From: mattlazycat	Date: November 4th, 2003 04:36 pm (UTC)		(Link)

Still not working in Firebird, but I'm sure I can manage to type "Deut 23:2" :)

How about fixing your HTML form up with <label> tags so you can click on the text, not just the checkbox? Like this:

<label><input type="checkbox" name="MSG_version" value="yes" checked="checked">The Message<br></label>

If the item and its description are in different table cells, you can use the for attribute to point to the id attribute of the input box. You can use id and name for the same thing in form elements, if I remember correctly. So change name=" to id=" in your input tags, then (for example) <label for="MSG_version">Form item description</label>


Incidentally, you seem to have recently added a "Read / Write comments" button, and that's messed up the layout. Pesky sqwrl :)

	From: vexen	Date: November 4th, 2003 04:43 pm (UTC)		(Link)

What's Firebird?

I haven't seen those Label tags before, they're well nifty, I'll go add them in a bit.

How's the layout messed up? In what browser? I'm using those Read/Write buttons on quite a large number of pages! (And will be all pages, eventually, I don't like the -form- -submit- button)

	From: mattlazycat	Date: November 4th, 2003 05:08 pm (UTC)		(Link)

Mozilla Firebird is the next Mozilla browser. It's like Mozilla but it's designed for normal people to use, not geeks. It renders the same, but has a much nicer interface, and the stuff like mail, news, address-book and IRC have been removed and made into their own standalone packages, so all you get is the browser. It's pretty neat, and especially for testing web stuff. There's an extension for it that lets you load the current URL into Internet Explorer, and there's another one that lets you edit the CSS of a page live, without reloading. Really cute stuff.


As for what's happening, I think the button's preventing the first column from floating all the way to the left, so there's no room for the second column. Try putting a clear: left rule in the CSS for the left column.
You can see what's happening in this shot: http://lazycat.org/tmp/sbwhoops.gif

	From: vexen	Date: November 4th, 2003 05:23 pm (UTC)		(Link)

Oh you answered my question as I asked it...

I liked the trimmed-down, no-additions, efficient browser-only-ness of it, many new browsers just make my old machine go slow, this one sounds like it'll be fast.

I've added clear:both to following CSS (I'm sure you'll get the gist):

div.top,div.title,div.BottomBar,div.Content{width:780px;margin-top:1em;margin-left:1em;clear:both}

All the content is in div.content, but by adding clear:both to all three main divs, I'm making sure that if random stray bigger-than-expected floats start messing with things their affects wont cross into the major pre- and post- content bits.

But... the whole site looks a bit funny, it's been a while since I fine-tuned style stuff for /other/ browsers!

	From: vexen	Date: November 4th, 2003 05:12 pm (UTC)		(Link)

Ooh I like the way Firebird speak, I'm installing it... what's your experience of it?

	From: mattlazycat	Date: November 4th, 2003 05:42 pm (UTC)		(Link)

Firebird is pretty neat, been using it for something like a year now. Be aware that it's not a finished product, hence the 0.7 and a few rough edges like the lack of an installer. If you find yourself adoring Firebird and want to play the nightly build game, read Burning Edge - they report on every nightly build so you can see if it's worth getting the latest build (i.e., if the bug that's annoying you has been fixed, or there's a cute new feature you want to play with).

While you're playing with Firebird, try out some of the extensions. I use:

• All-in-one gestures (mouse gestures for going back and forward, reloading, etc -- very addictive UI enhancement)
• EditCSS (modify a stylesheet in place without reloading)
• Checky (run the current page through a code validator.. don't install the 2.0 on this page, follow the homepage link and install 1.5 instead. This lets you do things like check accessibility and generated HTML validity really easily)
• Tabbrowser extensions (tweak how tabs work - like putting them at the bottom of the window, or making pop-ups load in tabs instead of new windows, etc)
• Download Statusbar (downloads in progress show as little blocks in the status bar instead of having their own window - really pretty handy)
• Cards (Solitaire, Golf, bunch of other card games... ahem :)

	From: vexen	Date: November 4th, 2003 05:58 pm (UTC)		(Link)

Checky sounds very useful!

	From: vexen	Date: November 4th, 2003 05:35 pm (UTC)		(Link)

I've added Label tags, they work fine, but not on IE6. (I.e. is very annoying in that you can't have multiple versions installed. Everyone in my house has IE6...)

Label tags are wonderful. Very simple.

	From: mattlazycat	Date: November 4th, 2003 05:21 pm (UTC)		(Link)

If you replace your old RetPassage() with this one, it works in IE 6, Opera 7, and Mozilla. I don't IE 5.5 or 5, so can't test on that, but this is standard DOM manipulation, so it should work back to 5.0 I think.

<script type="text/javascript">
function RetPassage(){
  var temp=window.location.href
  var i=temp.indexOf("?",1)
  if(i>1){
    temp=temp.substring(i+1)
    temp=temp.replace("%20"," ")

    passageElement = document.getElementById('Passage')
    passageElement.value=temp
  }
}
</script>

Also, because you don't specify a !DOCTYPE at the top of your document, you might find that CSS reacts differently across browsers. Then again you might not :) Using a DOCTYPE rather implies that you're coding to a specific standard, and geeks will bitch at you for not validating, whereas if you don't bother they probably won't pester you. Geeks like giving out opinions, but they don't much like teaching apparently!

	From: vexen	Date: November 4th, 2003 05:30 pm (UTC)		(Link)

I've found that declaring a doctype on a few of my sites actually stops some of the styles working from my main vexen.css, and although I tried for ages to get it to work for the particular doc-type (predictably I was using the least strict one), I couldn't fix it so I had to leave off the doctypes.

On some specific pages I found it didn't interfere, so I left it on, such as on my main http://www.vexen.co.uk/index.html (However I just rechecked and it's returning some odd error about not being to understand the doc type, I'll look at that later)

I'm guessing that it was sticking to a specific standard, and therefore ignoring/altering the way it read certain attributes, but I wasn't having any luck getting those attribs to look good just sticking to the standard, so I had to remove the doctype commands with plan to try again another day!

	From: mattlazycat	Date: November 4th, 2003 05:38 pm (UTC)		(Link)

Yeah, if there's one thing I've learned about web design, it's that retrofitting standards-compliance is next to impossible. The only way to do it without getting grey hair is to do it from scratch. Can certainly understand you not wanting to do that with the number of pages you have :)

Frankly I wouldn't bother. Commit to making your new pages validate if you like, but save the fixing of old ones for a very very rainy day.

The script doesn't need a doctype though - would really appreciate you using it instead of the one that doesn't work on my browser :)

	From: vexen	Date: November 4th, 2003 06:23 pm (UTC)		(Link)

I have certain pages where I know they should validate, the ones that I rewrite a lot (like the main front page)

I just fixed html401 validation for vexen/index.html, I needed to set the encoding to "windows-1252", which I've now set in the HTML, it was set to ISO-something (std western one), but apparently that was wrong. (I guessed a dozen or so different likely-looking ones until it accepted it!)

	From: vexen	Date: November 4th, 2003 06:33 pm (UTC)		(Link)

I've changed it to use getElement. It's been ages since I done JavaScript stuff. It's been a year since I descripted all my sites - ALL the menus and many other things used to be written through document.writes held on centralized .js files!

	From: mattlazycat	Date: November 4th, 2003 06:37 pm (UTC)		(Link)

Yes, the poor-admins's ASP/PHP: do it on the client side ;)

From: ex_myst341	Date: November 4th, 2003 05:43 pm (UTC)		(Link)

Whoa, that looks really cool. :) I haven't used it yet, but I didn't know there were so many different versions of the Bible!

	From: vexen	Date: November 4th, 2003 06:24 pm (UTC)		(Link)

They're the mainstream versions too, there's hundreds more!

From: ex_myst341	Date: November 4th, 2003 06:28 pm (UTC)		(Link)

Hmmm. Well, I guess that makes sense.

Anyway, [unrelated], I altered a photo I posted recently for Halloween. It's very vampirish now; I thought you might like to know... seeing that you have 'vampires' listed in your interests. :) I think the original post was on the 31st.

	From: vexen	Date: November 5th, 2003 10:33 am (UTC)		(Link)

You know I dated a vampire media fan, I attended some of the parties and regular meetings of the London Vampire Group and Vampire Connexion, and she looked not unlike you in those photos!

Er... I can't decide if, from your point of view, that's either "mildly interesting" or "a bit creepy" :-)

I don't remember putting vampires on my interests though!

From: ex_myst341	Date: November 5th, 2003 10:46 am (UTC)		(Link)

Last I looked you had vampires in your interests. :) Anyway, it's somewhere between interesting and a bit creepy, only in that if people are really drinking each other's blood--yikes. They'd better be careful and knowledgeable about blood-transmissible diseases!!!!!!!!!!!!

	From: vexen	Date: November 5th, 2003 11:06 am (UTC)		(Link)

The one I dated was a nurse and was fully qualified to know all things blood related :-)

Anyway I meant creepy that she looks like you, not that she likes vampire movies :-)

* puts on wild eyed look and a Type O Negative[1] voice and sings "She looks like... you!" *


[1] The Band, not the blood group! Quoting from song "My girlfriends' girlfriend"