Why CSS should not be used for layout

“I would rather spend my allotted time skiing or making love to my wife than worrying about whether or not I need to define a virtual destructor in my base class.”

That quote really sums up the argument pretty succinctly, but you may need additional persuasion depending on your circumstances.  It also comes from his second post on the topic.  A follow-up to the masses that commented on the original post with sundry opinions.  Some simply stated that the author was an idiot while others took the time to tear him a new one proper-like.  As the author states, many that would condemn have forgotten to add their own supporting cases; a common problem with these antagonistic debates.

For my part, I see the logic in the author’s comments.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that I agree with him, but it at least gives me some ideas of how to defend his method.  We all have to do things we don’t like to do, and sometimes we do things that compromise our abilities.  Web development is no different – in fact, it’s probably one of the defining cases for compromise.

Being a casual web developer myself, I have the luxury to code for standards and play with some of the latest methods available in technology.  Not everyone gets that luxury, and indeed at times, I don’t either.  I have to analyze the amount I can make on a given job versus the time spent on it.  As a hobby along side two children, a wife, and a few other hobbies, I’ve really got to make the most of my time.  As such, if I’m not going to get paid the amount I want, then something else is going to suffer.  At my day job, we’ve talked about Price, Quality, and Time as being the defining parts of a project.  Together, they all make up a circle and have to adjust dynamically as the others get larger or smaller.  If you sacrifice price, and there’s a time limit, then the only thing left that can slide is quality.  It tears at my nonsensical work ethic, but it’s reality.  On the otherhand, a lesser quality job doesn’t have to look like it.  We web developers have the benefit over some other industries because we can hide most of architecture mess behind a beautiful presentation layer.

So back to the conversation at hand: CSS versus Tables.  To bring this all together for you – and I trust you’ve either read the linked articles above or already know about the discussions surrounding the virtues of CSS and table design for XHTML layouts – let me settle the argument for myself.

I am an Arts and Crafts of Olde appreciatist.  I love my work as a craftsman; that is to say, I love the process of reaching a goal through creative and oft eccentric means.  I am learning to be a more pragmatic person in my work habits – at least when it’s necessary.  It’s a slow process, but I’ve made headway in little ways throughout my life.  It’s about compromise and keeping in mind the circle of Price, Time, and Quality.

It’s simple enough to imagine I could always remain vigilant on this circle of project specification goodness, but I wouldn’t.  Sometimes you just want to do a project.  So when either I have no boundaries per the specification, or I’m just personally driven to work at a project for my own reasons, I’m going to use CSS and standards-based coding practices.  When time and/or money are the object with which I am to contend, then I might use tables, or worse yet, a WYSIWYG editor.  The later approach ultimately saves me the most time and a customer’s money, but will ultimately take more time should the customer want some specific types of feature modifications to the code later.  I tend to view cheap and/or quick projects as being throw-away because of this.

I hope this insight has helped you to shed some light on your own dilemna in whatever craft it is that you persue – ever-mindful of the art in your craft, while carefully weighing the cost to your lifestyle (whether monetary, socially, or time management).

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Upgrading to Web 2.5
The Web 2.0 movement brought, among many other ideals, the concept of a truly “communal” Internet. We saw the entrance of communities such as MySpace, Orkut, Friendster, and of course, the blog, emerge. I maintain a regular blog and dabble in these other Internet communities, but ultimately find that they are not my thing.

What MySpace, for instance, did for me was to create a social community of friends and people with related interests. It’s a great concept, if only simple. I encountered two main problems with these solutions – set aside your particular opinion about the communities. The first, and most immediate, problem I had was that the site distracted me and my potential audience from my own blog. The other problem, something that took a little longer to become apparent, was that I was stuck into a much larger community than I was really interested in becoming “buddies” with.

My solution to these problems involves the maturation of Web 2.0 – perhaps to Web 2.5. I have heard of Web 3.0, but I don’t think the industry can make such a leap without some smaller steps in between. Web 2.5 allows the blog proprietor like myself to become part of these communities without stepping out of their home base.

The Case Study
My imagined solution looks simple at first glance. I maintain a blog. My friends maintain blogs and/or social networking profiles. I have other blogs/services out there to which I would like to drive attention. Now think of each of these things as containers to which I can subscribe, sometimes in a granular fashion. I build a collection of “friends,” “family,” and “interesting people” that I would like to have a reference to on my site. Today, you have blog rolls or even RSS feeds doing this. But what if you could access a container having someone’s profile and avatar, their blog articles, twitter feeds, and MySpace posts. From that container I can choose what I want to see, and how often I want to see it. Perhaps I just want digests. What’s more, the originator of that container can actually validate my request to subscribe to this data. They can also choose what they’ll allow me to see using templates (e.g. friends, family, co-workers), or define a custom rule just for me. The data continues to remain available through conventional means – say the RSS feed, a MySpace account, etc, but the personal container has controls.

I can extend it beyond the profile containers. Say you want to interact with your email or IM system through your blog. Think about having a single entry point to your personal web experience. The personal blog transforms into a personal dashboard with both public and private views. On the public side, you present your audience with your blog, some profile data, contact information, and perhaps a friend’s blog. Privately, you see your email, all your friends’ blogs, address book, and a calendar with your upcoming events.

There are ways to achieve most of this through conventional means, but there is no “solution” to it all. It takes a fundamental shift.

Back to WordPress
At the beginning of this post, I referred to my need for more in WordPress. WordPress utilizes a model of communal sharing already that leads me to believe that it is one of the strongest contenders to make my dream a reality. I’m jaded, of course, because I use WordPress a lot. However, I’ve also read about the WordPress.com Multi-User (MU) extension making its way to the public domain, BuddyPress. BuddyPress will make WordPress.com (and any other WP MU implementation) a community blog with integrated social networking a la MySpace. This is exactly what I’m talking about, if only on a very small scale. WordPress may have the framework to get where I want, but I still have to reach further for the over-arching API that allows WordPress to talk to social communities outside of itself. I believe WordPress has made the first move in my imagined Web 2.5.

The Solution
In brief, I imagine the final solution as being a web service that handles a centralized API for the OpenSocial, or something similar should the industry choose a better standard. Blog systems such as WordPress would have to utilize plugins to communicate with the API, but MySpace, Orkut, LinkedIn, and others would fit into the picture by being a part of OpenSocial. The custom web service would handle the “mash-up” of these different systems into a personal container. And of course, the user would manage their own container; permissions and contents.

In the end, I’d have my blog, my friends, and my choice. Web 2.0 moves forward and brings together the biggest social community ever on the Internet. Our personal sites become personal dashboards and launch points to our other interests. I think the way to Web 2.5 is clear, and someone out there is surely already working on it. You heard it here, first!

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After school, Balthazar was to take a bus over to his after-school care with some friends – apparently more like 20. We knew it was a lot to manage in one day, so we agreed to pick him up early from there. He barely managed to get out some vague details about his day before he passed out completely in his car seat. The guy was worn flat-out by his adventures. It turns out his day was a mixture of fear and fun. We weren’t able to convey the amount of time he’d spend at school, though technically it was less than what he spent in pre-K and after-school before. He got scared and cried a little bit early in the day. After some lunch and recess time, it sounded like he came to better terms with it.

As parents, we hate to know that our child was upset and afraid. You’re completely helpless when they’re away and having these feelings. I guess that’s what it is that parents really get upset over when their child gains some independence. You really feel the need to continue helping them and holding their hands when obstacles arrive, but you just have to let them make a go at it themselves. You do everything you can to ensure that they’re going to do good in the world and that they’ll have every manner of protection at their disposal, then you send them out the door to see how you did. It surprised me a lot that he had an emotional break-down at school. Not that that’s unordinary by any means, I just thought that he would have such a great time.

Today is Friday and he’s off on his second day at school. As a testament to his courage, he said yesterday that he wanted to go again. Even though there were some rough spots to contend with, Balthazar has stood back up to give it another try. I believe that he’ll have done much better this time, and he may even begin doing the things that we all loved at school; making friends.

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I had originally applauded the city’s apparent progressive attitude towards new business ventures in the likes of adult novelties, though now I see this was a mistake.  Silver Stars seemed to be doing well in their inauguration into the Gainesville business community.  I know they had many customers, friends, and partners throughout the city.  Their website reports that they are still able (and encouraging people) to process online orders.  There is some glimmer of hope, I suppose, that they may be able to work out a business license through some loophole.  Should that happen, they’ll be back in business until the Council finds some other way to shut them down.

Incidentally, I’m looking through the City Ordinances trying to find the specific violation, but have been unable to do so.  If anyone can point me to the specific code, I’d appreciate it.

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There comes a time when I need to do some data manipulation within Excel and import the results into a database. Mostly, I don’t have data in Excel that is overly complex, and so doesn’t pose any particular challenge in doing what I want. Today I’m working on an Excel document in Office 2007 – not one I made, but rather someone else’s wretched representation of data. It has carriage returns within the fields themselves, and I need to clean those out before importing the data into the database. There are a variety of ways to do it outside of Excel, but not a straightforward method within Excel. Microsoft’s search & replace feature in Office 2007 does not appear to be any better than in the former products. Is a little regular expression handling too much to ask for?!? So here are the goods:

If you turn off “word-wrap” on the offending cell, you should see a small box in the field where a carriage return once hid itself. Excel 2007 doesn’t simply allow me to copy this character and use it to search the worksheet. Neither does it acknowledge any sort of ^p, \r\n, or vbCRLF. Instead, you need to key in the ANSI code for the character you wish to search (and replace) on. In this case, I searched for ALT+0010 (the linefeed) and replaced it with a space. You may need to search for ALT+0013 ALT+0010 (CRLF) if this doesn’t work for you, but in my case removing the LF seemed to have worked.

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Friday, October 26th
The Monkey Barrel
115 Washington St.
Gainesville, GA 30501


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Seven Nations is a five-man Celtic rock band that features bagpipes and fiddle. Their style is a fusion of traditional and original music. 7N has toured the world playing the Winter Olympics, Irish/Scottish Highland Games and Festivals, as well as traditional concert venues.

Emerald Rose is a four-man Celtic folk-rock band with a rich, traditional world fusion sound with influences randing from the Chieftains to Jethro Tull. Blending amazing vocals and driving guitars and bass, their music ranges from traditional jigs and reels to original folk rock and pop.

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The update went through with no problems, though I had some issues with incompatible plugins that weren’t actually generating errors. To make a long, technical story more easily digestible, I can summarize by saying you need about 16MB of memory allocated to PHP’s script execution in PHP 5.2 and WordPress 2.2.2 (including WordPress 2.3). You’ll also want to update plugins that hit deprecated tables in WordPress such as the Google Sitemap Generator and the WordPress Database Backup. Both of these have current versions that address this problem. I also migrated over from the Ultimate Tag Warrior to WP 2.3′s integrated tag management features. It’s not quite as slick as what UTW had put together, but it’s working and I have great expectations for its extensibility with additional plugins. At any rate, it probably goes without saying that you should not keep UTW enabled with the new version of WordPress – I had heard some people didn’t have any problems with it, but I don’t see how as it makes calls to non-existent (deprecated) tables (e.g. post2cat).

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HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
I HAS A VAR
IM IN YR LOOP

UP VAR!!1
VISIBLE VAR
IZ VAR BIGGER THAN 10? KTHXBYE

IM OUTTA YR LOOP
KTHXBYE

It is questionable to this writer whether lolcode is a greater method of subterfuge-coding than Whitespace. Whichever one integrates with Microsoft Office as a macro option first will probably take the crown. Code on.

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My first WordPress plugin, Notify on Draft Post is now in its first public release. Here’s the rundown:

This plugin has now been accepted and is available for download via WordPress.org’s plugin site.

*** This tool has reached its usefulness. Version 2.2 of WordPress now includes the functionality natively. ***

**Release v.1.0.1
Cleaned up some of the comments within the code itself. It should be well documented by this point!

Features v.1.0
Check that user *can’t* Publish a post on their own (Contributor, for instance)
Selectable “ready to publish” flag for submission
WP Moderator notification email (admin email)

Installation:
The file notify-draft.php must be put within the wp-content/plugins/ directory of your WordPress installation. Activate the plugin from the administration interface…done!

Roadmap:
I would like to add some options for Notify on Draft Post to allow the selection of an alternate email or multiples. By default, the product utilizes the site’s defined “admin” email address.

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