I’m working on a new layout and I just rediscovered that I still dislike Internet Explorer’s CSS support. In fact; IE sucks a big one.

Peace, Love, & Bubble Wrap

That is all.

Just thought I'd share some assorted things I've been learning in my DHTML/XML class. These more or less come from my class notes and textbook. Hopefully this makes sense, I'm tired and not feeling especially great.

Most modern browsers handle style sheets, but did you know they read your styles in a very specific way?

Here's the order that CSS styles are handled:

1.) Anything with the !important tag next to it is given top priority.

Example:

By doing this, you can also override any stylesheets the visitor is using with their browser. Just be sure to use this wisely and to not abuse it. (Also be sure to put it BEFORE the semi-colon or it may not work right.)

2.) Does the style sheet belong to the Visitor or Author?
Most browser's today allow will favor their user's settings. That means that if they're using their own style sheet, it'll get higher priority than your's.

3.) The more specific the rule is, the more important it is.

There's an actual scoring system used to determine this:

• #IDs are the most specific. (100 points)
• .classes are medium (10 points)
• HTML tags are the least specific. (1 point)

These can also add up.

For example:

• DIV = 1 point
• .login DIV = 10 + 1 = 11 points
• #header DIV = 100 + 1 = 101 points
• #header .login DIV = 100 + 10 + 1 = 110 points

That would mean that the last one would get highest priority because it's the most specific.

4.) Last rule in the style sheet

The further down the page a set of css definitions are, the more important they are. In other words, the last thing in your style.css file is actually ranked higher than things at the top.

5.) Existing or inherited attributes are the last things considered.

Existing attributes: the the bold tag normally makes something bold, italic tag makes things italic. These sort of tags already apply a style to any text you use them on.

Inherited attributes: For example, if you embed one tag inside another, the inside tag inherits the style from the outer tag.

Well, as you may have gathered from Jasson's journal everything is still more or less going okay.

I really need to find out why I'm so quick to panic. I have two weeks where I'm fine; the picture of calm. And then suddenly I find myself either panicking or pissed off for absolutely no reason whatsoever. >_> *sighs* Basically, if I write a post where I'm super panicked, please don't take me too seriously. You'll know if it's serious if Jasson says something.

....

We're almost done with fall semester and then we have a bit before Winter semester begins. I'm passing my graphics class with flying colors, though relearning HTML has been a bit of a challenge. I haven't done any nested table layouts in years... which means I am seriously out of practice. In my final assignment for that chapter, I couldn't figure out how to get one of the inner tables to align properly. I've never been particularly skilled at forms either, so that gave me trouble too. The most forgiving chapter yet has been frames (wow!) and CSS (duh.) XD

However, my absolute lowest moment came when I had to make a CSS map. It was supposed to have little boxes that would appear on top of the map when you moused over the corresponding landmark. I would get one part working and then everything I'd done before would die on me. I finally got it working in MSIE, but the damn thing wouldn't work in Firefox. Only after I turned it in did I find out I was one character away from making them work.

I wrote:

#point01
{ CSS goes here }

but I had to write:

#point01 A
{ Same CSS goes here}

I forgot to put that "A" at the end of the CSS declaration, which tells browsers that the spot is also a link. >_< Since Firefox is a bit more strict than MSIE, it didn't understand what I was doing.

Other than that, school is going pretty well. I'll be glad when this semester is over, but I'm not looking forward to next semester either. I'm going to have about $400 - $500 worth of books I'll need to purchase for just four classes.

I swear these publishers must be bandits. That much money for books is simply outrageous. Though I suppose I should be happy; since once I walked out of the bookstore at CMU once with $800 worth of books and supplies. All the same, I'd really prefer not to have to pay that much or tack that much onto my student loans.

I also recently discovered that I'm probably going to need to either buy more space for Lunaescence or simply buy another space for my graphics. I released two skins for the eFiction script last month and the downloads are simply killing my bandwidth. It took me a bit to figure it out, since I kept having hack attempts all last month. (More on that below.) Now that the chaos has calmed down, I can clearly see the suckage is coming from those two files. >_>

It seems strange (and almost flattering) to see hits coming from Web sites in Germany, France, Italy and know they're using my eFiction skins. Seems even stranger when I look at my inbox and see all the requests for custom layouts and advice on how we did some things.

Part of me really is amazed by the reaction, but the other part of me keeps thinking "What in the world have I gotten myself into?"

Anyway, yeah... hack attempt. Last month, a guy in Italy released a full disclosure of eFiction's security vulnerabilities and how to exploit them. I mean right down to the scripting they should use. Fake gif images, SQL injections, and remote scripting -- oh my. So I had several hundred attempts to find "suntzu.php" in my non-existent author image folders, plus attempts to create directories, strange e-mails apparently generated by my script, and more. Lets just say the archive only looks the same. On top of the security patches Tammy released, I damn near changed the archive's entire file structure.

All while trying to get all this homework done. XD I'll say one thing, if those people did any service it was teaching me how to multi-task better. Though I just wish I could whittle down the modification requests, layout requests, and question e-mails so I could do a new layout for my blog and get the Christmas layout done for the main site.

My new layout is giving me all kinds of fits.

LOL Yes, another. XD This layout was just temporary until my photos came back.

Anyroad, I'm attempting to pull of a really cool CSS trick where I make it look like I'm using frames when I'm not. The middle area is supposed to scroll while the area outside is supposed to remain static. I even created a nice mouse-over navigation... though I couldn't make it anywhere as sophisticated as the first time I saw one like it.

I have the layout working. In Firefox at least. I found out only after I'd lost my temper that IE doesn't support fixed positioning. >_>

I searched through Google and found a few different work-arounds and I managed to get it looking a little better. Not great, but a little. The whole thing came together just as fast as my old Poison Paradise layout and I love it just as much. Which grates at me because Poison Paradise worked on everything, this thing won't work on IE.

.... and I just realized that I really need to get working on my homework, but this is far more interesting. ^^;;

Ick... I'm sorry to hear that, Theresa. I was hoping my bad luck had just passed, not passed on to someone else - especially not you. *hugs tight* After we're hooked back up for internet and stuff, I'll try to catch you on MSN. *super big hugs* Give everyone a hug from us!

Oh, and before I forget.... The ice-cream is Ben & Jerry's "Vanilla Heath Bar Crunch", Mom and Jass got "Brownie Batter." ^_^

We purchased the manufactured house today! $22,000 later, we were given the rules for the community we're moving to and were told the house should be ready to move into on Monday. ^___^ That includes Deposit, Lot Rent, and Pet Deposit so we should be all set for a least September. They have to finish a few repairs and get the Gas company in to connect the gas and it should be all set. We're going to be calling Two Men & A Truck tomorrow and setting up the move for the 24th or 25th. Packing is almost complete, but I feel like we've reached an impasse. The prior owners here [not new house] left tons of junk around and we're required to get rid of it before we leave. Fortunately, bright and early tomorrow morning the trash is being hauled away. Later tomorrow we're also going to be looking for a new car. After that point, we should be just about set, aside from getting jobs when we get there.

I promised myself I wouldn't begin the Lunaescence.com redesign until after the move was complete, we were well settled in, and I had a job. I've never been good at waiting. ^^;; I made out a rough sketch for each section (Main, FanFiction, FanArt, Forums, etc.), suddenly I was in Paint Shop Pro forming the images, and then I was in Notepad laying the dumb thing out.

I don't think I'll ever get positioning in CSS, though.... For the index, I have two menus on either side of the page and then the main content between them. I got the menus placed beautifully, but then the center section wouldn't work. When I got it to work it didn't want to move up where it belonged vertically, but when I fixed that, it was no longer where I wanted it horizontally. :-P Frustrated, I gave up and made a set of nested tables that I nudged down where it belonged using CSS. Now that solution worked. A few more hours more work and the layout should be ready to put up... only to be benched until I finish moving, have internet connected, and settle in. XD