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WordPress, I love you, but you drive me crazy
What’s even more extremely current than “bleeding edge”? Well, whatever it is, I’m not it. But I still try to keep my software as current as possible, and that includes updating WordPress whenever a...
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The iPokédex is here!
Yes, I am into Pokémon. Way more than any 34-year-old could possibly justify. At least I have a kid I can use as my excuse. But it’s getting pretty serious. First the DS video games, now the trading...
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Putting my money where my mouth is. OK, not money, but code. And not mouth,...
On my Tools page, I tout my use of jQuery, which is true (I do use it), but up to now I wasn’t actually using it on my own site. Like the unkempt barber, I was always too busy cutting everyone else’s...
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Fun with site usage stats
OK, “fun” may be an exaggeration, but it is interesting to look at these stats for room34.com courtesy of Google Analytics. The usage statistics that are always of the most interest to web designers...
View ArticleTrying out a new look
I’m trying out another new look for this blog. This design will probably evolve over time, but I am excited about the new direction — most significantly, the new colors, and the custom fonts using...
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The new site design, phase two
As I mentioned the other day, the initial launch of this new site design was just phase one — window dressing. Window dressing I happen to like a lot, but still… same old clunky underlying structure....
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Incremental redesign
If you are the a regular reader of this blog, you may notice things look slightly different than they did before. The light blue striped background behind the right sidebar is gone; there’s navigation...
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UoP’s Greatest Hits
In the spirit of “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all,” I will refrain from writing about last night’s midterm election results, except to say, “Don’t blame Minneapolis.” Also, to...
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Yes, it’s… yet another redesign
I’ve redesigned this blog more times than I can count. Many of those redesigns have been incremental tweaks, to be sure, but still, there’ve been probably dozens of times that I’ve completely torn it...
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Here’s the deal (sort of)…
OK, so here’s the deal (sort of) with those last couple of ambiguous posts. I’m trying to take advantage of some of the newest features of WordPress (which seem largely intended to keep WordPress...
View ArticleIt’s not finished yet, but it’s already pretty stupid…
You may or may not have seen my Stupid JavaScript Tricks A–Z page. For a while I’ve had a mildly enticing teaser on that page promising “something big” when I get to the letter D. Well, I finally...
View ArticleMore stupid web tricks coming your way…
I realize I’ve been working with PHP for too long when I get an idea like “I wonder exactly how birth rate affects population levels” and the first thing I think of is, “well why don’t I just build a...
View ArticleA fix for a fix in WordPress 2.1
One thing that surprised me when I started using WordPress again is that its search function only searches on blog posts, not on static pages. I suppose if most WordPress sites are 99.9% blog posts,...
View ArticleWordPress is great, but the documentation leaves a little to be desired…
Alas, the woes of using open source software rear their heads. WordPress abounds with undocumented, or at least very poorly documented, features. My dilemma: the default function for displaying a list...
View ArticleWow, I’m a reference in an O’Reilly code sample!
That’s not Bill O’Reilly, thank you very much, but O’Reilly, the much-lauded publisher of technology reference books. Doing a bit of narcissistic “googling,” I discovered that my site appears in the...
View ArticleAll hail PNG!
According to the official spec, it’s actually pronounced “ping,” which I dislike: “ping” already means something very specific (and very different) in the Internet world. But I’ll go along and stop...
View ArticleThe incredible ever-changing page background
Here’s more stuff that web designers might find interesting and everyone else will find either irrelevant or won’t even notice. I kind of liked the abstract image I had as the background of the pages...
View ArticleAre you a web geek? Can a 404 error page excite you?
If the former is true, it proves the latter. I’ll confess “yes” to both. Today at work I was doing some miscellaneous web-related research (aimless surfing? no, no, never), and I came across a page of...
View ArticleSidebar enhancements
You may have noticed after the current site redesign that the sidebar panels now sport toggle buttons that allow you to open and close them with slick Scriptaculous sliding effects. I’ve taken this a...
View ArticleVersion SNAFU
Today I updated WordPress for an “urgent security release,” and as usual there are unexpected side effects. For some reason now, my sliding sidebar panels no longer work. No JavaScript errors; they...
View ArticleThe pleasure (and pain) of independent discovery
I was pretty proud of myself when I came up with the solution for the dropdown menus I use in the navigation bar in my current site design. They don’t require all of the cockamamie JavaScript most...
View ArticleNew site design (partially) implemented
My guilt over slighting those regrettably still stuck using Internet Explorer 6 finally got the best of me, and I decided to do a new site design that doesn’t completely break down in that (outdated)...
View ArticleMicrosoft! You’ve done it again
Drat. As I was assembling the current site redesign, I took extra care to ensure that this time around it would be compatible with IE6, as much as a I detest it. I got rid of all of the 24-bit...
View ArticleOK, Microsoft, you’re off the hook…
But not in the way that the Cheat is off the hook. I fixed the IE6 CSS problem I ranted about yesterday, and it was perhaps one of the more satisfying solutions I’ve encountered where IE is concerned,...
View ArticleRoom 34 on iPhone
I finally got myself an iPhone on Thursday. In fact tomorrow I will have two, which is one more than I need (and is also a story for another post), but the point right now is that I finally have an...
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