HTML / CSS Web Log Entries
What Does It Mean To Be A CSS Class?
Posted: February 11, 2008 at 3:29 PM by Ben Nadel
This last week, I started converting a prototype application into some really clean XHTML and CSS. As I was doing this, I kept finding it hard to choose the most appropriate CSS class names. As I started to get more frustrated, I was reminded of OOP guru, Hal Helms . In the past, both in presentations and in face-to-face conversation, Hal Helms w... read more »
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Using Inline List Elements
Posted: December 31, 2007 at 9:46 AM by Ben Nadel
List elements (the LI within UL and OL elements) are, by default, block level elements. As we, as a community, have moved more towards web standards, many of us have began to use lists for our navigation claiming that semantically, navigation is a "list" of links to sections of our site. To do this, many of us, myself included, have turned list el... read more »
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Easy Print CSS Integration - NoPrint (Thanks Rick Osborne!)
Posted: December 31, 2007 at 8:23 AM by Ben Nadel
Last week, I talked about a little bit about a revelation that I had as far as print CSS vs. printer friendly pages go. I had said that print CSS was optimized to make haphazard printing better and printer friendly pages were optimized for purposeful printing. In response to this, Rick Osborne had some very good comments. For starters, he made... read more »
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Print CSS vs. Printer Friendly Format
Posted: December 28, 2007 at 5:20 PM by Ben Nadel
It used to be that the way I created the printer friendly version of a page was with a logical step inside of my header and footer. See, most of my pages include a header and a footer template: <!--- Include header template. ---> <cfinclude template="_header.cfm"> <!--- CODE. ---> <!--- Include footer template. -... read more »
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David Stamm On Styling Form Elements
Posted: December 7, 2007 at 8:27 AM by Ben Nadel
David Stamm, a colleague of mine, sometimes referred to as the "Secret Weapon", feels very strongly about the styling of form elements. Specifically, he feels that we as web developers should not try to style form elements - the look and feel of form elements is determined both by the computer's operating system and the given browser and it doesn'... read more »
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How Many HTML Elements Can You Name in 5 Minutes?
Posted: November 20, 2007 at 7:52 AM by Ben Nadel
I just got this fun little link off of Michael Porter's ColdFusion and Flex Blog . I was able to name 56 HTML elements, but more shockingly, I couldn't remember 35 elements! Of the 35 that I couldn't name, I don't even know what some of them are; I guess it's time to hit the books again. You should check it out, it's a fun game . ... read more »
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CSS Background Images Using Percentage Positioning
Posted: October 15, 2007 at 7:20 AM by Ben Nadel
One of the techniques that Dan Cederholm uses widely in Bulletproof Web Design is the positioning of background images using percentages. Up until now, I have only ever used either pixel placement or keyword placement using TOP or LEFT to position background images. As such, I was a bit confused as to how the percentage positioning even worked. To... read more »
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Bulletproof Web Design By Dan Cederholm (Thanks Javier Julio!)
Posted: October 15, 2007 at 7:00 AM by Ben Nadel
On the enthusiastic recommendation by Javier Julio , I read and just finished the book Bulletproof Web Design: Improving flexibility and protecting against worst-case scenarios with XHTML and CSS. This book is awesome and a must-read for everyone in the web development industry. It has completely changed the way I think about building web site fr... read more »
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Images Can Have CSS Padding - Crazy! (Saucy)
Posted: October 1, 2007 at 8:03 AM by Ben Nadel
I was sitting in Union Square Sunday morning, reading through Bulletproof Web Design (as recommended by Javier Julio ) when I came across an example that used padding on an image element. I had never seen this before, and frankly, it does not seem intuitive at all. I can't even believe that it works. Images seem like the basic building blocks o... read more »
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IE Has Correct Box Model In Standards Compliant Mode
Posted: September 14, 2007 at 10:24 AM by Ben Nadel
Internet Explorer (IE) has had a different CSS box model than the Mozilla based browsers for a long time - or so I thought. As a hold-over from the "browser wars", I have come up with techniques to deal with the fact that CSS padding gets added to Mozilla's explicitly defined box widths, while in IE padding gets absorbed by the width of the box mo... read more »
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The CTRL+SHIFT+S Test For Proper Page Architecture
Posted: July 24, 2007 at 9:16 AM by Ben Nadel
As of late, I have been really getting into trying to develop with tight CSS and web standards compliance. The other day, one of my co-workers, David Stamm (aka The Secret Weapon), told me that in FireFox's web developer plugin , the key stroke CTRL+SHIFT+S will turn on and off all style sheets in the current page. Using this during development... read more »
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Fixing DIVs That Cause Content Truncation When Printing
Posted: July 23, 2007 at 7:00 AM by Ben Nadel
A client recently called me complaining that their pages weren't printing correctly. This had never been a problem before. But apparently, now that the site has been up for a while and has some good content, the pages stopped printing correctly. After trying it for myself, I was irked to see that indeed, the first page printed but then none of the... read more »
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Using BODY ID As A Back To Top Page Anchor
Posted: July 11, 2007 at 10:35 AM by Ben Nadel
Traditionally, I think a lot of people use a named Anchor tag to create a "Back To Top" page anchor: <a name="top"></a> I know that I've done that. But, it always felt a bit ganky to me. I mean, the first element in your page is a useless link? That just feels wrong, doesn't it? Just recently, I found out that you can refer to e... read more »
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Sandra Clark Rocked My World
Posted: July 11, 2007 at 7:50 AM by Ben Nadel
I'm not just a web developer, I'm a ColdFusion applications developer. I'm also a graphic designer, a user interface designer, and I try to keep a constant view of the overall user experience in mind. Just like the lot of you, I have to employ many different skill sets to get work done on a daily basis. As such, there's always about a thousand dif... read more »
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My Shortie: Ray Camden's Beginner ColdFusion Contest (Monster Maker)
Posted: May 16, 2007 at 9:19 AM by Ben Nadel
Now that Ray Camden's Beginner ColdFusion Content has ended, I can discuss my unofficial entry. Seeing as I am not a beginner, I could not technically enter the contest, but I thought it would be a cool little project to have a go at, especially since I am not tremendously proficient with CFCs and object oriented programming (OOP). Before I get... read more »
