http://meyerweb.com Things that Eric A. Meyer, CSS expert, writes about on his personal Web site; it's largely Web standards and Web technology, but also various bits of culture, politics, personal observations, and other miscellaneous stuff Fri, 22 May 2009 12:39:32 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en It's taken me slightly more than a month to write this post. It's about people at their best. Last month, just after speaking at a conference in Amsterdam, my laptop was stolen. Actually, to be more painfully accurate, my laptop case was stolen---and inside it at the time was the laptop, ... http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2009/05/20/kept-afloat-in-amsterdam/ There's something about the Diggbroglio that has left me scratching my head: how is it that so many people are up in arms about the DiggBar when they've had nothing to say about the framing bars of StumbleUpon, FaceBook, etc. etc.? Now, please note that I'm not saying the DiggBar, ... http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2009/04/14/digging-in-the-mud/ In creating the combo-bar charts for the survey report, I stumbled into an Explorer bug that I didn't remember ever seeing before, and Google didn't turn up anything that seemed to be related. This could easily mean that I'm the only person who ever did something this insane and ... http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2009/04/11/handling-an-explicit-width-bug-in-internet-explorer/ At last---at long, long last!---the results of the A List Apart Survey 2008 are available, along with the anonymized raw data we collected. There are a great many reasons why it took so long to get this out the door. A big part is that it's almost entirely a volunteer ... http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2009/04/07/findings-of-the-a-list-apart-survey-2008/ One of the things that I've found mind-bendingly annoying about Leopard (besides its complete refusal to allow classic window management) is the "this file was downloaded from the internet, are you sure you want to open it?" dialog box. Yes, damn it: I just downloaded the file with the ... http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2009/03/13/disabling-downloaded-file-warnings-in-leopard/ (This is part of the Feedback on ‘WaSP Community CSS3 Feedback 2008′ series.) My few thoughts on the "Graphical Effects" part of the feedback document. A lot of what was mentioned by the community is already in the pipeline, so there's not a lot to say about those except "hurry ... http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2009/02/24/css3-feedback-graphical-thoughts/ When I was in Boston earlier this month, one of the people I'd thought to hang out with was Jared Spool, and of course he was on the other side of the country while I was in his hometown. This was a bit of a downer but I figured, ... http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2009/02/20/london-the-gathering/ (This is part of the Feedback on 'WaSP Community CSS3 Feedback 2008' series.) The portion of the feedback devoted to shapes had two overarching themes, as I saw it. That makes this entry a bit short, but when I tried to combine it with my feedback on "Graphical Effects", it ... http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2009/02/19/css3-feedback-animated-shapes/ (This is part of the Feedback on 'WaSP Community CSS3 Feedback 2008' series.) Not surprisingly, there was a lot of community feedback asking for better layout mechanisms. Actually, people were asking for any decent layout mechanism at all, which CSS has historically lacked. Floats mostly work, but they're a ... http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2009/02/17/wanted-layout-system/ (This is part of the Feedback on 'WaSP Community CSS3 Feedback 2008' series.) In this round, layout. Not all of it, but the bits that struck me as either really useful or really, really way too long overdue. Float containment -- yes, we need a property that does just that. ... http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2009/02/16/css3-feedback-layout/ (This is part of the Feedback on 'WaSP Community CSS3 Feedback 2008' series.) Out of all the selector feedback, selector blocks was the part that really caught my attention. I also see the usefulness of a parent selector, but that one has come up many times before, and it's always ... http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2009/02/12/selector-blocks/ Back before holiday season hit, Elika Etemad---better known as Fantasai---published WaSP Community CSS3 Feedback 2008. I gave it a read and came away with a number of things I wanted to say. So many things, in fact, that I'll need to split them up into a series of ... http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2009/02/11/feedback-on-wasp-community-css3-feedback-2008/ Human beings say, "It never rains but it pours." This is not very apt, for it frequently does rain without pouring. The rabbits' proverb is better expressed. They say, "One cloud feels lonely"... ---Richard Adams, Watership Down The past few weeks have been a bit more intense than usual. ... http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2009/02/09/lifes-rich-tapestry/ Hey all, and especially those of you in the EU: I'm going to be doing an all-new one-day workshop in London in early March via the offices of Carson Workshops, for whom I've done workshops in the past. Previously I've done two-day gigs with a beginner-to-intermediate skill range, but ... http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2009/01/29/london-cssxhtml-workshop/ How many times have you played out the following scenario? Makes local changes to your style sheet(s). Upload the changes to the staging server. Switch to your browser and hit "reload". Nothing happens. Force-reload. Nothing happens. Go back to make sure the upload is finished and successful. Reload again. Still nothing. Try sprinkling in !important. Upload, ... http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2009/01/22/using-http-headers-to-serve-styles/