Jeremy French
Li'll tweaks
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
There have been a few tweaks over the last week.Firstly I have added definition lists to the selectior for the central box style used for code, unordered lists, ect. I used lots of them on the grand designs page and they look much better like this.
I have fiddled with the javascript for the drop down menu so that it will only work if it is positioned, otherwise with alternate, or no styles it would try to collapse the box and make the page look bad.
I also fixed a link on the life page as this was loosing the www. from the domain name which would stop the menus working.
I have noticed that the menu filckers on firefox so I am going to investigate that, and while I am it I will try and tidy up the css to bring down the size a bit. Then I will try and put some more content on the site. Also I am not happy with the way this blog page renders, it dosn't seem to use paragraphs may look at that
Site wide update
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Well the site has been largely static since I tweaked the layout in Feb. But I wasn't happy. I wanted some changes. I wanted things to be updated.As luck would have it I was spurred on by needing to change my hosting provider. My old one was good, but price. I wanted a cheap service. So decided to move. I didn't know if a new provider would have PHP (they did) so I looked into ways to have a meaning system without PHP.
Server side includes would be a sensible way to go, but they depend on the technology being used. Client side includes, via a .js file and document.write are the work of the devil. I didn't want to use either of those.
I decided to use a newish technology called XMLHTTPGET (XML HTTP GET) which uses a JavaScript file to read XML files from a server and gives you DOM access to that XML file. There is quite a lot of buzz about this technology. Thought I should see what it was all about. Was more or less a piece of cake. Using the example found here I put together a script that pulls in a file and puts the nav on the page using some dom insertion.
Most of the legwork was in converting the pages to use the new format and making them XHTML 1.0 compliant.
Now it seems to work fairly smoothly. For browsers that don't support XMLHTTTP get, or if there is an error or no JavaScript the accessibility menu gets displayed. This menu was put in overviews for screen readers and limited resource devices (like mobile phones) it links to the site map and the home page.
I also try to use links in the page to get around the site, where they are logical. For example a section homepage will have links to the sub sections.
So far I am happy with the results. There are still a few things that need ironing out, but it's getting there.
But what for
I have been pondering the use of this blog. I mostly set it up to see if I could get my sites formatting to work with with the blogger interface. But now it is there and really easy to edit it seems a shame not to use it.So I have decided that it will be used as a status report as to my website. I am often tweeking things on it that are not visible and it may be handy to log my progress.
So the next post will be an update of the last week or so's work.
First Post
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
This is the fist post on this blog. Just checking everything is working really.