Including a modification I applied today to fix the hover state when browsing the child menus, I think I’ve successfully applied the Suckerfish Dropdown in a vertical menu: Vertical Suckerfish Menu Test. I’m pretty happy with the way it came out even though there are a few quirks that remain unanswered.
Comments (+)
Haven’t had time to parse through the whys but I enabled transparent backgrounds for flash files by paring down the code per another A List Apart article, Flash Satay: Embedding Flash While Supporting Standards: A List Apart.
So not only do the Flash headers work with any color background now in IE and Mozilla, but they’re streamlined and validated.
Comments (+)
I stayed up late last night in a Southpark-themed study session trying to figure out how to modify the Suckerfish Dropdowns to work from a vertical instead of horizontal menu. Sleep overtook me before I could figure it out. I had planned on spending more time with the problem this weekend.
Today’s link surfing, as it turns out, led me to this article, Suckerfish Dropdowns - HTML Dog where they’ve refined the Suckerfish technique and in their examples illustrate just the method I need to accomplish what I was working on. How timely is that?
Comments (+)
It seems that code that I was using to make the flash file (for the FIR) background transparent does work in IE (6.0) even though it wasn’t working in Firefox.
Here’s the W3C recommendation for Paragraphs, Lines, and Phrases.
It should also be noted that I didn’t know about the existence of the code tag which seems to be the inline version of the block pre tag. Nor do I understand the subtleties between the acronym tag and the abbr tag.
Comments (+)
I’ll often browse articles in my surfing that I mean to go back and read in depth but then I forget what the URL is and how I found it.
There have been a number of links I’ve lost in this way but luckily this, Matthew Thomas > When semantic markup goes bad isn’t one of them. It’s an interesting article about the misuse of semantic markup for presentational use, something that I’m guilty of using the em tag to make things look italic. The article gives some examples of semantic tags and when they should be used. I was under the mistaken impression that b and i tags were depreciated.
Comments (+)
Just checked the FIR implementation in IE and discovered what they meant when they talk about the Flash of Partially Styled Content. There’s a fix at ShaunInman.com // Commentary // IFR: Revisited and Revised that I’ll have to look at. I’m also going to have to look further into making the background on the SWF file transparent to account for different background colors. I might’ve missed something simple in the original tutorial but the background color is set in the SWF file and, unless it matches, the background of the page where it’s placed, makes itself all too apparent in the layout.
Comments (+)
With only the hint of flourish, I present the Inman Flash Replacement modification.
You’ll notice the headers on the postings are in the Casablanca Antique font, provided through an innovative flash replacement technique that enables unique fonts without the labor of having to create image files for each one.
From a design standpoint, this broadens the palette quite a bit. The javascript behind the method is a bit weighty however and I’m a bit worried about compatibility across browsers but considering how ubiquitous the Flash player and javascript are, I think this is a viable scheme.
Time will tell.
Comments (+)
I posted a link previously about coding Structured Tables which was helpful for helping understand how tables can be utilized to present data but have found it wanting in helping me understand how to style tables using CSS.
Today, I found a site that’s a bit more comprehensive and has links to further information, Advanced Tables Tutorial. Even so, there’s a bit of experimentation to make it tables bend to my will. Further reports will be forthcoming.
Comments (+)
While I’m sure I’ve been on this site, Boxes and Arrows: The Design behind the Design, before I never realized that it was an Information Architecture resource. Definitely a resource for my professional development.
Comments (+)
Had a chance to try out the Alternate Style Sheets method from A List Apart. Good stuff. Easy to use (they provide a ready-made javascript and IE seems to like it. I think the same thing could be accomplished on the server-side if you enabled some sort of user profiles but this is a good browser-side method. This weekend I’ll try and implement it on my site.
Comments (+)
