September 2004 in the Life of Ben (Blog)
CSS Update (29th September 2004)
This website uses the <h1> header element for the Project Cerbera title at the top of the page and the <h2> header element for any other type of title. I have removed the 'margin-top' and 'margin-bottom' attributes from these elements so that there is no more additional spacing above and below them. I have also set the <h2> element to use a normal font weight and style but appear in a medium grey.
In the vehicle download sections vertical space is at something of a premium and compressing the space used for headers has helped this. It also means that the fragment links (hotlinks) used to jump directly to a particular point on a page now do not have the old margin space above the title. I am also seeking to remove other whitespace automatically assigned by browsers to elements like links. I may reverse these changes depending on their effect.
I have changed from using percentage units to set font size and now use the em unit and colours are now set using three digits rather than six. I have also made all the style entries more thorough and added entries for elements which did not already have them.
Full Site Validation (29th September 2004)
I fully validated all pages on this websites, fixed all errors and put the fixed pages online. Page is now 100% compliant to W3C HTML4.01 and also validated the Cascading Style Sheet used by all the pages on this site, which passed first time! Therefore this website is also 100% compliant with W3C CSS2. Until I break it again.
XHTML Conversion (29th September 2004)
After reading the W3 Schools articles about XHTML I found that XHTML is like very strict HTML4.01 and that there is even a walkthrough to convert from HTML4.01 to XHTML, so that is what I am going to do to my own website next.
Site Relaunch (23rd September 2004)
The server move has finally taken place, two months after originally anticipated. My domain name projectcerbera.com has now been applied and gone live worldwide, too! I decided this was ample reason for a site redesign so I decided to go for even greater efficiency with a detabulated layout, single style sheet and much more conventional appearence overall. All pages are now consistent between each other and I think the program interface-like appearence is quite pleasing.
The site has improved technically as well, with link styles set individually for all text and image events. Normal links are bright blue with visited links a dark blue. Links being hovered over turn red and a link being clicked or otherwise activated will turn brighter red. Images show these colours by using a border.
Time to update your bookmarks! c{:¬)
Projects List (23rd September 2004)
I have rewritten the News Index so that it has a greater focus on the projects I am currently working on and how much time I am try to dedicate to them. I do branch off into little side projects for a day or two sometimes but if a major change happens I will update the lists in the news portal. Most important is that the Curveshire team have re-appeared and we are making excellent progress. Remember to check our thread for the most recent updates.
Started Using FireFox Browser (1st September 2004)
After Icey suggested I switch to FireFox because of all the errors IE6 was generating due to it not supporting CSS2 completely, I duely tried out FireFox and within about five minutes set it as my default browser. I have been so impressed by the functionality, efficiency and thoroughness of FireFox that I will try to write an article in my Miscellaneous section to praise it. It will start off something like this:
I have always been highly skeptical of the claims that IE was uncommonly bad because I have some awareness of how complicated rendering an HTML page must be. After trying FireFox I can no longer offer any defense for IE because the difference between them is staggeringly in FireFox’s favour.