Kevin Dancy: The Philosopher's Toolbox

Sat, 08 May 2004 19:04:27 GMT

Zeldman Style: Our good friends at Ozonation.org have alerted us to a great RSS newsreader for Linux: Liferea. The Philosopher's Toolbox never looked better.

Oh, right, where was I?

Wed, 24 Mar 2004 23:21:40 GMT

Almost forgot the logging part of web logs. A quick update. The fall: not great. Lots and lots of work. Little opportunity to write. The spring: lots and lots of work. Slightly more opportunity to write. Most recently: Took a right turn into Aristotle's account of motion. Have not been seen since.

Mon, 15 Sep 2003 19:48:13 GMT

Sure would be nice to have a 'Previous/Next' navigation macro built into Radio.

Mon, 15 Sep 2003 05:59:32 GMT

Built a module out of MS Access, Applescript and BBEdit to generate web pages from database records. Again. This time I'm using tables to display the data. Crude but effective cms.

Fri, 12 Sep 2003 07:17:16 GMT

New section for web design resources. First feature: an overview of open source CMMS's (Computerized Maintenance Management Software), as well as Project Management/ Job Ticketing/ Help Desk applications.

Thu, 04 Sep 2003 20:36:56 GMT

It's been a busy summer, but not for my own web work. Origianl content the old fashioned way: on paper. Experimenting with digital photography, and looking into linux-based group ware. Massey College has a new website. Nice job Marc! The css alone is a thing of wonder.

Sat, 05 Jul 2003 18:46:01 GMT

Dreaweaver MX first impression: The visual editing side of this visual editor is greatly enhanced and much more can be done with a click of a mouse. The site management and content menagement features (carried through from earlier versions) are also very handy, and the ability to view the markup directly (a necessity!) remains, and is easily accessible. But somehow I feel I was more efficient writing markup with just BBedit and a browser. The help function also seems to be greatly expanded and better integrated with other MX products, but also more unwieldy (i.e. more navigation and less text per page -- very irritating when you want the answer to a question fast). However, since I'm not producing Flash or using .asp, .jsp, .cfm, .php, etc., I haven't found any advantage to the MX side of Dreamweaver MX so far, or to its much-heralded easy integration with other development tools. But we'll see. On the plus side -- the new version installed without a flaw and recognised all my old settings and sites, and it does what it says it does very well -- i.e it is a powerful visual editor.

Summary: With a much expanded graphical interface, Dreamweaver MX lets you do more with the click of a mouse than ever before. Dreamweaver MX also promises more integration with other authoring tools, but if you prefer to edit your markup directly and your needs are simple (i.e you are not serving pages dynamically), you aren't going to see much of an advantage (beyond the possibility of future expansion as your needs and skills grow). On the other hand, the built in site management and content management features are very useful. This, combined with the ability to edit the markup directly makes Dreamweaver a keeper for me.

Mon, 26 May 2003 05:34:58 GMT

Original content? You bet. Just not here. Web page production with Dreamweaver MX (will have to see how far it can be pushed in the way of CMS). Database development. And Aristotle. Lots of Aristotle.

Sat, 12 Apr 2003 20:10:28 GMT

Wondering where I got to? The last two months have been busy. Very busy. Wrote my first ever Apple Script. Used the experience gained working with templates, scripting and the Radio CMS to turn a Microsoft Access database into a cms and then used it to publish a 450 item photo database, in xhtml. Am writing a primer on web technologies. Worked on my thesis, compiling a 40 page collecion of citations and tranlations of Aquinas's use of the term 'dispositive cause'. Did an awful lot of other work which has nothing to do with computers (but lots to do with people). Took a vacation (and 200 pictures).

Sun, 02 Feb 2003 07:27:31 GMT

New template for the 'Classic Toolbox' theme. Look for it in the Template Design Lab. This one provides better structure.

Sat, 18 Jan 2003 06:18:41 GMT

What am I doing these days? Producing original content. Just not here. But stay tuned anyway.

Mon, 06 Jan 2003 18:23:57 GMT

Happy New Year!

Sat, 28 Dec 2002 03:10:13 GMT

Merry Christmas!

Sun, 24 Nov 2002 19:43:14 GMT

Ha! Template version 5 now works in IE 5.5 Win. Removing the background color from the parent of the floated and absolutely positioned divs (by wrapping them in a div without background attributes) did the trick. Wow, is this ever a bizarre bug. What have we learned? (i) The parent of block level elements with attribute: float (left or right), or position: absolute cannot have a background color or image, otherwise the margins or parent and child are, um, rendered unpredictably in IE 5 win. (ii) either the parent and any floated child must have position relative, or neither may have it, otherwise the child is rendered behind the parent. (In which case the child will completely dissappear if the parent has a background color or image).

Sun, 24 Nov 2002 19:24:35 GMT

The dissappearing middle column problem is fixed in Template version 5 in IE 5 win. One problem left: improperly positioned left column. All thanks to 'Big John'.

Sun, 24 Nov 2002 18:54:30 GMT

The problems with template version 6.0 in IE5.5 win are fixed. The tip came from Big John's experiments with nested floats. John covers a variety of rendering bugs having to do with the unharmonic convergence of position attributes, float attributes, background attributes, and margin attributes. The analysis is good but the complexity makes it a little hard to follow. Here's a quick summary of the 'IE lost left margin with right float bug' (as I understand it): (i) If a block level parent with width and margins is assigned position: static or position: relative, it must be given a width, or it and its child will lose their left margin. If it is assigned position: absolute everything is ok. (ii) If a block level parent which has a background color or image contains a div with float: right, the parent (i.e. the div with the background), and the child (i.e. the floated div) lose their left margins. (iii) Similarly, if an element with position: absolute is placed within a block level parent that has a background color or image, it will kill the left attribute in the child. To avoid the bug: the parent of the floated element should have no margins (or perhaps no background color or image - he doesn't mention this option); Also: (iv) If the parent of a floated element has a background, then either the parent and the floated child must be given position: relative, or else neither should have it. Otherwise IE will put the floated child element behind the background of its parent element. (This is the bug that killed the first shot at template version 6 in IE5.5. It was solved by removing position: relative from the parent of the floated divs, so that neither the parent nor the child would have position: relative). Exciting, no?

Sun, 24 Nov 2002 06:44:20 GMT

Template Verions 5 and 6 both work great in IE5.1 Mac, Mozilla 1.1 Mac, and Netscape 6.0 Win. But some very wonky browswer bugs in IE5.5 Win are toasting both designs. Diagnosis continues thanks to the forensic work of 'Big John' and friends.

Sun, 24 Nov 2002 06:38:14 GMT

Template design continues, but with a shift in focus. Rather than begin by attempting to reproduce the original design with structural xhtml and css, and then assessing the impact on accessibility, I've begun by asking "what is the best structure from the viewpoing of logic and accessibility" and then assessed the implications for visual formatting. Conclusion: The content should be divided into 'primary' and 'secondary'. The content in the middle column is the page's primary content. The content in the right column contains highlight, notes, call-outs, etc. It is secondary in importance, and should definitely come after the primary content in the source, and in an unstyled page. The navigation elements can be divided into: site navigation, section navigation, and subsection navigation. Site navigation should always come at the top of the page, section and subsection navigation could (reasonably) come before the primary content, or after the secondary content, in the source and on the unstyled page. Template versions 5 and 6 are derived from these general guidelines. Version 5 uses absolute positioning to place the subsection navigation after the secondary content. Verion 6 uses floats to place the subsection navigation after the section navigation, but before the primary content.

Thu, 14 Nov 2002 05:50:09 GMT

Placed a link to The Template Design Lab on the sidebar. Thanks to the Radio CMS one line of markup propagates to the entire archive the next time I republish the site.

Thu, 14 Nov 2002 05:10:04 GMT

Revised version 3.0 of the Classic Toolbox template to make the navigation links in the unstyled pages more reader friendly. Introduced 3.0b for those who prefer to have a fixed width set on the left hand column. This also puts the left sidebar ahead of the middle column's content on the unstyled page. I've been mulling over the pros and cons of always attempting to place the navigation elements after the main content. (In this case the situation is more complicated, since some of the content in the left sidebar is part of the main content, but lets pretend it wasn't.) My opinion: Insofar as navigation elements may be important for readers to understand and move through the site intelligently (and find what they want quickly) it sometimes makes sense to put some navigation elements before the main content on an unstyled page. Designer's beware: accessibility is now, and always has been a matter of intelligent communication. And that always takes careful judgement applied to particular cases.

Wed, 13 Nov 2002 06:26:39 GMT

Fixed format problems with the recent post list by giving it its own id declaration and changing the divs to spans.

Wed, 13 Nov 2002 06:06:47 GMT

Just solved an old, nagging problem with the CMS. Added one line to the root pref file, and 15 characters to the root template for non-home pages, and the proper category name for this weblog shows up in all the titles (i.e. 'The Philosopher's Toolbox'). Amazingly simple, Radio's macro and prefs files function as a 'cascading CMS' where the prefs in each directory set the values for all subdirectories. Very nice. Easy to grasp.

Wed, 13 Nov 2002 04:29:45 GMT

Fixed the 'large print' bug on the story pages. Now, selecting 'large print' from the Appearance Preference dropdown menu will actually give you large print in the body text for everything which isn't a blog page. Thanks to the miracle of CSS, that site-wide modification required changing 4 characters in one document. Go style sheets go! Thanks Marc for the heads-up.

Thu, 07 Nov 2002 06:07:11 GMT

Tweeked yesterday's templates based on thoughful feedback from a friend (thanks Marc!), continued runination, and added Version 2.0b, which should make the unstyled page a little easier to read. It's hard to know which version is best. Version 2.0b will be the slickest to render, and the unstyled page is clear and well structured. But if you want to cut through the navigation and sidebar content and get to the substance (as you would if the page were an article, story, journal entry, etc., and not just a big annotated bunch of links) then you might want the middle column pushed right up under the title block on the unstyled page (and everything else appearing after it). In which case, Version 3.0's your man.

Wed, 06 Nov 2002 18:26:25 GMT

Template revision continues with some nice new xhtml and css designs. Check them out here. The pages validate. Now its time to test them in various browsers.