As a web developer, one of the things I struggle with is keeping my CSS files from becoming a complete disaster. I’m sure that some of you reading this share my pain. A couple days ago, I ran across a post by Emil Stenström about what he calls the Tree Method.
Overall, it seems to make a lot of sense. The only thing I might object to is organizing properties alphabetically. Grouping related properties makes more sense to me, even though it often means I’m not totally consistent with how I order them.
So, I ask those of you who are good with CSS (I know that at least one of you are): Would you recommend this method? What would you tweak to make it better? Do you have another method that you feel is better?
Whenever my dad and I talk about tech stuff, I invariably tell him that I think Microsoft is in real trouble. I get the feeling that he thinks I’m full of hot air. Think I’m wrong? Check out the story of how the Shut Down menu in Windows Vista was designed. Does this sound like a healthy company to you?
In about an hour, I’ll be on my way to the airport, then flying to Ohio, for a much-needed vacation. I will likely not have internet access, so call me if you need anything.
I wanted to mention a few things before I leave.
First, Chris Pirillo has announced that Gnomedex 7 will be held in Seattle. I’ll definitely be there again.
Tuesday night, Gabe and I updated MotoringFile’s theme. I’m proud of how it turned out. Please let me know if you see anywhere we could make improvements, either with the design or the code.
Also on Tuesday, I spotted my first counterfeit MINI. Take a guess at what it really is.
I think that’s about it. Have a great Thanksgiving.
Go Irish!
I know this is a long shot, but do you understand Greek? The post by Andy Beard that I wrote about the other day is listed in the show notes for an episode of a Greek podcast called Newslens. I’d really like to know what they say about it.
I get the feeling that I might get some flak for saying this, but I think Show Me (via stereogum) by John Legend is an extremely beautiful song. On top of that, it’s great to know that there’s still some dignified R&B out there.
It’s too bad that the cynical hipsters at stereogum are so blinded by their stereotyping and Buckley-worship.
I’ve been having a conversation with Andy Beard on a post of his entitled “Google are killing the future of RSS“. For some reason, my most recent comment has not appeared on the page. I can only assume that he did not appreciate its tone. So, I have decided to post the comment here:
The task list examples are bogus. It’s the user’s personal
information, not the publisher’s. The user should be able to do what
he wants with it, even accidentally share it with the world.
The financial information and marketing examples do have some merit.
(Why someone would subscribe to a feed full of marketing speak is
beyond me. But whatever.)
However, I don’t think any of these cases are strong enough to warrant
adding a no-sharing restriction to feeds. (I’m taking back the “more
power to you” statement in my last post. That was an incredibly stupid
thing to say.) I’ve come to the realization that what we’re really
talking about is a DRM scheme. We’ve already seen the kind of damage
that can be done with DRM in the music, film, and ebook industries.
Adding it to RSS for some short-term gain would be a disaster.
There’s another programmatic way you could solve this problem. Simply
prevent applications that allow for sharing to access your feeds. Very
easy to implement. It would also help you with your goal of having
less readers.
This is old news, but it’s worth pointing at, as it will likely affect the work of many of my readers: Tim Berners-Lee says the W3C plans on setting up a new HTML workgroup that will make incremental, parallel changes to HTML and XHTML. There will also be a new XHTML 2 group to work on a completely new spec.
Let’s hope they manage to keep all the cats moving with the herd this time.
