Aja Lapus

Category: Design

  • Deprecated HTML Still Taught in High Schools

    I was asked for help by my good friend to assist her nephew on his Web page design project. I first asked him what lessons they have discussed in school, so I could match the level of what the teacher taught to what we would be doing. As usual, it included <html>, <head>, and <body> elements, as well as the tables, anchors, images and lists. I was just disappointed when he said they still use <font> tags for changing the size and color of text, and use the <body> attributes background and bgcolor for placing background images and color on the page.

    Of course, as a standardista, I hated the fact that I am forced to use deprecated elements and attributes on Web pages. So, I decided to make a statement on this blog hoping to be heard (or read) by computer, web design, and web development teachers in any level of education.

    Please, please update yourself on what you know and teach about Web design. HTML 3.2, which you are teaching your depolama students, has been replaced by HTML 4.01 almost 9 years ago. That, in turn, has evden eve nakliyat been reformulated to become XHTML 1.0 in 2000. You should also know that HTML should only be used for structure and CSS be used as its presentational layer.

    Web design and development education standardization is one of the things I’d be pushing for in my Web standards advocacy. Education starts in the school. And, if teachers do not know what to teach their students, no advancement would ever happen. In my humble opinion, this principle of educational advancement doesn’t only apply in Web education.

    We are still in the process of talking about forming a formal Web standards organization in the Philippines. If you feel the same way as I do in this blog entry, and love to fight for Web standards compliance, join us in our discussions to help save the Web and its users—for interoperability, accessibility, validity, and semantics.

  • Lots’u-pdates~a

    OK. So, I’m craving for pizza.[1] Well, it’s actually Yellow Cab I’m looking for if you’re really interested in sending me some. LOL

    Anyhow, I’ve managed to update my WordPress installation from 2.2.2 to 2.5 yesterday evening, fixed a little about the tag cloud in my templates that will now use the system native to WordPress, fixed some tags whose display contained spaces and/or hyphens, and updated some plugins I am using.

    I was actually watching the CSS Naked Day website around that time along with the UST Online Grades page. Unfortunately, they both weren’t updated even if I try to reload them pages once in about every 5 to 10 minutes. 😛 So, I just slept.

    I really thought there would be no CSS Naked Day this year. Made me sad, really. Dustin’s blog was updated March 9 when I last checked it before today. However, a good morning dawned upon me when I woke up. Someone commented on my plugin page asking me to update it, telling me Dustin moved the CSS Naked Day to the 9th. So, there, I updated it already!

    I have just one problem though. My site coughs up HTTP header errors whenever I try to respond to comments on my blog entries. The comments get posted still, but the errors are still annoying. Is there anyone else out there producing similar errors after updating to WordPress 2.5? Tell me please, and maybe how to eliminate it as well. Thank you!

    Update: Apparently it was the Extended Live Archives plugin I was using that causes the error. I have just tested it using my own comment below. It seems that the problem was already existent even months ago with the 2.3 release because of the database changes, but I already admitted I haven’t been fully aware of blogging news lately. The plugin remains disabled, so you might notice a little barer homepage than before. There seems to be a fix, though I guess I have to do it a little later as I am already tired after a full half day of tweaking with my installation.

    Footnote:

    1. ^ I’m always craving actually. OMG! I have to go on a diet. LOL

  • UST Web Site Redesign

    I was trying to check the University calendar on the UST Web site for the preliminary examinations schedule when I noticed the redesign and restructure planned for it has already been implemented. Excitedly, I saw some of the things I’ve dreamt of doing for it[1] accomplished on the reboot.[2]

    These include:

    • Porting the site from ASP to PHP; and,
    • Complying with the XHTML 1.0 and the CSS 2 recommendations.

    A very clean design added to its beauty and usability. And, scripting features that makes the layout fluid or fixed, as well as changing the font size according to the users’ preferences, made it more accessible. Two very good steps to have been taken, IMO.

    I remember checking it a day after the said reboot, the news roller was a bit misaligned in Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Safari,[3] but was rendered as desired in Internet Explorer 7. Now, four days later, after browsing it again to continue writing this post, I see they’ve already fixed the alignment problem for the major browsers with the exception of Safari/Win—now I have nothing to rant about the site being made with only IE anymore. Heh.

    The new design also features compliance badges from W3C, which results to only a single markup error that is, IMO, fairly forgivable for an elaborate design and a complex site structure. That error may even be caused by the CMS[4] itself for one of its modules automatically placing a <link /> to a style sheet wherever it was inserted.

    I haven’t seen much improvement in a single reboot for the site as far as I could remember.[5] The move to open source software, Web standards compliance, and accessibility with usability is, IMO, the best direction any Web site could have taken. Kudos to the Webmasters of the new UST Web site!

    Footnotes:

    1. ^ when I volunteered to be a TomasinoWeb member
    2. ^ another term for redesign; from CSS Reboot
    3. ^ all on the Windows platform
    4. ^ namely, Joomla!
    5. ^ with three designs, as of now

  • Redesign At Long Last

    I have announced a redesign more than a month ago, but since WP 2.2 has been delayed, I decided to delay it as well. It’s finished now … well, almost. The upgrading process and the redesign exhausted me. So this post will just be a placeholder. Place your comments here, but I will surely edit this entry later.

    I was just worried about some things the upgrade did to my database, it seems that some non-Latin characters was converted to something else. I will investigate on this matter after I wake up later this morning.

    *after waking up this afternoon*

    After years of having single color accents, I’ve decided to take on dual-color accents to be used on this new design. I just love having complementary orange and blue on almost anything, now they’re on my Web site as well.

    Some pages still wouldn’t work, and some are still being rewritten. The new Projects page will be used to organize all my work including Web development and WordPress plugin development pages.

    This design has been tested on Firefox 2.0.0.x, Opera 9.x and Internet Explorer 7. I may include some bug fixes for Internet Explorer 6 as I discover it, but don’t count on it.

    Credits go to Feed Icons for the standard feed icon, and to FamFamFam for the cute little Silk icons I’ve used throughout the whole site.

    Thanks to Arvin for pointing out that my comment form didn’t work. I’ve only used id attributes on the form elements that browsers handling HTML-compatible XHTML wouldn’t process as query string variable names like what they do on name attributes.

    Criticisms are welcome. 🙂

  • Not Only WP 2.2 will be Delayed

    You’ve probably read that Matt Mullenweg announced a delay to the WP 2.2 release, which was previously due in 4 days, on your Dashboard already, but it still is worth blogging. As I am creating my new theme—now at a rough estimate of 75% completion after five [half] days of work—I think it would be better to delay the release of AjaLapus.com 4.0 as well.

    New features from WP 2.2, including core Widgets support, integrated tagging system[1] and Atom 1.0 standard syndication feeds, would most probably make me revise my theme a lot more since I am planning to use them anyway. And since I still haven’t tried using nightlies, nor do I have time and patience to install AMP again on either my Linux or Windows installations to test and develop on a nightly, it’d probably be best if I would wait the couple of weeks out for the new WordPress to be released.

    So far, I have the following completion percentages for the templates of the upcoming theme before I delay working on it:

    • Header, Footer, and Single post templates and styles at 100%
    • Homepage, Quasi-static Pages, and Sidebar templates and styles at about 90%
    • Archives [including Tag, Date, Category and Search pages], 404 page, and Page-specific templates at 0%

    And, btw, I’ve already consulted Shari and Lexie about the theme and they seem to like it so far. That was a relief since Shari immediately turned down the first one I’ve made. Well, not that it all depends on them—I really just like positive feedback.

    For those who were browsing yesterday late at night and have been [403] Forbidden from viewing any page, that was most probably be me doing some tests. Ugh. I really need a local LAMP/WAMP installation.

    And, about the issue of ad serving using Google AdSense, I decided to stick to HTML-compatible XHTML Strict since I’ve encountered a FAQ from Google stating that AdSense code within an <iframe> would lead to PSAs or less targeted ads [probably the same case an <object> tag would produce] even though that method was approved by Google.

    So, there you have it—just lame updates. I’m getting busy at school since I’m taking up my Math 321 this summer vacation.[2] I still do hope I’d have more fun before the vacation ends.

    Footnotes:

    1. ^ As Dougal Campbell pointed out, it was pushed to 2.3 milestone—I wasn’t reading the wp-hackers list as well.
    2. ^ If you can’t remember, it’s because of this little problem.