A Macro Liquid CSS Layout of the monkeeworks Home Page

Hi, there! If you are a returning visitor, you might notice that the monkeeworks home page (this page) is a slightly different. It is. There are two new panels: (1) "Photo Op" and (2) this one "New Home Page".

What I get a kick of is that if you maximize your browser in a newer WXGA (1280x800) or larger screen, the two new panels will appear as a third column at the right of your screen. At 1600x1200, you will see a fourth column! At an older style XGA resolution (1024x768), the third column becomes part of the bottom half of the "fold" (meaning you have to page down to see it). If you have a monitor capable of better than 1024x768, try playing with your browser size, then observe the transition.

If you don't find it interesting, you haven't read about CSS liquid, frozen, or jello layouts. I think the layout of this third column is a macro application of CSS liquid layouts. The cool things you can do with CSS boxes...

I've verified that the macro liquid layout of the home page works on IE 6 and 7, FF 3, and Safari 1.3.

-Clifford Vincent Arrow
clifford.arrow@monkeeworks.com

Spring 2009

A Note about Gender

I was walking puppy Miat (a Maltese) this morning. We had two encounters with ladies who assumed Miat was a girl despite his having a blue leash (blue for boys, pink for girls). Both had said they thought I was a Carolina fan. Many times puppy books will use the female gender pronoun to generically refer to puppies. This appears to be the convention. Trivia: Cesar Millan in Cesar's Way makes a point to alternate between he/she for dogs and humans from chapter-to-chapter.

Agony with Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 Floats, Divs, and Hyperlinks

I just spent the past 4 hours trying to figure out why a float'ed hyperlinked image intermittently worked when clicked. Interestingly, this problem occurs only with Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, not 6. Of course, firefox handles the case correctly.

Here's the scenario: I have a left float'ed hyperlinked image div, followed by a right float'ed hyperlinked image div, and then followed by a non-float'ed textual div. I found out that a in-line tag pair in its non-float'ed textual div will sometimes cause only a portion of either of the two hyperlinked image div's to work. In my case, I had to remove a <em></em> tag pair in the third non-float'ed textual div.

How's that for throwing a monkey wrench into the works? Thanks, microsoft. Not.

Miat (the Maltese Puppy) Mistaken for a Guinea pig

A funny thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago while I was walking our new puppy Miat (a Maltese). A lady was walking towards us on the other side of the street. As she approached, she crossed the street and told me: "I didn't know that was a dog. I thought you were walking your Guinea pig." That was funny. After she said that, I thought to myself, yeah, he that comparison is very apt.

Site Updates....

Whew... This site is now powered with server-side scripting, PHP! Yeah, baby, yeah. Now the menu breadcrumbs (i.e., home->projects->etc.) are generated with PHP (You'll notice php extensions instead of .html ones in your URL box.) Previously, they were generated with javascript. What's the significance? So, javascript does not have to be enabled on the user's browser to see the breadcrumb trail.

Also, the conventional wisdom for SEO (search engine optimization) is to have all navigation links delivered in simple, plain html, instead of relying on javascript, so that the search bots can crawl all over my site and be happy. ...But wait, you say, what about people who have previously book marked any URL's with html extensions? Thanks to Apache's Redirect directive, all those old links get 301 (permanent) redirects. That's cool.

Additional trivia... Updated my favicon.ico (you know the cute icon that IE and FF will display on the the tabs or bookmarks) so that the background is transparent. Previously, I had set it to white so that I could "matte" the image/background for a better quality icon, but since the background varies when the favicon.ico is displayed, I changed it to a non-matte transparent background for a little more refined browser experience. And, finally, I changed the » (called a guillemet character) in the breadcrumb menu to to snazzy up its appearance.

P.S. Miat arrives tomorrow!

Slowness with CS3 Photoshop

Recently, I've begun noticing that my CS3 Photoshop was taking longer and longer to open files. This morning it go so bad that it took about 3 minutes to open a Camera Raw *.CR2 file.

I did a quick google and found out that if a network printer is configured on the machine (but is offline), file opening can be very slow. For my case, my default printer was a network printer (which was offline). I just made another printer my default (my virtual Adobe Acrobat PDF printer) and wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am. PS CS3 opens up files like grease lightning. Thanks to the internet community and to google!

The Value of Second Place

I know why having a Big Brown Day reminded me of the Tour de France. When I was a kid growing up on the Hawaiian island of Molokai, Uncle Max (not my real uncle, but I called him that), cheered me up one day after I complained to him of always coming in second at something (can't remember what). He pointed out that a cyclist in the Tour who always or almost always placed second in each stage was virtually guaranteed the overall Tour win. (Uncle Max was an avid cycling fan.) I guess that always stuck with me. Now, of course, Big Brown didn't come in second at Belmont, but I think Uncle Max would have told Big Brown (if horses could talk) not to give up.

Ever Have a Big Brown Day?

I'm not a huge follower of horse racing, but I did follow odds-on-favorite Big Brown fail at his bid be a Triple Crown winner in a long time. Some say he just had a "bad day." Something about his shocking and disappointing lost at Belmont resonated with me. Ever bought high, then later sold low? Ever played a sport in which you liked but never could be the best in? Yes, I've had many "it's just not my day" days. They're hard to deal with. Sometimes you just lose spirit, the optimism just wanes out.

I remember what former cyclist/TV commentator Bob Roll had said was Lance Armstrong's most memorable accomplishment in all his Tour de France victories. It was when the chips were down for Armstrong in stage 15 in his bid to win the 2003 Tour de France. During that mountain stage, Armstrong's specialty, Armstrong dramatically falls once and stumbles once. Later, it becomes clear that Armstrong was struggling in his personal life as well with his later divorce that year. Yet, despite these setbacks, after his fall and stumble in stage 15, he goes on the attack to win the stage and the 2003 Tour by 61 seconds, his narrowest Tour win ever. I remember watching that event live on TV and being a bit puzzled at Roll's choice of Armstrong's best Tour moment.

But upon later reflection, it makes sense to me despite the cliche. A person often defines himself/herself on how he behaves when things are near their worst. On whether his determination shines through or is snuffed out when the odds are against him. Despite the cliche, I agree, "it's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game." Easy to say, hard to truly appreciate and remember when things are looking bad for you. But I think it's the right attitude to take when things are looking grim.