Comments on: Sometimes, A House of Cards

By: Bryan Buchs

Bryan Buchs — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 16:48:43 +0000

27 comments and only one about Journey? Come one, people…
If anyone hasn’t seen “VH1 Behind The Music – Journey”, well, you haven’t lived. Best. Episode. Ever. Those guys *hate* each other now.
Anywho, I agree with your point on alloting extra time for x-browser debugging – it’s so easy to under-estimate the time it’s really going to take to get it done. Right.

By: luis fernandes

luis fernandes — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 23:40:17 +0000

What we need is an interactive CSS debugger that allows us to single-step through each application of the css rules and allows us to stop at the exact css rule that is the cause of all that anxiety, grief and hair-loss.
I don’t know, nor can I imagine the interface of such a debugger or how this would work but once someone writes a prototype css debugger we can all suggest improvements.

By: CodeBitch

CodeBitch — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 02:09:34 +0000

There are comprehensive lists of known bugs for many browsers, eg Big John's for IE/Windows and mine for IE5/Mac, at MacEdition. I can't tell from your description if the bug you encountered is already documented there, but it could be this one.

By: tlack

tlack — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 05:30:10 +0000

Wow, it must be nice to have clients that can pay you for five or ten hours of layout on a single, simplistic HTML page. Usually when I get to the point of frustration mentioned in this post I just tear out the CSS layout code and make it a table with CSS for cell styling. And you know what? I almost always get it perfect the first time. They suck but they work.

By: Jerry

Jerry — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 15:16:19 +0000

Had the same problem with position:relative also. In my case worked O.K. on Mac IE 5.x but on PC IE 5.x, I wasn’t able to resize my table without causing the computer to freeze up. I replaced it with width:100%; and all was well.

By: Kris

Kris — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 10:21:05 +0000

Only two things matter: The KISS Principle and Somebody Else’s Advice

By: anonymous coward

anonymous coward — Sun, 18 Apr 2004 00:48:42 +0000

Hmmm…there is a turkey about the position:relative syntax in IE/Mac, maybe in IE across the board, that may have been the culprit.
You mentioned you tried the obvious and non-obvious. Did you investigate z-index? Use of position:relative allows the use of z-index in IE. The default behavior of z-index may be at fault. If you had not explicitly placed your element in z-index stack, you may be able to see the elements (possibly through a transparent background) but not interact with them. I have recently learned that not knowing what the default behaviors of code might be can lead to hair pulling scenarios of “WHY!?”

By: Dann Ryan

Dann Ryan — Fri, 16 Apr 2004 19:51:31 +0000

You’re telling me, I can’t begin to express the number of hours I spent going through the CSS for my site just for the difference between IE/Mozilla/Netscape on my PC. I haven’t even had the opportunity to touch it on a Mac, and I am definately dreading when that opportunity does arise.
The most frustrating part is when I get comments from people I know like “Oh, thats your new site? Thats it? I don’t see what the big deal is…” Even other people I know in web design that completely write CSS off and are, for lack of a better word, tablewhores.
The stuff that CSS can accomplish is amazing, but it doesn’t come without its cost.

By: Jeremy Boggs

Jeremy Boggs — Fri, 16 Apr 2004 17:52:49 +0000

I literally found out about CSS in January in a class I'm taking in grad school, Creating History in New Media. CSS is amazing stuff, and I'm so thankful that I've found it, but the countless hours doing things that Dan is talking about here is not unlike reading about 6 books a week (which is fairly typical in a history grad program, my experience in my MA program anyways). I actually messed around with a problem for the past 4 days for one of my assignments, which I haven't completely solved. Because it's so new for all of us in class, and because we're all historians in the class, I'm really suprised (and proud) that most of us have learned to use it somewhat efficiently. In most history grad programs students are taught how to "shred" through books quickly to get at the main arguments, so tackling CSS and working with it hours on end is a whole new world for us. In the long run, CSS will make (in my opinion) working with History and New Media much easier and rewarding. I'm sold on the virtues of CSS; now I'm just trying to become as proficient with it as most of the people who post here...if that's even remotely possible!

By: Bo Salisbury

Bo Salisbury — Fri, 16 Apr 2004 08:16:34 +0000

Back before you folks were probably born, I remember seeing a handmade poster on a telephone pole in East Los Angeles, advertising the first area show of a new supergroup, Journey, playing at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go on Sunset Blvd. My friends and I were big fans of Neal Schon and Aynsley Dunbar (from the Mothers), so we were practically the first in line. What a show that was! Neil and Aynsley were joined by Ross Valory, Gregg Rolie and a rhythm guitarist / vocalist named George Tickner, who later went on to become a physician or something.
Anyways, I’m an old duffer, so when I’m having trouble I have to shift to chorale music or some ambient stuff (Aphex Twin) or some older Miles Davis or absolute silence. When things are going well, then it’s happy punk or trance or the 77′s.
Where would design be without music?