James Oppenheim’s blog

Australian Web Week has been born, this year from October 2 - 9. There is not much on at the moment, however, give it a couple of years and I think it will be a really exciting time for the Australian digital industry. Taken from the Australian Web Week website (http://webweek.com.au) the week involves:

…the best of the Australian web industry - sites and applications, designers and designs, innovative Australians taking it to the world. Over ten days professionals across the industry from around the country and the from around the world will come together to connect, learn and celebrate the strength of the Australian web industry.

Technorati Tags: Australian Web Week, Web

Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo.

I spend most of my daily working hours as a front-end developer creating custom HTML, CSS, JavaScript for the web. However, from time to time I have to dip my toes into HTML emails. Which is not such a stretch as after all they use the same underlying technologies. Making them even more comparable is the pain I have to go through bending, cheating and hacking the code to fit with a Microsoft product:

Internet Explorer 6 is to web development as Outlook 2007 is to HTML email development - A massive time waster!

As outlined back in January 2007 by the Campaign Monitor guys Microsoft Outlook 2007 uses the Word rendering engine to display emails, that means:

1. No background images
2. Poor background colour support
3. No support for float or position
4. Shocking box model support

The Good

Internet Explorer 8 has a high level of CSS 2.1 support, which is a fantastic move in the right direction.

The Bad

Internet Explorer 6 and its additional development time to support it will be with us for a long time to come and Internet Explorer 8 does not support any CSS3.

The Ugly

Just when you though Microsoft was listening to standards bodies and creating a better Internet environment for all they mention that Outlook 2010 will also still use the Word rendering engine.

Hopefully, the Email Standards Project’s latest website http://fixoutlook.org/ will implore Microsoft to do the right thing and stop using Microsoft Word to render emails. Please, please, please. If I say it three times does it become true? I hope so.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Outlook, Email Standards, fixoutlook.org

It is possible to use multiple CSS classes on one HTML element. For example:

class="first second"

This is fantastic to produce reusable default styles that can be slightly overridden by the use of a second, third or fourth class. However, what becomes more interesting is that you can use both of the CSS classes in combination to create a more specific class.

For example, if the first class was ‘green’:


.first {
background-color: green;
}


and the ’second’ class was red:


.second {
background-color: red;
}


But when an element has both classes together ‘.first.second’ you get yellow.

.first.second {
background-color: yellow;
}

A point to note with the multiple classes is that the order is not important, for example: ‘.first.second’ is the same as ‘.second.first’.

However, there is a problem! In IE6, ‘.first.second’ works exactly the same way as ‘.second’. This is because IE6 doesn’t understand the chain of classes within a CSS selector, but instead only reads the last class in the chain.

Because of this we can’t safely use this technique if we want to support IE6. However, we can use it to create a IE6 CSS hack! To do this we add a random class that does not exist on the element before the real one and only IE6 will still match it. For example:


.ie6.third {
background-color: orange;
}


I have setup a demo page to demonstrate the multiple CSS classes & the IE6 CSS hack.

Technorati Tags: CSS, Examples, Web Standards, IE6, CSS hacks

On and off I have been thinking of redesigning this website and the first step is always the logo. So after months I have finally got around to knocking something up in Illustrator.

What do you think?

Technorati Tags: Personal, Web design, Logo Design

Have you ever tried to use custom CSS background images for your form inputs? Well it actually turns out to be quite easy: apply the background image and then remove the default borders. But unfortunately in Apple’s Safari you get some over zealous focus styles applied by the browsers default rendering engine:

To remove this outer glow, just apply some simple CSS:

outline: none;


See my example of how to turn off Safari’s input focus outer glow for detailed information.

Technorati Tags: CSS, Web Standards, Safari, Web Browsers, Input Focus

Has anyone ever search for a solution to a problem in Google to only find that high up on the search results page comes Experts Exchange? I searched for ‘css background image on textarea‘ and low and behold Experts Exchange comes up in 4th position. Just like every other time I am meet with the message:

“View this solution now by starting your 7-day free trial. Setting up your free trial is quick, easy, and secure. We will return you to this solution, unlocked, when you’re done.”

I always wondered how they get Google to cache this page if I can’t see it, I even checked Google’s cache view with no luck.

But wait there is a simple solution to this problem…. scroll down to the bottom and BAM there is the answer! I can’t believe I never saw that after 6 years of searching for programming problems.

I hope someone else find this useful. Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: Web, Personal, Interesting Sites, Hacking

In these days of rising petrol prices an unnecessary road trip to indulge in the mouth watering Caravan Cafe burger seemed the perfect antidote to any well thought out savings plan. The Caravan Cafe burger came highly recommended and what’s more I can’t resist a challenge, so both my girlfriend and I thought a quest was in order.

So off we went into the Melbourne countryside with salivating mouths and Internet printed directions. However, after driving around Seymour for half an hour due to inadequate directions provided by the what I thought was the all concurring and infallible internet (can you tell I use a computer every day?) we ended up asking a local bikie, who was more than happy to help; after a 5 minute conversation. The wrong directions that were provided actually turned out to be the home residence of the late owner of the Caravan Cafe and special burger patty creator ‘Mrs Sal’. Driving around Seymour actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise because this mystifying burger was starting to take on an eerie mythical status and we also got to take in the sites including the defunct adult store ‘erotic nights’.

“Two burgers with the lot ($7 each) with beetroot (50c extra) please, oh and a strawberries milkshake”. The words were spilling out of my mouth, I could not stop them, I knew I was excited. Tantalisingly, we were able to watch the creation of these legendary beasts: the special burger patties were moulded up with an ice cream scoop, flattened on the grill and then onions mushed on top. Toasted buns, bacon, pineapple, egg, cheese, tomato, lettuce and sauce. Excellent juiciness, good structural integrity, dribble down your arm good times - what a combo!

All in all I think the Caravan Cafe burger was worth a road trip, however, the overall size, bacon and cheese let it down just a touch. I would have to say that the Buxton Burger still rocks my world. But, if you happen to find yourself driving through Seymour a stop is well worth your while.

On the way home we stopped in at the Flowerdale pub for a beer amongst the Harley’s and dirt bikes. Upon indulging the barman on our epic quest he said with a smirk on his face “I don’t know where you got your information from, but have your heard of our Mountain Burger?”

Will the search ever end, I hope not!

Related Posts

• The best hamburger in Melbourne, the almighty Cathedral burger wins again!

Technorati Tags: Melbourne, Seymour, Best hamburger in Melbourne, Burger, Personal

The John Slatin Accessibility Fund Project is an independent volunteer collaborative effort of accessibility experts who are generously donating their time to do an accessibility audit of participating companies websites.

The accessibility audit cost the site owner a minimum of $500, which will be donated to The John Slatin Fund.

Who is John Slatin? Why not check out the Knowbility website.

This is an ideal opportunity for both any company that was wondering about the accessibility of their website and any accessibility experts with some spare time.

Technorati Tags: Accessibility, Website, The John Slatin Fund Accessibility Project

With 2007 done and dusted I have had a chance this weekend to sit down and reflect on my first full year as a blogger. I must admit that I struggled to find the time and motivation to write blog posts, weather they are personal, professional or just funny. But all in all I think it was a good year. So without further ado below is a list of my favorite blog posts from Oppenheim.com.au:

1. 10 most popular websites in Australian and web standards
2. Website evolution - Look how far the web has come
3. SEO friendly Flash programming
4. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) basics - Website marketing made easy
5. The best hamburger in Melbourne, the almighty Cathedral burger wins again!

Thank you all for reading and I look forward to a fantastic 2008.

Technorati Tags: James Oppenheim, blogging, 2007

Merry Christmas to all and a happy new year. I will be off the radar for a while so this can keep you interested. Enjoy.

Technorati Tags: Personal, Interesting sites, Christmas, ElfYourself