CSS Wizardry » Development http://csswizardry.com Just another WordPress weblog Sun, 05 Sep 2010 18:05:35 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Suzanna Haworth Photography redesign http://csswizardry.com/2010/02/suzanna-haworth-redesign/ http://csswizardry.com/2010/02/suzanna-haworth-redesign/#comments Sun, 28 Feb 2010 17:40:52 +0000 Harry Roberts http://csswizardry.com/?p=834 Having only put the first version of Suze’s site live a few months ago, we both decided it needed a whole new approach. Originally a static site, built with my own PHP framework, it relied on manual updates from me, which meant that for the sake of efficiency updates had to happen once there was enough content to upload; ergo not very often. After porting CSS Wizardry over to Wordpress and being very impressed, I decided that was the best approach for Suze too. This meant she could update her own site as often as she wanted.

A screenshot of Suzanna's new site

Also, follow Suze on Twitter.

As the site was built very quickly, we are adapting it as it grows and fixing any bugs as they happen. Let me know if you find anything astray. Anyway, enough talking, go look for yourselves!

]]> http://csswizardry.com/2010/02/suzanna-haworth-redesign/feed/ 2 Typographic phrases (or: how to turn sayings geeky) http://csswizardry.com/2010/02/typographic-phrases-or-how-to-turn-sayings-geeky/ http://csswizardry.com/2010/02/typographic-phrases-or-how-to-turn-sayings-geeky/#comments Fri, 19 Feb 2010 09:46:28 +0000 Harry Roberts http://csswizardry.com/?p=780 A while ago I had the idea to express some old sayings in a silly, geeky way, using code and logic to express logically, the meaning behind some well known phrases. I got Illustrator fired up last night and decided to finally got a few made. They’re kind of obvious really, even a non-developer brain can make sense of them, and deciphering the saying is pretty simple, but I think they’re cool nonetheless.

Many hands make light work

Many hands make light work

There are lots of contradictions in sayings and phrases. Like this one, if many hands do make light work, then how does this next one work?

Too many cooks spoil the broth

Too many cooks spoil the broth

A stitch in time…

A stitch in time saves nine

While the cat is away…

While the cat is away the mice will play

Absence makes the heart grow fonder vs. time is a great healer

Absence makes the heart grow fonder vs. time is a great healer

This one is another glaring contradiction, so I decided to combine the two into one poster.

Out of sight, out of mind

Out of sight, out of mind

Two wrongs don’t make a right

This one doesn’t really follow the code paradigm, but I thought I’d include it anyway.

Two wrongs don't make a right

Got any more that would work in this way? Leave any suggestions in the comments.

Also, I do realise that, programmatically, not all of these posters make perfect sense. For example, $cooks > 'enough' doesn’t really work in a programming sense… It’s just a bit of fun!

]]> http://csswizardry.com/2010/02/typographic-phrases-or-how-to-turn-sayings-geeky/feed/ 9 Message to Santa—a Christmas project http://csswizardry.com/2009/12/message-to-santaa-christmas-project/ http://csswizardry.com/2009/12/message-to-santaa-christmas-project/#comments Wed, 23 Dec 2009 11:01:54 +0000 Harry Roberts http://csswizardry.com/?p=76 Last year, the ever so talented Megan Smith and I designed and built Message to Santa—a cool way for kids to send of their present letters to the Big Man. Megan provided the cute little illustrations, and I designed and built it all. Although it is December 23 now, so probably a little late to be sending off your letters, I thought I’d do a quick blog post about it…

A screenshot of Message to Santa

]]> http://csswizardry.com/2009/12/message-to-santaa-christmas-project/feed/ 0 Typographic work planner http://csswizardry.com/2009/12/typographic-work-planner/ http://csswizardry.com/2009/12/typographic-work-planner/#comments Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:17:25 +0000 Harry Roberts http://csswizardry.com/?p=49 No one likes being told what to do, especially if it’s work related, but nevertheless jobs need done. Why present boring stuff in a boring way? If you’re going to be told what to do, at least soften the blow by being told nicely. Enter this, a little HTML/CSS typographic work planner. By using some super-semantic HTML and a dash of CSS you can craft a beautiful looking yet incredibly simple work planner for you and your staff.

Screenshot of the typographic work planner

Typographic work planner markup:

The rich, semantic markup is as follows. Notice the use of the more semantic elements and attributes such as summary="", colgroup, scope="", caption and more…

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
  <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />

  <title>Typographic work planner</title>

  <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/style.css" />
</head>
<body id="home">
  <div id="wrapper">
    <table summary="An overview of upcoming and recently completed work ?
    by employees">
      <caption>Work schedule</caption>
      <colgroup>
        <col id="date" />
        <col id="user" />
        <col id="dec" />
      </colgroup>
      <thead>
        <tr>
          <th scope="col">Date</th>
          <th scope="col">User</th>
          <th scope="col">Description</th>
        </tr>
      </thead>
      <tfoot>
        <tr>
          <td colspan="3">Sense Internet Ltd work planner</td>
        </tr>
      </tfoot>
      <tbody>
        <tr>
          <td class="date">20 December, 2009</td>
          <td class="user">Harry Roberts</td>
          <td class="desc">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, elit. Nunc ?
          rhoncus dui et mauris. Nam augue felis, dapibus ut, condimentum ?
          in, ornare a, est. Proin sem risus, pretium ut, mattis nec.</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td class="date">20 December, 2009</td>
          <td class="user">Joe Whitley</td>
          <td class="desc">Suspendisse venenatis. Donec eleifend ?
          dignissim diam. Integer faucibus neque tempor pede. Maecenas at ?
          magna sed lectus adipiscing molestie. Pellentesque habitant morbi ?
          tristique senectus et netuset malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. ?
          Curabitur sodales gravida tellus.</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td class="date">21 December, 2009</td>
          <td class="user">Harry Roberts</td>
          <td class="desc">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, elit. Nunc ?
          rhoncus dui et mauris. Nam augue felis, dapibus ut, condimentum ?
          in, ornare a, est. Proin sem risus, pretium ut, mattis nec.</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td class="date">21 December, 2009</td>
          <td class="user">Joe Whitley</td>
          <td class="desc">Suspendisse venenatis. Donec eleifend ?
          dignissim diam. Integer faucibus neque tempor pede. Maecenas at ?
          magna sed lectus adipiscing molestie. Pellentesque habitant morbi ?
          tristique senectus et netuset malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. ?
          Curabitur sodales gravida tellus.</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td class="date">21 December, 2009</td>
          <td class="user">Sam Penrose</td>
          <td class="desc">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, elit. Nunc ?
          rhoncus dui et mauris. Nam augue felis, dapibus ut, condimentum ?
          in, ornare a, est. Proin sem risus, pretium ut, mattis nec.</td>
        </tr>
        <tr class="today">
          <td class="date">22 December, 2009</td>
          <td class="user">Joe Whitley</td>
          <td class="desc">Suspendisse venenatis. Donec eleifend ?
          dignissim diam. Integer faucibus neque tempor pede. Maecenas at ?
          magna sed lectus adipiscing molestie. Pellentesque habitant morbi ?
          tristique senectus et netuset malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. ?
          Curabitur sodales gravida tellus.</td>
        </tr>
        <tr class="today">
          <td class="date">22 December, 2009</td>
          <td class="user">Sam Penrose</td>
          <td class="desc">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, elit. Nunc ?
          rhoncus dui et mauris. Nam augue felis, dapibus ut, condimentum ?
          in, ornare a, est. Proin sem risus, pretium ut, mattis nec.</td>
        </tr>
        <tr class="today">
          <td class="date">22 December, 2009</td>
          <td class="user">Joe Whitley</td>
          <td class="desc">Suspendisse venenatis. Donec eleifend ?
          dignissim diam. Integer faucibus neque tempor pede. Maecenas at ?
          magna sed lectus adipiscing molestie. Pellentesque habitant morbi ?
          tristique senectus et netuset malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. ?
          Curabitur sodales gravida tellus.</td>
        </tr>
      </tbody>
    </table>
  </div>
  </body>
</html>

In detail…

There are a few things in the table you may not have seen before, briefly, they are:

  • summary="": This is an attribute which provides a brief overview of the table and its contents/purpose.
  • caption: This is a table specific caption, essentially a heading/title explicitly for the table.
  • colgroup and col: This is an essentially invisible element that just adds semantic meaning to the table. It defines the columns and can—in some browsers—be used to style them.
  • scope="col": This is an attribute which tells the browser whether the th is a title for a column or a row. This then obviously makes the other possible attribute value row.
  • tfoot: This is a table footer and contain pretty much anything you like. It must however appear before the tbody.

Typographic work planner CSS:

The CSS used to create the work planner is pretty basic, with a dash or progressive enhancement added via some CSS3. View the full CSS file with reset etc.

table{
  margin-bottom:20px;
}
td,th{
  border-bottom:1px solid #ccc;
}
tbody tr{
  background:#fff;
}
tbody tr:nth-of-type(even){
  background:#ffc;
}
th,tfoot,caption{
  font-family:Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;
  font-size:1.6em;
  font-weight:bold;
}
th,td{
  padding:10px 0;
}
caption{
  font-size:2.4em;
  position:absolute;
  left:-9999px;
}
.date{
  width:160px;
  padding:10px 15px 10px 5px;
  font-family:Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times;
  font-size:1.6em;
  font-style:italic;
}
.user{
  width:460px;
  padding-right:20px;
  font-family:Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;
  font-size:4.8em;
  font-weight:bold;
}
.desc{
  width:280px;
  font-size:1.2em;
}
tbody tr.today{
  background:#ff8;

  text-shadow:1px 1px 1px rgba(0,0,0,0.3);
}
tfoot{
  color:#666;
}
tfoot td{
  padding:10px 5px;
}

Typographic work planner demo

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