Posts in the CSS Category

Last night, I announced the creation of a new mailing list devoted to practical discussions of CSS called, ingeniously enough, css-discuss.  In the first two hours we’d picked up 150 subscribers; two hours after that the list size had doubled.  As I write this, we’re passing 700 subscribers and still climbing.  If I’d known it was going to be like this, I probably never would have done it!

Of course, it wasn’t just me.  Major thanks go to John Allsopp of Western Civilisation for providing the server resources and setting up the list.  John and I will try our hardest to keep up with this runaway train, and we hope you’ll hop aboard!

• Friday, 25 January 2002 was published on Friday, January 25th, 2002.
• It was assigned to the CSS category.
• There have been no replies.

John Allsopp wrote to me today: “Now you really can say ‘my middle name is Cascading Style Sheets.'”  I guess so.  Thanks, Amazon!

• Wednesday, 24 October 2001 was published on Wednesday, October 24th, 2001.
• It was assigned to the CSS and Humor categories.
• There have been no replies.

Not much has been going on of late, at least not much that’s worth writing about here.  I mean, I had fun going to a Cleveland Barons hockey game with a friend, but is an account of Eric watching hockey interesting?  Not likely.  (Though Mark and I did have fun playing “What’s That Music On The PA?”)

In the near future, though—that’s something else again.  I’ll be teaching another CSS class for the HWG/IWA.  This one will run a little longer than six weeks because Thanksgiving is right in the middle of the class.  The last session went rather well, I thought, and the next session ought to be even better now that I have a chance to tweak the material and avoid some missteps.  Also because I’ll have a teaching assistant for the first time.  Woohoo!  Now I can foist a portion of the grading on somebody else!

• Saturday, 20 October 2001 was published on Saturday, October 20th, 2001.
• It was assigned to the CSS and General categories.
• There have been no replies.

A new month, a new beginning: I’ve launched css/edge, a place for some personal (yet public) CSS-based design experimentation.  The basic goal: to push CSS as far as I can, and to do things with HTML and CSS that nobody has ever seen before.  The first installment was the complexspiral demo; now, with the launch of css/edge, I’ve added pure CSS popups.  Investigate, share, and enjoy!

In the meantime, Kat and I are giving serious thought to renaming our guest room “Heartbreak Hotel”—not out of any love for Elvis, but because several people we know are suddenly leaving long-time partners, and some of them have dropped by/will be dropping by for a few days’ retreat.  Part of me wonders if it’s post-traumatic stress left over from last month, or if perhaps 9/11 shocked a lot of people into realizing (as one person put it) that life is both too long and too short to be unhappy.

• Monday, 1 October 2001 was published on Monday, October 1st, 2001.
• It was assigned to the CSS category.
• There have been no replies.

The complexspiral demo is now online.

• Tuesday, 18 September 2001 (redux) was published on Tuesday, September 18th, 2001.
• It was assigned to the CSS category.
• There have been no replies.

As I crawl back into update mode—last week was Web2001, where I presented quite a bit and met lots of cool folks (and got my picture taken by Heather Champ).  I also got Jeffrey Zeldman’s Taking Your Talent to the Web signed by the man himself, and then discovered that I’m mentioned in the acknowledgments.

Random thought drawn from the show: although I don’t think tables are an evil design tool, I do think they’ve poisoned and limited our ideas of what is possible in Web design.  There is another structure that can be described as a collection of cells: a prison.  It’s time for designers to break out.

If you’re dropping by to see if the complexspiral demo is live yet—no, it isn’t, but it will be soon!  I’ll be doing my best to get it and the material from my talks online in the next week or two.  I beg your patience while I get myself reoriented to life without five simultaneous high-pressure short-schedule projects.  While you’re waiting, you can get an update on nanotech use in military and civilian products from CNN.com and the Associated Press.  Thank you—please pull around to the first window.

• Monday, 10 September 2001 was published on Monday, September 10th, 2001.
• It was assigned to the CSS category.
• There have been no replies.

I surfed past Molly’s Web site and found that I’d landed (as had Kat) on Molly’s new “Famous People I Know” page (thanks Molly!), so I started wandering through some of the other sites she has listed.  Some people I know, some I don’t.  I came across a striking contemplation from a person I do know, Leslie Veen: “Is [this] what being a part of a democracy means—taking turns at cringing at the one who occupies the oval office?”  Amen, sister!  Can I get an ay-men from the audience?  Thank you.

The HWG class is settling down into some sort of interesting groove.  Week 2 went much better than Week 1, mostly because I gave the students something to actually work with, instead of grilling them on theory.  Hands-on learning—what a concept!  So we’re going to stick with that mode for the remainder of the course.  I’ve heard from a few students that while they’re struggling and sometimes confused, they’re really learning something and enjoying it.  On the other hand, roughly half the students have yet to send in any of their homework, which is a little bothersome.  Well, I’ll deal with that in a bit.

• Monday, 5 March 2001 was published on Monday, March 5th, 2001.
• It was assigned to the CSS category.
• There have been no replies.

I was going to post more political material, but realized that I’m either becoming more activist, in which case I’ll soon be writing plenty of political stuff elsewhere; or else I’m going to stop caring again, in which case why bore us both with the transitory partisan nattering?  Like you need me to tell you what to think—I can barely figure out what I think.  Anyway, the catalyst for this near-ramble was an article titled “Education, Texas Style” which I found on CNN.com.  Feel free to read it and draw your own conclusions.  Then share them with me, or your friends, or your dog, or whoever.

The CSS2 class I’m teaching is now a week underway, and I get the distinct impression I’ve overwhlemed the students pretty thoroughly, in a big fly-meets-sledgehammer kind of way.  This was not my intention, I assure you, but I believe I’ve done it anyway.  I’m going to try some new approaches in week 2, to see if they help the students reach better understanding of the concepts we’re covering.  We’ll see.

Final edits on both new books should wrap this week, and the titles should hit shelves within a month or so.  In theory.  Then I get to think about things like “watching videos” and “relaxing,” which are oddly familiar terms I’ve heard other people use and have resolved to investigate more closely.

• Monday, 26 February 2001 was published on Monday, February 26th, 2001.
• It was assigned to the CSS category.
• There have been no replies.