Sam’s random musings

Harriet Martineau:

“Readers are plentiful; thinkers are rare.”

(Via Motivational Quotes of the Day.)

CSS Tip: Create a default with special cases - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals):

When you have one element with multiple states, you can use an ID to define the default appearance and classes for the individual cases. This makes your CSS easier to read and reduces code duplication (stay DRY).

I like this tip

(Via .)

A Pox on You, Greg Pierce:

A pox on Greg and all of his house for ever mentioning the insanely addictive Character Disorder.

You’ll be my ruin, you scoundrel.

Ok one little comment by Seth on an IRC channel and I wasted about an hour on this addictive price of crack. Now I Know where the true blame lies

(Via TruerWords.)

Dynamic Resolution Dependent Layouts:

Frustrated by the limitations of both fixed and fluid layouts? Well, we can have our cake and eat it too with dynamic resolution dependent layouts. Kevin shows us how we can change 3-column layouts to 2-column layouts on the fly, provide appropriate font-sizes to increase legibility, and even reward higher resolution viewers with extra content and larger images.

Ok this is a cool layout concept as well, check out the example, nice!

(Via Particletree RSS Digest.)

CSS Layout Tips:

Alex Robinson is In Search Of The One True Layoyut. A great read, even if it’s been a bit over-hyped by some people. His simple description of how to create a less crufty 3 column layout is nice, but not as original as some people seem to think it is, and not without its own issues. However the rest of the article is top notch stuff, and pulls together some techniques I’ve seen around into one elegant tutorial and example. High quality reference material for all of us. (Hat-tip: Eric Meyer)

I agree withe the above comments, but it is a fairly complete look at many of the issues for a css nincompoop like myself. It seems like there really should be an evolution to some common set of layouts that can be used as a starting point, but it seems like everyone still feels the need to solve the problems in their own way. Of course the biggest issue is that standards application in web browsers is not Standard

(Via Twilight Universe.)

Henry David Thoreau:

“I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestioned ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.”

(Via Motivational Quotes of the Day.)

Ajax Contact Form:

Dustin Diaz has put together an Ajax Contact Form.

This simple little puppy will send off the email in the background via Ajax, keeping you up-to date on progress with indicators.

View a live demo

Slick

(Via Ajaxian Blog.)

IETab—Gold!:

Hats off to Hong Jen Yee. Forget catching tigers by the tail — this clever coder and friends have put together an extension able to tame the might of Internet Explorer within a humble Firefox tab. Magic. Operation is as simple as it gets.

• Install it
• Go to a site
• Right click and scroll to ‘View this page in IETab’

And the greatest chuckle? IE now has tabbed browsing in Firefox before it has it natively.

This is really cool, I bet Lance could really use this.

(Via SitePoint’s Design Blog: Pixel Perfect.)