It’s been a while

I won’t go into too much detail, but I’ve been hunting for a new hosting provider. Thanks to a friend, I am now back up and running.

Several countries and photos later, I will update in a little bit with some of the favourites.

Cheers!

Google Chrome

Positives

• It’s really fast
• The UI is quite easy to use and comprehend
• Tabs containing the address bar, navigation buttons et al, rather than the other way round, actually is more semantic and intuitive
• It uses webkit, not a proprietary rendering engine
• Finally, a browser with a decent font-size for the address bar
• Did I mention it was really fast?

Negatives

• For a browser that’s meant to be created for today’s users’ needs, it doesn’t have RSS support? Did I miss something?
• What’s with the Vista-styled minimise, maximise and close buttons? Not to mention the IE 8-inspired address bar, how it dulls part of the line to put more emphasis on the domain…
• Does anyone find “Help make Google Chrome better by automatically sending usage statistics and crash reports to Google” the least bit fishy?
• Inability to see, at a glance, long page title text without hovering over the tab
• IE 7- and 8-styled menu, tucked away in a button, makes it harder to get to, not to mention inconsistent with just about all other applications
• Lack of page zoom, instead only having text zoom

That’s all for now… I’m mostly just glad I didn’t have to look to yet another browser to check for inconsistent page rendering. Looking forward to future versions, and what the Google giant are capable of.

Google Chrome

Anchor pseudoclass issues in Internet Explorer 6

I’ve never come across this problem in all my years as a developer, and needless to say, it frustrated me no end.

Everyone knows the LVHA rule, or LoVe HAte (if they don’t, they should know that :link comes first, :visited next, :hover next, and :active last. The order they come in matters, so don’t forget!)

Sometimes, I have to do complex buttons; this often means having a <span> element inside the anchor, with specific styling for it during hover etc.

This is where the issue comes in. In the following code:

a:link,
a:visited { background-color: #fff;
    color: #585858; }

a:link span,
a:visited span { zoom: 1.0; /* triggering hasLayout so in IE 6 the background colour actually shows */
    display: block;
    background-color: #4ff;
    cursor: pointer; }

a:focus span,
a:hover span,
a:active span { background-color: #33f;
    color: #fff; }

Shouldn’t be anything wrong with that code, right? :link are unvisited links, :visited are visited links, that covers all anchors. The special hovering is only for <span>s. Works in standards-compliant browsers.

In IE, though, the background colours don’t change. Not while the link is still unvisited. Once they’re visited, they work fine. Why? No idea. But if you add rules for :focus, :hover, and :active (to “underride” the ones defined for the <span>):

a:link,
a:visited { background-color: #fff;
    color: #585858; }

a:focus,
a:hover,
a:active { color: #595959; }

a:link span,
a:visited span { zoom: 1.0; /* triggering hasLayout so in IE 6 the background colour actually shows */
    display: block;
    background-color: #4ff;
    cursor: pointer; }

a:focus span,
a:hover span,
a:active span { background-color: #33f;
    color: #fff; }

The “underridden” rule must not be identical (must be different by some amount, and it doesn’t seem to matter which property, as long as it differs slightly.) I’ve changed the colour from #585858 to #595959 and suddenly, it works. Change them to the same colour value and it stops working.

I’ve been sick and have a headache so this post may sound incoherent, but I hope it makes sense. And is useful.

Things are happening

The main site over at mingteo.com has been fully refurbished, sporting a nice shiny new codebase and design. Soon, when I have the time to sort through it all, this blog will be updated with the same design (so it’s all nice and consistent, you know?) ‘Soon’ being the taunting variable in that sentence… cross your fingers because I’m crossing mine that it will get done, at some stage…

Other than that, we’ve been doing some fun cookery. First there was J and my very first attempt at hand-making gnocchi, we did it with a simple creamy gorgonzola cheese sauce:

Then we cranked the new pasta maker to hand-make parpadelle, which was accompanied by a chicken and white wine rosé sauce (it took more than three hours, but we thought it was worth it):

Last night, to commemorate the fixing of the stupid near-new oven that shouldn’t be broken (it’s a long title, I know,) I whipped up a filo filled with a lightly fried salmon steak and tahini yoghurt, with steamed asparagus spears dolloped with more yum tahini yoghurt:

Well, that’s about it. Still haven’t made any progress on that story… oh well, maybe better luck next time.

A List Apart’s Web Survey 2008

I took it:

New short

Here’s my attempt at semi-regular postings :) A new short, the butter queen. The idea for this cropped up in the past week, and it flew. Unfortunately, another short that’s been around for much longer still hasn’t been finished yet… and, I seem to have lost my notes for it.

Anyway, enjoy :)

Announcement

I forgot to mention one last thing: I have let the onegaishimasu.info domain expire, due to spam issues with *.info domains. I will continue everything as normal with the mingteo.com domain.