Technology

• IEContentLoaded – An alternative for DOMContenloaded on Internet Explorer

  A better solution than the deferred <script> technique I was using. I've already wrapped it into our internal library.

• Digital Web Magazine – Everything You Know About CSS Is Wrong

  A great, if not ready for pime time, layout technique. Going back to the future by using the table-based display types for your grids. Party like it's (a standards compliant) 1999.

• JavaScript and screen readers

  If you care about such things (and you really should you know.)

• Google Analytics Blog: More Enterprise-Class Features Added To Google Analytics

  I'm being driven a little nuts waiting for some of these to be rolled out. The AdSense integration is especially interesting to me, but almost all of them will get used in one way or another (either here or at work.)

Music

• I am old, I remember when all of this was going on

  Start here:
  Obscure Roxanne battle records fortnight part 1:

  and finish here:
  Roxanne Battle Records

• Jeff Mangum has been spotted in the wild. Here he is playing "Engine" last week in Columbus, Ohio. If he'd show up at the Boston version of this show, I'd still be kicking myself right now for missing it. He sounds great.

Sports

• Ivan Basso is back and wasted no time getting back into the swing of things. Just days after finishing his suspension the Italian finished third at the Japan Cup, behind the Little Prince.

  Cunego wins Japan Cup

• Speaking of Basso, the former Giro winner is focusing his whole return season on La Corsa Rosa this year. No surprise there.

  Know who else is eying the Giro? None other than American Lance Armstrong…

  Which means the Giro will be nuts this year. The Italian press was going to be there in droves anyway, covering Basso's return with real intensity. Now, with Lance showing up with his sights on winning, the rest of the world will be there as well.

  It will be a zoo.

  Can't wait.

• How must it feel to be one of those fans in Indianapolis or New York who cheered when Tom Brady went down in the first game of the season. So far both teams are looking up at the Patriots. I'm wondering if that's the result they expected when Brady went down?

  It's been a very interesting season so far.

• With the Red Sox, the Yankees and the Rays all in the same division there's a chance that the three best teams in baseball could all be in the same division one year and only one of them would make the playoffs.

  Nutty, I know, but imagine the three teams cannibalize themselves going 10-9 in their respective season series and in a weaker division the second place team swoops in to steal the Wild Card.

That'll do for now. More later.

//height for IE6. Thankfully IE6 messes up height in a useful way
height:350px;
//height for everything else. IE6 looks at this and says "wha?"
height:auto;
//min-height for everything else. IE6 is baffled by this.
min-height:350px;

I can't tell you how many times I've used this exact pattern. It actually works really well, it's just so wrong it bothers me each and every time I type it into a style sheet.

It works because the first height declaration, in pixels, is rendered by Internet Explorer 6 exactly the way the next two rules are rendered by every other browser. Meaning, it starts at 350px and then expands to fill whatever content it contains. Add to that the fact IE6 is baffled by the next two declarations (not understanding auto as a value for height and not supporting min-height in any way, shape or form) and for IE6 height is all you need.

Thing is, every other browser that matters renders the single height declaration (with overflowing content) like this:

Which is where the height:auto and min-height declarations come into play. Add those in and things start acting as expected with the other browsers- the container starts at 350px and expands to fit the overflowing content.

Since there are no "hacks", the above sheet will validate, I just hate the pattern of declaring height once and then immediately redeclaring it- especially to support a seven year old browser.

So… IE6? Are you listening? Can you please give up the ghost so I can put this pattern to bed?

Pretty please?

"Did you know that you can nest your divs so deep that Firebug stops working properly? I do now."

From:

mezzoblue § Design Rants

Personally, I'm surprised because I've seen some savagely nested divs produced by systems like Drupal and while it was a singularly awful environment to work in, it didn't actually cause Firebug to choke. Also, looking through his code, I see nothing that screams to me as being exceptionally deeply nested. I put a comment in. I'll update with more info…

Check out this class attribute generate by my beloved WordPress' upload feature:

class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-4590"

See anything suspicious? I sure do. wp-image-4590 is a unique identifier being passed off as a class. Why? I actually have no clue as I'm not privy to the thought process behind that particular piece of code What I do know is pretty much demands to be an ID. When I teach this stuff to people, I say "If it's unique, meaning there will ever only be one of them, make it an ID. If there's more than one or it's a general descriptor, make it a class." So I look at that code block every time I upload an image and I frown. Then I blow away the whole class attribute away, since I use none of them.

This is just splitting hairs, I know. Using a class like that is basically harmless. But, truth be told, splitting hairs helps me solidify my ideas about the way these things should work. That, in turn helps me improve the way my crew and I do our thing. So? Hairs I split and everyone is happier.

I'm just doing my small part to make the web a better place one nitpicky, semantic post at a time.

We're Back! Webmonkey Relaunches, Rejoins Wired

The original web developer's resource has returned. Webmonkey has been completely redesigned, and we're ready to rock once more. Also, our entire content library is now hosted on a wiki, so every tutorial, reference page and code example is open for editing. Come on in and show us what you've got!

Webmonkey: the Web Developers Resource

*Some still exist: like Thau's JavaScript Tutorial, which is over ten years old now.

**I've been a Dreamweaver user since Version 1.2.