers for web hosting packages, I thought: sure, this will be a good opportunity to start that website I’ve been thinking about. So I registered for the site.

I designed a logo on my desktop with CSS (as opposed to in photoshop), this way the file size would be much smaller. I felt so smug. A few hours after registering, I uploaded my logo to my new site (www.cssfoundry.com). I always get a little thrill out of seeing my stuff through an http request, as opposed to from my desktop, so of course I looked at my site. typed the URL into the browser, and WTF DO I SEE? THERE’S ADS FOR GODADDY ON MY PAGE!!!!! all across the top of the page about 100 pixels in height, there are ads for go daddy! How did these get here? They weren’t in my code, and I sure as heck didn’t sign up for them. I signed up for hosting that was worth $96.00, not some crummy free geocities, or aol sponsored site. I mean, I paid money to have the site! You can imagine how ripped-off, and how stupid I felt when the guy on the phone said that the free hosting was supposed to be free “ad-supported” hosting. How that could be worth $96.00 is beyond me. Faulty advertising at its best, I thought. Oh well, I’ll have to switch hosts….

…but wait! I just thought of something. Why don’t I just cover their ads with a div element? This way, the ads would not be visible; people would only see the div element layered on top of the ads. The ads wouldn’t even be clickable. It was such a great plan, because GoDaddy wouldn’t get to make money off of my site, and my visitors wouldn’t be bothered with their ads. So that’s what I did. GoDaddy tried to scam me, and I beat them, here is the CSS:

#GoDaddyTriedToScamMeAndIBeatThem {
	position: absolute;
	top:0px;
	width: 100%;
	height: 101px;
	background-color: inherit;
}

and the corresponding html, of course:

<div id="GoDaddyTriedToScamMeAndIBeatThem"></div>

What a satisfying feeling… I just hope they don’t catch on to me. At least for the time-being, I can say that I won. My little way of “sticking it to the man”.
;)

i just discovered the web developer’s toolbar for firefox. hmm.. how do i describe it to someone who’s never used it? well, basically it’s like being able to take an x-ray of a webpage. there’s tons of viewing options to demystify the layout of tightly-knit/transparent page layouts. a very cool tool. i wish i had heard about sooner, it’s very worth your while if you have not seen this before.

after spending way too much time contemplating the idea of writing my own code to syndicate my livejournal rss feed into my site, i’ve come to terms with this practical alternative. i’m sure i could’ve written the code… eventually ;b… it probably would have been a hack-job, and wouldn’t have looked as clean as this movable type blog, but… if i had a few weekends to dedicate to the cause, i think i could’ve done it. but i’m busy. and i’m not exactly a php wizard (yet!). when i know more about php, i’ll make sure i do something cool with it.

okay type nerds, today is your lucky day. there’s an entire film about typography. while 1.5 hours on the history and current usage of a font sounds totally boring to the average non-design person, i’m sure the film-artists will find a way to make it worth your while. i’m sure i’ll see it, and i’m betting some people from work would be interested.

i just found my new mentor for web design: boagworld.com. it’s a pretty cool site for beginners. they cover a lot of stuff you would never talk about in a class. and they stay very current with web standards. neato.

i’m taking intro to javascript as well as php (with mysql) this fall. both classes are online, which is pretty convenient. javascript should come fairly quickly since i took intro to programming with java. but php is kinda scary. i’m a little worried that this particular class will be too much all at once. it seems like a really cool language, based on how much you can do with it, and how simple everything looks on paper, but it’s also intimidating. i don’t have the required pre-requisites, but the teacher said i could take it if i’m willing to work really hard. i’ve never used mysql, so that’s another intimidating factor.

i’ve been lagging on syndicating this journal to my website. i need to officially put a hold on that idea. i’ve been meaning to spend time on it, but with weddings and birthdays and everything else, i’ve just been too busy. at some point during this semester, i’ll take another look at “php-embedding” this site. i don’t have time now (especially with school starting), and it’ll be easier then.

i set up a little mail() script on my website. i’m a little afraid of it being abused so i don’t want to post a link to it. this was my first (server) script; it was really exciting to see the script work when i sent myself an email from my domain. now i’ve got to figure out how to validate input fields… that should be a challenge!

i’m faced with the fact that i don’t have a whole lot of web design experience. i also have no formal design education (trust me, a bfa and design degree are two very different things). the skills i have right now would be respectable if it were 1996… but it’s not. when i look at job postings, almost everyone asks for some server-scripting skills, and i have none. my current job has nothing to do with the web.

my only advantage could be drawing. i need to do more of it with my web design. despite the my lack of server-skills and advanced web-design skills, drawing is really the only possible edge i have over real-deal computer science people (except for the ones who can also draw!). i’ve been spending most of my free time trying to learn web stuff, and not drawing… so my drawing skills have been waning. i really should be exploiting my access to illustrator at work. this is my new self-imposed ultimatum: make one vector “object” per day (just a tree or a bird or whatever; something simple) and post one of them in this journal each week. we’ll see where it goes from here… hopefully i can start a library of my own custom vector art…

i found livejournal’s guide on syndicating your livejournal account. they don’t mention using javascript/rss/xsl. instead they recommend buying an account so that you can create your own style on livejournal’s site. go figure. if you pay them, they give you a feed to your journal formatted the way you’ve specified. but i’m too stubborn to do this, and it seems like a cop-out. i’m still going to try to use DOM and ActiveXObjects with RSS and XSL. i’m sure if i ever learn perl, i’ll look back and wonder why any of this was hard… (or why i didn’t just get a paid account!)

woot!!!

finished up with an A in my XML class! it was getting a little tricky at the end of the course (writing recursive functions in xsl?) but hooray, i got through it, and i got an A (as planned!). the bigger challenge is figuring out how to use all this technical stuff in real world applications, given that i currently work somewhere where I will probably never use this programming language. i have to come up with these concoctions entirely on my own. the first two things i’m going to do are 1. syndicate this journal into my site (as previously mentioned), and 2. design the catalog section of a particular side project of mine using XML.