solidhex.com

Slowly but surely, I am finally starting to make some tweaks around here. Firstly, I’ve updated the blogroll list, but I am taking (what I think) is a unique approach; I’ve either met or worked with everyone on my blogroll list at some point or another. I am doing this for two reasons:

1. It will help me remember everyone I’ve met during the course of the year at conferences and meet-ups.
2. It makes me look more important than I actually am.

And by met, I mean in person, face-to-face. I think this will encourage me to introduce myself to more people. In the interest of full disclosure, I basically stole the idea from Jeremy Keith’s bedroll. He takes it one step further by actually requiring a stay over night and a bouzouki serenade, but that’s more than I willing to extend myself at this juncture. Speaking of Jeremy, he is not yet on my list, even though I’ve had iChat conversations with him a couple of times and sat next to him at a panel or two, it’s not kosher per my strict sidebar-linking guidelines. For everyone else on my list, it’s a sure bet I’ve either talked geek with or work with them.

Other minor tweaks as well as vast re-aligns are coming shortly as I find time. But let it be said, I am really committed to improving this site. Where did all this zest and vigor come from? I’ve been a front-end web developer, full time, for the last four years at Fluidesign. I’ve been tinkering on the web for eight years. It’s been a long time since I’ve done anything other than client work. Plus, I want to give a little back to the web community at large if I can. I’ve learned countless time saving tricks and bug fixes from everyone else, and it’s high time I bring something to the table other than my own hungry, fat stomach.

I’ve run into a rather odd Explorer bug of late. The issue has to do with floated or positioned text and line-height. Explorer has many well documented bugs regarding text, positioning and floats, which you can brush up on at PIE. Chances are you are already quite familiar with that list. After some Googling, I still couldn’t find a definitive answer to my problem though, so I’ve decided to document it here.

The bug

When text is floated or positioned in Explorer, the line-height seems to be reduced to the point of the text being cut off. This quirk is most notable when a larger, seriffed typeface is used, but can also be quite noticeable with Arial in particular. Below is a screen shot of what it looks like in IE7 and you can also view the HTML file from whence the screenshot came. Sometimes, this bug goes unnoticed if the cut off portion of the text is very minimal, but if you were to look really closely, you would notice it. In fact, in some cases, I didn’t notice it myself until it was pointed out to me by the all seeing eye of QA4U.

Workarounds

So far, I’ve found three workarounds:

1. Increase the line-height to an arbitrary value until text is fully visible.
2. Wrap text in a floated container.
3. For positioned text, add padding.

While option 1 works, it requires some fudging. Generally, you have to increase the line-height to equal the size of the font. So for example, if the text size is 32 pixels, the line-height should be at least 32 pixels, but you will have to ‘eyeball’ it to get it to look right. The drawback that I’ve found to this method is that the increased line-height can create vertical spacing issues with other layout elements, not to mention you will need to adjust every single header or paragraph that has floated text.

Option 2 works brilliantly and doesn’t require any jiggery-pokery with line-height settings, but the drawback here is that it means an extra div in your markup which might not be desirable to you.

Option 3 has the same potential drawbacks as option 1. You might be able to get away with adding arbitrary padding to the text in some designs, but other designs may be more strict, so it’s clearly not an across the board solution.

In my case, I had dozens of headers floated left and links floated right, so method two won out, which is the solution I provided on the example page. It also had the advantage of me being able to reproduce the design I was coding more closely, which pleased the designer, so the extra divs didn’t cause any premature hair loss.

Conclusion

This is certainly not an exhaustive list of workarounds or fixes, just three quick methods I found of sidestepping the issue. If anyone knows of a fix that does NOT involve altering the structural layer, why the bug is occurring in the first place, or both, I’d love to hear about it. Happy coding!

I will skip the usual ‘long time, no post’ verbiage and skip right to talking about where I was from March 7 - March 12; SXSWi. They say it gets bigger and bigger every year. If that’s true, I can’t possibly wrap my mind around next year’s festival.

There was definitely a slant toward business and marketing this year, but us coding nerds were there in full force as the “Secrets of JavaScript Libraries” panel proved. It was GREAT to see some code on those slides after days of high level argument and theory. Don’t get me wrong, I find that stuff fascinating as well, but for me, I tend to get a little more excited when I can see the rubber hit the road and check out some examples. Since I know we’re all fans of lists, down below is my list of panels that I thought were really worth their weight in salt:

• Secrets of JavaScript Libraries
• Browser Wars: Deja Vu All Over Again?
• A Critical Look at OpenID
• Building Portable Social Networks
• The Art of Self-Branding
• Client-Side Code and Internationalization

I will not bother with a ‘worst of’ list because frankly, I didn’t see anything that was dreadful, which if anything, is a testament to how well the conference is put together over all.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t have a few gripes, however.

I think the layout of the Austin Convention Center is bizarre; who has ever heard of a building that has separate elevators to go the third and fourth floors? Why did we have certain panels and presentations in the massive ballrooms that were half-full and cram Mark Cuban and Mike Eisner into a 100 seat room? Ditto that with Browser Wars. I mean, we had the bloody creator of JavaScript in there, don’t you think at a festival of web-heads that might get just a little bit of attention?

But I really can’t bitch too much. I had a great time in The Live Music Capital of the World and got to meet some great people who all have a passion for the same things I do. How often do you get to say that?

This, without a doubt, has been my busiest December ever. It included a trip to Web Design World 2007 in Boston, temporary relocation from my apartment due to mold infestation, an office move, client work and of course Christmas and New Years. Don’t mistake that for complaining mind you, I just never realized how many fun-filled activities could be jam-packed into one calendar month.

Due to the benevolent nature of my employer, our office is officially closed from now through January 2. It truly is the most wonderful time of the year. It would have been more pleasant to kick off my vacation without the flu, but hey, can’t have your cake and eat it too, right? Even if I were to eat said cake, it probably would taste like Styrofoam anyway.

This is all a very long winded way of me wishing everyone the best for the holidays and the coming year. And speaking of the coming year, perhaps I will finally actually do something with my bit of cyber real estate - I’ve been rocking the default WordPress theme for about, oh, four months now?

My major flaw has (always) been that I will hash and re-hash a layout or design or CSS file about 10,000 times only to then either banish it to the recycle bin, or just store it my archives. When I saw Dan Cederholm speak a few weeks back in Boston, he made reference to the book Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard, and the notion of an 80 percenter. Perhaps I need that more philosophical approach to my work. I might actually get something done!

My plans of relaunching with a fresh theme have been derailed oh so slightly by a crazy work week. No excuses. Always play like a champion. Currently, I split blogging duties between solidhex and The Company’s internal blog. Said company blog will become public in the very near future. Imagine my embarrassment if my personal site isn’t up to date by then.

Realizing I won’t have much validity as a front end technologist running the default WordPress install, I have begun tinkering away on my own custom theme. It won’t be winning any Webby awards, to be sure, but it will be something crafted and slaved over by the solidhex committee. As things have slowed down a bit for me at The Company, I have stolen a few extra hours every night to fire up Photoshop and fiddle about with a grid based layout.

I figure I will give this whole blogging thing a twirl and see if it’s for me.

In keeping with true geek fashion, I have left the title of my first post as is. Consider it a nod to all the ones who stood before me. Those of you not familiar with programming parlance might not recognize the above catch phrase. Typically, it’s the first script you write in any programming language to get a feel for the syntax. It’s not particularly clever or cute anymore, but it’s kind of a tradition.

If you are really interested - even though I can’t imagine you are - you can read all the gory details via Wikipedia. This counts as your ‘learn something new everyday’ bit, so you owe me one.