{"rowid": 113, "title": "What Your Turkey Can Teach You About Project Management", "contents": "The problem with project management is that everyone thinks it\u2019s boring. Well, that\u2019s not really the problem. The problem is that everyone thinks it\u2019s boring but it\u2019s still really important. Project management is what lets you deliver your art \u2013 whether that be design or development. \n\nIn the same way, a Christmas dinner cooked by a brilliant chef with no organizational skills is disastrous \u2013 courses arrive in the wrong order, some things are cold whilst others are raw and generally it\u2019s a trip to the ER waiting to happen. Continuing the Christmas dinner theme, here are my top tips for successful projects, wrapped up in a nice little festive analogy. Enjoy!\n\nTip 1: Know What You\u2019re Aiming For\n\n(Turkey? Ham? Both??)\n\nThe underlying cause for the failure of so many projects is mismatched expectations. Christmas dinner cannot be a success if you serve glazed ham and your guests view turkey as the essential Christmas dinner ingredient. It doesn\u2019t matter how delicious and well executed your glazed ham is, it\u2019s still fundamentally just not turkey. You might win one or two adventurous souls over, but the rest will go home disappointed.\n\nAdd to the mix the fact that most web design projects are nowhere near as emotive as Christmas dinner (trust me, a ham vs turkey debate will rage much longer than a fixed vs fluid debate in normal human circles) and the problem is compounded. In particular, as technologists, we forget that our ability to precisely imagine the outcome of a project, be it a website, a piece of software, or similar, is much more keenly developed than the average customer of such projects. \n\nSo what\u2019s the solution? Get very clear, from the very beginning, on exactly what the project is about. What are you trying to achieve? How will you measure success? Is the presence of turkey a critical success factor?\n\nSummarize all this information in some form of document (in PM-speak, it\u2019s called a Project Initiation Document typically). Ideally, get the people who are the real decision makers to sign their agreement to that summary in their own blood. Well, you get the picture, I suppose actual blood is not strictly necessary, but a bit of gothic music to set the tone can be useful!\n\nTip 2: Plan at the Right Level of Detail\n\nHugely detailed and useless Gantt charts are a personal bugbear of mine. For any project, you should plan at the appropriate level of detail (and in an appropriate format) for the project itself. In our Christmas dinner example, it may be perfectly fine to have a list of tasks for the preparation work, but for the intricate interplay of oven availability and cooking times, something more complex is usually due. Having cooked roast dinners for fourteen in a student house where only the top oven and two of the rings on the hob actually worked, I can attest to the need for sequence diagrams in some of these situations!\n\nThe mistake many small teams make is to end up with a project plan that is really the amalgamation of their individual todo lists. What is needed is a project plan that will:\n\n\n\treflect reality\n\tbe easy to update\n\thelp to track progress (i.e. are we on track or not?)\n\n\nA good approach is to break your project into stages (each representing something tangible) and then into deliverables (again, something tangible for each milestone, else you\u2019ll never know if you\u2019ve hit it or not!). \n\nMy personal rule of thumb is that the level of granularity needed on most projects is 2-3 days \u2013 i.e. we should never be more than two to three days from a definitive milestone which will either be complete or not. The added advantage of this approach is that if find yourself off track, you can only be two to three days off track\u2026 much easier to make up than if you went weeks or even months working hard but not actually delivering what was needed!\n\nIn our Christmas dinner example, there are a number of critical milestones \u2013 a tick list of questions. Do we have all the ingredients? Check. Has the turkey been basted? Check. On the actual day, the sequencing and timing will mean more specific questions: It\u2019s 12pm. Are the Brussels sprouts cooked to death yet? Check. (Allowing for the extra hour of boiling to go from soft and green to mushy and brown\u2026 Yeuch!) \n\nTip 3: Actively Manage Risks and Issues\n\nA risk is something that could go wrong. An issue is something that has already gone wrong. Risks and issues are where project management superstars are born. Anyone can manage things when everything is going according to plan; it\u2019s what you do when Cousin Jim refuses to eat anything but strawberry jam sandwiches that sorts the men from the boys. \n\nThe key with a Christmas dinner, as with any project, is to have contingency plans for the most likely and most damaging risks. These depend on your own particular situation, but some examples might be:\n\n \n\t\t\n\t\t\tRISK\n\t\t\tCONTINGENCY PLAN\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\tCousin Jim is a picky eater.\n\t\t\tHave strawberry jam and sliced white bread on hand to placate.\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\tPrime organic turkey might not be available at Waitrose on Christmas eve.\n\t\t\tShop in advance!\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\tYou live somewhere remote that seems to lose power around Christmas on a disturbingly regular basis.\n\t\t\t(number of options here depending on how far you want to go\u2026)\n\n\t\t\t\t\tBuy a backup generator.\n\n\t\t\t\t\tInvent a new cooking method using only candles.\n\n\t\t\t\t\tStock up on \u201cChristmas dinner in a tin\u201d.\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\tYour mother in law is likely to be annoying.\n\t\t\tBottle of sherry at the ready (whether it\u2019s for you or her, you can decide!).\n\t\t\n \n\n\nThe point of planning in advance is so that most of your issues don\u2019t blindside you \u2013 you can spring into action with the contingency plan immediately. This leaves you with plenty of ingenuity and ability to cope in reserve for those truly unexpected events. \n\nBack in your regular projects, you should have a risk management plan (developed at the beginning of the project and regularly reviewed) as well as an issue list, tracking open, in progress and closed issues. Importantly, your issue list should be separate from any kind of bug list \u2013 issues are at a project level, bugs are at a technical level.\n\nTip 4: Have a Project Board\n\nA project board consists of the overall sponsor of your project (often, but not always, the guy with the cheque book) and typically a business expert and a technical expert to help advise the sponsor. The project board is the entity that is meant to make the big, critical decisions. As a project manager, your role is to prepare a recommendation, but leave the actual decision up to the board. \n\nAdmittedly this is where our Christmas dinner analogy has to stretch the most, but if you imagine that instead of just cooking for your family you are the caterer preparing a Christmas feast for a company. In this case, you obviously want to please the diners who will be eating the food, but key decisions are likely to be taken by whoever is organizing the event. They, in turn, will involve the boss if there are really big decisions that would affect the project drastically \u2013 for instance, having to move it to January, or it exceeding the set budget by a significant amount.\n\nMost projects suffer from not having a project board to consult for these major decisions, or from having the wrong people selected. The first ailment is eased by ensuring that you have a functioning project board, with whom you either meet regularly to update on status, or where there is a special process for convening the board if they are needed. The second problem is a little more subtle. Key questions to ask yourself are:\n\n\n\tWho is funding this project?\n\tWho has the authority to stop the project if it was the right thing to do?\n\tWho are the right business and technical advisors?\n\tWho are the folks who don\u2019t look like they are powerful on the org chart, but in fact might scupper this project? (e.g. administrators, tech support, personal assistants\u2026)\n\n\nTip 5: Finish Unequivocably and Well\n\nNo one is ever uncertain as to when Christmas dinner ends. Once the flaming pudding has been consumed and the cheese tray picked at, the end of the dinner is heralded by groaning and everyone collapsing in their chairs. Different households have different rituals, so you might only open your presents after Christmas dinner (unlikely if you have small children!), or you might round off the afternoon watching the Queen\u2019s speech (in Britland, certainly) or if you live in warmer climes you might round off Christmas dinner with a swim (which was our tradition in Cape Town \u2013 after 30 mins of food settling so you didn\u2019t get cramp, of course!). \n\nThe problem with projects is that they are one time efforts and so nowhere near as ritualized. Unless you have been incredibly lucky, you\u2019ve probably worked on a project where you thought you were finished but seemed unable to lose your \u201czombie customers\u201d \u2013 those folks who just didn\u2019t realise it was over and kept coming back with more and more requests. You might even have fallen prey to this yourself, believing that the website going live was the end of the project and not realising that a number of things still needed to be wrapped up.\n\nThe essence of this final tip is to inject some of that end-of-Christmas finality ritual into your projects. Find your own ritual for closing down projects \u2013 more than just sending the customer the invoice and archiving the files. Consider things like documentation, support structure handover and training to make sure that those zombies are going to the right people (hopefully not you!). \n\nSo, to summarise:\n\n\n\tMake sure you start your projects well \u2013 with an agreed (written) vision of what you\u2019re trying to achieve.\n\tPlan your projects at the right level of detail and in an appropriate format \u2013 never be more than a few days away from knowing for sure whether you\u2019re on track or not.\n\tPlan for likely and important risks and make sure you track and resolve those you actually encounter.\n\tInstitute a project board, made up of the people with the real power over your project.\n\tCreate rituals for closing projects well \u2013 don\u2019t leave anyone in doubt that the project has been delivered, or of who they should go to for further help.", "year": "2008", "author": "Meri Williams", "author_slug": "meriwilliams", "published": "2008-12-16T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2008/what-your-turkey-can-teach-you-about-project-management/", "topic": "business"} {"rowid": 107, "title": "Using Google App Engine as Your Own Content Delivery Network", "contents": "Do you remember, years ago, when hosting was expensive, domain names were the province of the rich, and you hosted your web pages on Geocities? It seems odd to me now that there was a time when each and every geek didn\u2019t have his own top-level domain and super hosting setup. But as the parts became more and more affordable a man could become an outcast if he didn\u2019t have his own slightly surreal-sounding TLD.\n\nAnd so it will be in the future when people realise with surprise there was a time before affordable content delivery networks.\n\nA content delivery network, or CDN, is a system of servers spread around the world, serving files from the nearest physical location. Instead of waiting for a file to find its way from a server farm in Silicon Valley 8,000 kilometres away, I can receive it from London, Dublin, or Paris, cutting down the time I wait. The big names \u2014 Google, Yahoo, Amazon, et al \u2014 use CDNs for their sites, but they\u2019ve always been far too expensive for us mere mortals. Until now.\n\nThere\u2019s a service out there ready for you to use as your very own CDN. You have the company\u2019s blessing, you won\u2019t need to write a line of code, and \u2014 best of all \u2014 it\u2019s free. The name? Google App Engine.\n\nIn this article you\u2019ll find out how to set up a CDN on Google App Engine. You\u2019ll get the development software running on your own computer, tell App Engine what files to serve, upload them to a web site, and give everyone round the world access to them.\n\nCreating your first Google App Engine project\n\nBefore we do anything else, you\u2019ll need to download the Google App Engine software development kit (SDK). You\u2019ll need Python 2.5 too \u2014 you won\u2019t be writing any Python code but the App Engine SDK will need it to run on your computer. If you don\u2019t have Python, App Engine will install it for you (if you use Mac OS X 10.5 or a Linux-based OS you\u2019ll have Python; if you use Windows you won\u2019t).\n\nDone that? Excellent, because that\u2019s the hardest step. The rest is plain sailing.\n\nYou\u2019ll need to choose a unique \u2018application id\u2019 \u2014 nothing more than a name \u2014 for your project. Make sure it consists only of lowercase letters and numbers. For this article I\u2019ll use 24ways2008, but you can choose anything you like.\n\nOn your computer, create a folder named after your application id. This folder can be anywhere you want: your desktop, your documents folder, or wherever you usually keep your web files. Within your new folder, create a folder called assets, and within that folder create three folders called images, css, and javascript. These three folders are the ones you\u2019ll fill with files and serve from your content delivery network. You can have other folders too, if you like.\n\nThat will leave you with a folder structure like this:\n\n24ways2008/\n\t\tassets/\n\t\t\tcss/\n\t\t\timages/\n\t\t\tjavascript/\n\nNow you need to put a few files in these folders, so we can later see our CDN in action. You can put anything you want in these folders, but for this example we\u2019ll include an HTML file, a style sheet, an image, and a Javascript library.\n\nIn the top-level folder (the one I\u2019ve called 24ways2008), create a file called index.html. Fill this with any content you want. In the assets/css folder, create a file named core.css and throw in a couple of CSS rules for good measure. In the assets/images directory save any image that takes your fancy \u2014 I\u2019ve used the silver badge from the App Engine download page. Finally, to fill the JavaScript folder, add in this jQuery library file. If you\u2019ve got the time and the inclination, you can build a page that uses all these elements.\n\nSo now we should have a set of files and folders that look something like this:\n\n24ways2008/\n\t\tassets/\n\t\t\t\tindex.html\n\t\t\t\tcss/\n\t\t\t\t\t\tcore.css\n\t\t\t\timages/\n\t\t\t\t\t\tappengine-silver-120x30.gif\n\t\t\t\tjavascript/\n\t\t\t\t\t\tjquery-1.2.6.min.js\n\nWhich leaves us with one last file to create. This is the important one: it tells App Engine what to do with your files. It\u2019s named app.yaml, it sits at the top-level (inside the folder I\u2019ve named 24ways2008), and it needs to include these lines:\n\napplication: 24ways2008\nversion: 1\nruntime: python\napi_version: 1\n\nhandlers:\n- url: /\n\tstatic_files: assets/index.html\n\tupload: assets/index.html\n\n- url: /\n\tstatic_dir: assets\n\nYou need to make sure you change 24ways2008 on the first line to whatever you chose as your application id, but otherwise the content of your app.yaml file should be identical. And with that, you\u2019ve created your first App Engine project. If you want it, you can download a zip file containing my project.\n\nTesting your project\n\nAs it stands, your project is ready to be uploaded to App Engine. But we couldn\u2019t call ourselves professionals if we didn\u2019t test it, could we? So, let\u2019s put that downloaded SDK to good use and run the project from your own computer.\n\nOne of the files you\u2019ll find App Engine installed is named dev_appserver.py, a Python script used to simulate App Engine on your computer. You\u2019ll find lots of information on how to do this in the documentation on the development web server, but it boils down to running the script like so (the space and the dot at the end are important):\n\ndev_appserver.py .\n\nYou\u2019ll need to run this from the command-line: Mac users can run the Terminal application, Linux users can run their favourite shell, and Windows users will need to run it via the Command Prompt (open the Start menu, choose \u2018Run\u2026\u2019, type \u2018cmd\u2018, and click \u2018OK\u2019). Before you run the script you\u2019ll need to make sure you\u2019re in the project folder \u2014 in my case, as I saved it to my desktop I can go there by typing \n\ncd ~/Desktop/24ways2008\n\nin my Mac\u2019s Terminal app; if you\u2019re using Windows you can type \n\ncd \"C:\\Documents and Settings\\username\\Desktop\\24ways2008\"\n\nIf that\u2019s successful, you\u2019ll see a few lines of output, the last looking something like this:\n\nINFO 2008-11-22 14:35:00,830 dev_appserver_main.py] Running application 24ways2008 on port 8080: http://localhost:8080\n\nNow you can power up your favourite browser, point it to http://localhost:8080/, and you\u2019ll see the page you saved as index.html. You\u2019ll also find your CSS file at http://localhost:8080/css/core.css. In fact, anything you put inside the assets folder in the project will be accessible from this domain. You\u2019re running our own App Engine web server!\n\nNote that no-one else will be able to see your files: localhost is a special domain that you can only see from your computer \u2014 and once you stop the development server (by pressing Control\u2013C) you\u2019ll not be able to see the files in your browser until you start it again.\n\nYou might notice a new file has turned up in your project: index.yaml. App Engine creates this file when you run the development server, and it\u2019s for internal App Engine use only. If you delete it there are no ill effects, but it will reappear when you next run the development server. If you\u2019re using version control (e.g. Subversion) there\u2019s no need to keep a copy in your repository.\n\nSo you\u2019ve tested your project and you\u2019ve seen it working on your own machine; now all you need to do is upload your project and the world will be able to see your files too.\n\nUploading your project\n\nIf you don\u2019t have a Google account, create one and then sign in to App Engine. Tell Google about your new project by clicking on the \u2018Create an Application\u2019 button. Enter your application id, give the application a name, and agree to the terms and conditions. That\u2019s it. All we need do now is upload the files.\n\nOpen your Mac OS X Terminal, Windows Command Prompt, or Linux shell window again, move to the project folder, and type (again, the space and the dot at the end are important):\n\nappcfg.py update .\n\nEnter your email address and password when prompted, and let App Engine do it\u2019s thing. It\u2019ll take no more than a few seconds, but in that time App Engine will have done the equivalent of logging in to an FTP server and copying files across. It\u2019s fairly understated, but you now have your own project up and running. You can see mine at http://24ways2008.appspot.com/, and everyone can see yours at http://your-application-id.appspot.com/. Your files are being served up over Google\u2019s content delivery network, at no cost to you!\n\nBenefits of using Google App Engine\n\nThe benefits of App Engine as a CDN are obvious: your own server doesn\u2019t suck up the bandwidth, while your visitors will appreciate a faster site. But there are also less obvious benefits.\n\nFirst, once you\u2019ve set up your site, updating it is an absolute breeze. Each time you update a file (or a batch of files) you need only run appcfg.py to see the changes appear on your site. To paraphrase Joel Spolsky, a good web site must be able to be updated in a single step. Many designers and developers can\u2019t make that claim, but with App Engine, you can.\n\nApp Engine also allows multiple people to work on one application. If you want a friend to be able to upload files to your site you can let him do so without giving him usernames and passwords \u2014 all he needs is his own Google account. App Engine also gives you a log of all actions taken by collaborators, so you can see who\u2019s made updates, and when.\n\nAnother bonus is the simple version control App Engine offers. Do you remember the file named app.yaml you created a while back? The second line looked like this:\n\nversion: 1\n\nIf you change the version number to 2 (or 3, or 4, etc), App Engine will keep a copy of the last version you uploaded. If anything goes wrong with your latest version, you can tell App Engine to revert back to that last saved version. It\u2019s no proper version control system, but it could get you out of a sticky situation.\n\nOne last thing to note: if you\u2019re not happy using your-application-id.appspot.com as your domain, App Engine will quite happily use any domain you own.\n\nThe weak points of Google App Engine\n\nIn the right circumstances, App Engine can be a real boon. I run my own site using the method I\u2019ve discussed above, and I\u2019m very happy with it. But App Engine does have its disadvantages, most notably those discussed by Aral Balkan in his post \u2018Why Google App Engine is broken and what Google must do to fix it\u2018.\n\nAral found the biggest problems while using App Engine as a web application platform; I wouldn\u2019t recommend using it as such either (at least for now) but for our purposes as a CDN for static files, it\u2019s much more worthy. Still, App Engine has two shortcomings you should be aware of.\n\nThe first is that you can\u2019t host a file larger than one megabyte. If you want to use App Engine to host that 4.3MB download for your latest-and-greatest desktop software, you\u2019re out of luck. The only solution is to stick to smaller files.\n\nThe second problem is the quota system. Google\u2019s own documentation says you\u2019re allowed 650,000 requests a day and 10,000 megabytes of bandwidth in and out (20,000 megabytes in total), which should be plenty for most sites. But people have seen sites shut down temporarily for breaching quotas \u2014 in some cases after inexplicable jumps in Google\u2019s server CPU usage. Aral, who\u2019s seen it happen to his own sites, seemed genuinely frustrated by this, and if you measure your hits in the hundreds of thousands and don\u2019t want to worry about uptime, App Engine isn\u2019t for you.\n\nThat said, for most of us, App Engine offers a fantastic resource: the ability to host files on Google\u2019s own content delivery network, at no charge.\n\nConclusion\n\nIf you\u2019ve come this far, you\u2019ve seen how to create a Google App Engine project and host your own files on Google\u2019s CDN. You\u2019ve seen the great advantages App Engine offers \u2014 an excellent content delivery network, the ability to update your site with a single command, multiple authors, simple version control, and the use of your own domain \u2014 and you\u2019ve come across some of its weaknesses \u2014 most importantly the limit on file sizes and the quota system. All that\u2019s left to do is upload those applications \u2014 but not before you\u2019ve finished your Christmas shopping.", "year": "2008", "author": "Matt Riggott", "author_slug": "mattriggott", "published": "2008-12-06T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2008/using-google-app-engine-as-your-own-cdn/", "topic": "process"} {"rowid": 112, "title": "User Styling", "contents": "During the recent US elections, Twitter decided to add an \u2018election bar\u2019 as part of their site design. You could close it if it annoyed you, but the action wasn\u2019t persistent and the bar would always come back like a bad penny. \n\nThe solution to common browsing problems like this is CSS. \u2018User styling\u2019 (or the creepy \u2018skinning\u2019) is the creation of CSS rules to customise and personalise a particular domain. Aside from hiding adverts and other annoyances, there are many reasons for taking the time and effort to do it:\n\n\n\tImproving personal readability by changing text size and colour\n\tPersonalising the look of a web app like GMail to look less insipid\n\tRevealing microformats\n\tSport! My dreams of site skinning tennis are not yet fully realised, but it\u2019ll be all the rage by next Christmas, believe me.\n\n\nHopefully you\u2019re now asking \u201cBut how? HOW?!\u201d. The process of creating a site skin is roughly as follows:\n\n\n\tSee something you want to change\n\tFind out what it\u2019s called, and if any rules already apply to it\n\tWrite CSS rule(s) to override and/or enhance it.\n\tApply the rules\n\n\nSo let\u2019s get stuck in\u2026\n\nSee something\n\nLet\u2019s start small with Multimap.com. Look at that big header \u2013 it takes up an awful lot of screen space doesn\u2019t it? \n\n\n\nNo matter, we can fix it.\n\nTools\n\nNow we need to find out where that big assed header is in the DOM, and make overriding CSS rules. The best tool I\u2019ve found yet is the Mac OS X app, CSS Edit. It utilises a slick \u2018override stylesheets\u2019 function and DOM Inspector. Rather than give you all the usual DOM inspection tools, CSS Edit\u2019s is solely concerned with style. Go into \u2018X-Ray\u2019 mode, click an element, and look at the inspector window to see every style rule governing it. Click the selector to be taken to where it lives in the CSS. It really is a user styling dream app.\n\n\n\nHaving said all that, you can achieve all this with free, cross platform tools \u2013 namely Firefox with the Firebug and Stylish extensions. We\u2019ll be using them for these examples, so make sure you have them installed if you want to follow along.\n\n\n\nUsing Firebug, we can see that the page is very helpfully marked up, and that whole top area is simply a div with an ID of header. \n\nChange Something\n\nWhen you installed Stylish, it added a page and brush icon to your status bar. Click on that, and choose Write Style > for Multimap.com. The other options allow you to only create a style for a particular part of a website or URL, but we want this to apply to the whole of Multimap:\n\n\n\nThe \u2018Add Style\u2019 window then pops up, with the @-moz-document query at the top:\n\n@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);\n@-moz-document domain(\"multimap.com\") {\n}\n\nAll you need to do is add the CSS to hide the header, in between the curly brackets.\n\n@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);\n@-moz-document domain(\"multimap.com\") {\n #header {display: none;} \n}\n\n\n\nA click of the preview button shows us that it\u2019s worked! Now the map appears further up the page. The ethics of hiding adverts is a discussion for another time, but let\u2019s face it, when did you last whoop at the sight of a banner?\n\nMake Something Better\n\nIf we\u2019re happy with our modifications, all we need to do is give it a name and save. Whenever you visit Multimap.com, the style will be available. Stylish also allows you to toggle a style on/off via the status bar menu. If you feel you want to share this style with the world, then userstyles.org is the place to do it. It\u2019s a grand repository of customisations that Stylish connects with. Whenever you visit a site, you can see if anyone else has written a style for it, again, via the status bar menu \u201cFind Styles for this Page\u201d. Selecting this with \u201cBBC News\u201d shows that there are plenty of options, ranging from small layout tweaks to redesigns:\n\n\n\nWhat\u2019s more, whenever a style is updated, Stylish will notify you, and offer a one-click process to update it. This does only work in Firefox and Flock, so I\u2019ll cover ways of applying site styles to other browsers later.\n\nSpecific Techniques\n\nImportant!\n\nIn the Multimap example there wasn\u2019t a display specified on that element, but it isn\u2019t always going to be that easy. You may have spent most of your CSS life being a good designer and not resorting to adding !important to give your rule priority. There\u2019s no way to avoid this in user styling \u2013 if you\u2019re overriding an existing rule it\u2019s a necessity! Be prepared to be typing !important a lot.\n\nStar Selector\n\nThe Universal Selector is a particularly useful way to start a style. For example, if we want to make Flickr use Helvetica before Arial (as they should\u2019ve done!), we can cover all occurrences with just one rule:\n\n* {font-family: \"Helvetica Neue\", Helvetica, sans-serif !important;}\n\nYou can also use it to select \u2018everything within an element\u2019, by placing it after the element name:\n\n#content * {font-family: \"Helvetica Neue\", Helvetica, sans-serif !important;}\n\nSwapping Images\n\nIf you\u2019re changing something a little more complex, such as Google Reader, then at some point you\u2019ll probably want to change an . The technique for replacing an image involves:\n\n\n\tmaking your replacement image the background of the tag\n\tadding padding top and left to the size of you image to push the \u2018top\u2019 image away\n\tmaking the height and width zero.\n\n\n\n\nThe old image is then pushed out of the way and hidden from view, allowing the replacement in the background to be revealed. Targeting the image may require using an attribute selector:\n\nimg[src=\"/reader/ui/3544433079-tree-view-folder-open.gif\"] {\n\tpadding: 16px 0 0 16px;\n\twidth: 0 !important;\n\theight: 0 !important;\n\tbackground-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAABAAAAAQCAYA\nAAAf8/9hAAAABHNCSVQICAgIfAhkiAAAAAlwSFlzAAALEgAACxIB0t1+/AAAA\nBx0RVh0U29mdHdhcmUAQWRvYmUgRmlyZXdvcmtzIENTM5jWRgMAAAAVdE\nVYdENyZWF0aW9uIFRpbWUAMjkvNi8wOJJ/BVgAAAG3SURBVDiNpZIhb5RBEIaf\n2W+vpIagIITSBIHBgsGjEYQaFLYShcITDL+ABIPnh4BFN0GQNFA4Cnf3fbszL2L3\njiuEVLDJbCazu8+8Mzsmif9ZBvDy7bvXlni0HRe8eXL/zuPzABng62J5kFKaAQS\nQgJAOgHMB9vDZq+d71689Hcyw9LfAZAYdioE10VSJo6OPL/KNvSuHD+7dhU\n0vHEsDUUWJChIlYJIjFx5BuMB2mJY/DnMoOJl/R147oBUR0QAm8LAGCOEh3IO\nULiAl8jSOy/nPetGsbGRKjktEiBCEHMlQj4loCuu4zCXCi4lUHTNDtGqEiACTqAFSI\nOgAUAKv4bkWVy2g6tAbJtGy0TNugM3HADmlurKH27dVZSecxjboXggiAsMItR\nh99wTILdewYRpXVJWtY85k7fPW8e1GpJFJacgesXs6VYYomz9G2yDhwPB7NEB\nBDAMK7WYJlisYVBCpfaJBeB+eocFyVyAgCaoMCTJSTOOCWSyILrAnaXpSexRsx\nGGAZ0AR+XT+5fjzyfwSpnUB/1w64xizVI/t6q3b+58+vJ96mWtLf9haxNoc8M\nv7N3d+AT4XPcFIxghoAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC) no-repeat !important;\n}\n\nWoah boy! What was all that gubbins in the background-image? It was a Data URI, and you can create these easily with Hixie\u2019s online tool. It\u2019s simply the image translated into text so that it can be embedded in the CSS, cutting down on the number of http requests. It\u2019s also a necessity with Mozilla browsers, as they don\u2019t allow user CSS to reference images stored locally. Converting images to URI\u2019s avoids this, as well as making a style easily portable \u2013 no images folder to pass around. \n\nDon\u2019t forget all your other CSS techniques at your disposal: inserting your own content with :before and :after pseudo classes, make elements semi-transparent with opacity and round box corners without hacking . You can have fun, and for once, enjoy the freedom of not worrying about IE!\n\nUser styling without Stylish\n\nInstead of using the Stylish extension, you can add rules to the userContent.css file, or use @import in that file to load a separate stylesheet. You can find this is in /Library/Application Support/Camino/chrome/ on OS X, or C/Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/Chrome on Windows. This is only way to apply user styles in Camino, but what about other browsers?\n\nOpera & Omniweb: \n\nBoth allow you to specify a custom CSS file as part of the site\u2019s preferences. Opera also allows custom javascript, using the same syntax as Greasemonkey scripts (more on that below)\n\nSafari\n\nThere are a few options here: the PithHelmet and SafariStand haxies both allow custom stylesheets, or alternatively, a Greasemonkey style user script can employed via GreaseKit. The latter is my favoured solution on my Helvetireader theme, as it can allow for more prescriptive domain rules, just like the Mozilla @-moz-document method. User scripts are also the solution supported by the widest range of browsers.\n\nWhat now?\n\nHopefully I\u2019ve given you enough information for you to be able start making your own styles. If you want to go straight in and tackle the \u2018Holy Grail\u2019, then off with you to GMail \u2013 I get more requests to theme that than anything else!\n\nIf you\u2019re a site author and want to encourage this sort of tom foolery, a good way is to provide a unique class or ID name with the body tag:\n\n
\n\nThis makes it very easy to write rules that only apply to that particular site. If you wanted to use Safari without any of the haxies mentioned above, this method means you can include rules in a general CSS file (chosen via Preferences > Advanced > Stylesheet) without affecting other sites. \n\nOne final revelation on user styling \u2013 it\u2019s not just for web sites. You can tweak the UI of Firefox itself with the userChrome.css. You\u2019ll need to use the in-built DOM Inspector instead of Firebug to inspect the window chrome, instead of a page. Great if you want to make small tweaks (changing the size of tab text for example) without creating a full blown theme.", "year": "2008", "author": "Jon Hicks", "author_slug": "jonhicks", "published": "2008-12-03T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2008/user-styling/", "topic": "process"} {"rowid": 116, "title": "The IE6 Equation", "contents": "It is the destiny of one browser to serve as the nemesis of web developers everywhere. At the birth of the Web Standards movement, that role was played by Netscape Navigator 4; an outdated browser that refused to die. Its tenacious existence hampered the adoption of modern standards. Today that role is played by Internet Explorer 6.\n\nThere\u2019s a sensation that I\u2019m sure you\u2019re familiar with. It\u2019s a horrible mixture of dread and nervousness. It\u2019s the feeling you get when\u2014after working on a design for a while in a standards-compliant browser like Firefox, Safari or Opera\u2014you decide that you can no longer put off the inevitable moment when you must check the site in IE6. Fingers are crossed, prayers are muttered, but alas, to no avail. The nemesis browser invariably screws something up.\n\nWhat do you do next? If the differences in IE6 are minor, you could just leave it be. After all, websites don\u2019t need to look exactly the same in all browsers. But if there are major layout issues and a significant portion of your audience is still using IE6, you\u2019ll probably need to roll up your sleeves and start fixing the problems.\n\nA common approach is to quarantine IE6-specific CSS in a separate stylesheet. This stylesheet can then be referenced from the HTML document using conditional comments like this:\n\n\n\nThat stylesheet will only be served up to Internet Explorer where the version number is less than 7.\n\nYou can put anything inside a conditional comment. You could put a script element in there. So as well as serving up browser-specific CSS, it\u2019s possible to serve up browser-specific JavaScript.\n\nA few years back, before Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7, JavaScript genius Dean Edwards wrote a script called IE7. This amazing piece of code uses JavaScript to make Internet Explorer 5 and 6 behave like a standards-compliant browser. Dean used JavaScript to bootstrap IE\u2019s CSS support.\n\nBecause the script is specifically targeted at Internet Explorer, there\u2019s no point in serving it up to other browsers. Conditional comments to the rescue:\n\n\n\nStandards-compliant browsers won\u2019t fetch the script. Users of IE6, on the hand, will pay a kind of bad browser tax by having to download the JavaScript file.\n\nSo when should you develop an IE6-specific stylesheet and when should you just use Dean\u2019s JavaScript code? This is the question that myself and my co-worker Natalie Downe set out to answer one morning at Clearleft. We realised that in order to answer that question you need to first answer two other questions, how much time does it take to develop for IE6? and how much of your audience is using IE6?\n\nLet\u2019s say that t represents the total development time. Let t6 represent the portion of that time you spend developing for IE6. If your total audience is a, then a6 is the portion of your audience using IE6. With some algebraic help from our mathematically minded co-worker Cennydd Bowles, Natalie and I came up with the following equation to calculate the percentage likelihood that you should be using Dean\u2019s IE7 script:\n\n\n\np = 50 [ log ( at6 / ta6 ) + 1 ]\n\nTry plugging in your own numbers. If you spend a lot of time developing for IE6 and only a small portion of your audience is using that browser, you\u2019ll get a very high number out of the equation; you should probably use the IE7 script. But if you only spend a little time developing for IE6 and a significant portion of you audience are still using that browser, you\u2019ll get a very small value for p; you might as well write an IE6-specific stylesheet.\n\nOf course this equation is somewhat disingenuous. While it\u2019s entirely possible to research the percentage of your audience still using IE6, it\u2019s not so easy to figure out how much of your development time will be spent developing for that one browser. You can\u2019t really know until you\u2019ve already done the development, by which time the equation is irrelevant.\n\nInstead of using the equation, you could try imposing a limit on how long you will spend developing for IE6. Get your site working in standards-compliant browsers first, then give yourself a time limit to get it working in IE6. If you can\u2019t solve all the issues in that time limit, switch over to using Dean\u2019s script. You could even make the time limit directly proportional to the percentage of your audience using IE6. If 20% of your audience is still using IE6 and you\u2019ve just spent five days getting the site working in standards-compliant browsers, give yourself one day to get it working in IE6. But if 50% of your audience is still using IE6, be prepared to spend 2.5 days wrestling with your nemesis.\n\nAll of these different methods for dealing with IE6 demonstrate that there\u2019s no one single answer that works for everyone. They also highlight a problem with the current debate around dealing with IE6. There\u2019s no shortage of blog posts, articles and even entire websites discussing when to drop support for IE6. But very few of them take the time to define what they mean by \u201csupport.\u201d This isn\u2019t a binary issue. There is no Boolean answer. Instead, there\u2019s a sliding scale of support:\n\n\n\tBlock IE6 users from your site.\n\tDevelop with web standards and don\u2019t spend any development time testing in IE6.\n\tUse the Dean Edwards IE7 script to bootstrap CSS support in IE6.\n\tWrite an IE6 stylesheet to address layout issues.\n\tMake your site look exactly the same in IE6 as in any other browser.\n\n\nEach end of that scale is extreme. I don\u2019t think that anybody should be actively blocking any browser but neither do I think that users of an outdated browser should get exactly the same experience as users of a more modern browser. The real meanings of \u201csupporting\u201d or \u201cnot supporting\u201d IE6 lie somewhere in-between those extremes.\n\nJust as I think that semantics are important in markup, they are equally important in our discussion of web development. So let\u2019s try to come up with some better terms than using the catch-all verb \u201csupport.\u201d If you say in your client contract that you \u201csupport\u201d IE6, define exactly what that means. If you find yourself in a discussion about \u201cdropping support\u201d for IE6, take the time to explain what you think that entails.\n\nThe web developers at Yahoo! are on the right track with their concept of graded browser support. I\u2019m interested in hearing more ideas of how to frame this discussion. If we can all agree to use clear and precise language, we stand a better chance of defeating our nemesis.", "year": "2008", "author": "Jeremy Keith", "author_slug": "jeremykeith", "published": "2008-12-08T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2008/the-ie6-equation/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 117, "title": "The First Tool You Reach For", "contents": "Microsoft recently announced that Internet Explorer 8 will be released in the first half of 2009. Compared to the standards support of other major browsers, IE8 will not be especially great, but it will finally catch up with the state of the art in one specific area: support for CSS tables. This milestone has the potential to trigger an important change in the way you approach web design.\n\nTo show you just how big a difference CSS tables can make, think about how you might code a fluid, three-column layout from scratch. Just to make your life more difficult, give it one fixed-width column, with a background colour that differs from the rest of the page. Ready? Go!\n\nOkay, since you\u2019re the sort of discerning web designer who reads 24ways, I\u2019m going to assume you at least considered doing this without using HTML tables for the layout. If you\u2019re especially hardcore, I imagine you began thinking of CSS floats, negative margins, and faux columns. If you did, colour me impressed!\n\nNow admit it: you probably also gave an inward sigh about the time it would take to figure out the math on the negative margin overlaps, check for dropped floats in Internet Explorer and generally wrestle each of the major browsers into giving you what you want. If after all that you simply gave up and used HTML tables, I can\u2019t say I blame you.\n\nThere are plenty of professional web designers out there who still choose to use HTML tables as their main layout tool. Sure, they may know that users with screen readers get confused by inappropriate use of tables, but they have a job to do, and they want tools that will make that job easy, not difficult.\n\nNow let me show you how to do it with CSS tables. First, we have a div element for each of our columns, and we wrap them all in another two divs:\n\n