sometimes a blog by Dan Greene
July was a quiet month in Library Monk blog land, but a busy one in real life. I’m officially out of MU’s SISLT Ph.D program and our house is for sale.
I’ve accepted a job at Hodges Library, IT Technologist III in Library Outreach. We move in to a leased townhouse on the 25th and I have orientation on the 28th.
Anybody want to help us pack? To any Knoxville folks you’re welcome to help us unpack.
I’ve applied for a job in Knoxville. No, I’m not going to tell you what it is, you think I want everybody applying for it? 🙂 It does tie in my web design skills and library background nicely and I hope I get the job.
I’ve tried the PhD thing twice now, once at UT and currently here at Missouri. It’s really not for me. But if nothing else comes along I’ll finish out my assistantship here and possibility even finish the PhD if I can keep myself motivated that long. But I’ve determined academic research isn’t for me, I’d rather be out there doing something.
Stephanie is applying for jobs both here in Missouri and at UT. So who gets a job where and when determines who moves back to Knoxville first. But we’ll both be in Knoxville eventually along with Lisa and all the critters.
Wish us luck. 🙂
I just installed IE 7 Beta 2. Very minimalist approach, almost too minimal. You can add toolbars to the interface, but adding things in destroys the look Microsoft is going for. IE 7 also appears to introduce more CSS bugs instead of fixing them. Or maybe I have a hack in my left side navigation that IE 7 doesn’t like.
Visually I like the new look, but the CSS behind the site is pretty complex, I’m sure it’s more complex than it needs to be. There are lots of fixes in there for browser bugs/CSS glitches.
http://www.librarymonk.com/wp-content/themes/monastery/style.css
Most of these fixes are for browsers that very few people still use. I’d rather the content be readable across browsers, instead of pixel perfect. CSS this complex has got to be slowing things down, the file is 471 lines long.
So far my attempts to whittle down the CSS has managed to break things. I’d like to have just what I need to preserve the major aspects of look of the site. I don’t really care of the margins differ across browsers etc.
Anybody want to help me out? 🙂
I know someone who insists on using Netscape 4.7 on Mac OS 9.2. Not only that, they insist on telling other people how good Netscape 4.7 is and telling people they should design their sites for Netscape 4.7.
For those of you doing the math, the Netscape 4.x line started in June 1997. The last of the 4.x versions, 4.8, was release in August 2002. More history is available from the Netscape Browser Archive. Depending on the exact version number Netscape 4.7 was “current” anywhere from September 1999 to November 2001. In early 2003 Apple stopped shipping systems with the option of OS 9.2.
Don’t get me wrong, older technology is great if it’s all you have and it does what you need. I still have Lynx installed on my Windows XP box for testing accessibility. I know the limitations of using a text only browser in 2006. Netscape 4.7 wasn’t even a good browser when it was current.
How do you get someone stuck in the last decade to see the light. There are scores of reasons to move on and sometimes a line must be drawn . So how do you get someone out of an outdated technology rut?
The Acid 2 Test is a holy grail of web standards support that designers wish browser maker would strive for. Basically if your browser can display this page as a smiley face, it has good standards support.
Internal builds of Safari, Opera, and Konqueror all pass the Acid 2 Test. But the first publicly available browser to pass the test is iCab 3.0 beta, for Mac OS X, currently at build 280. Really surprising considering how bad iCab used to be.
I came across a nice article at Digital Web Magazine that introduces PHP and tells you how to do simple, useful things. You won’t be able to write a complex script with this info, but it’s good for adding things like menus or copyright statements to every page of your site.
Web Page Design for Designers October 2003 issue has articles on CSS support in current browsers as well as in Dreamweaver MX 2004. The review of Dreamweaver wasn’t glowing but I’ll probably get it at some point since I can get student pricing at the UT Computer Store.