Styling without classes and IDs November 14, 2008
Posted by macfoto in General, Web Design.add a comment
Sometimes you get into a situation where you you don’t have all of the control on the web page you would like. I had an image that I had attached to a page with Drupal. Unfortunately it didn’t have a class or ID associated with it for styling. I could have tried going into the theme, but I wanted to know if there were any other options that I could use in my stylesheet. I eventually found the answer was “attribute selectors” this allows you to use the attribute to identify the particular image or other element you need. ie img[src="http://www.example.com/imagefile.jpg"] {} One thing to note is that the URL has to be exact, http://www.example.com/imagefile.jpg will be treated differently than http://example.com/imagefile.jpg.
More info can be found in Eric Meyer’s article on attribute selectors.
My Favourite Firefox Extensions October 12, 2008
Posted by macfoto in General, Mac Websites, Web Design.add a comment
One of the best part of Firefox is how you can extend it. While other programs allow you to extend them some, with Firefox the options are great. This is a list of some of the extensions that I use:
Web Developer and Firebug are a couple extensions that are useful if you are designing web pages. They allow you to see your web page with different options and to find out details of the structure of the page. The Web developer extension has options for disabling various features of the browser to see what your site will look like in those circumstances, provides information about the HTML structure and CSS of the web page and will have your page validated. Firebug also gives a detailed view of your HTML and CSS.
NoScript is an extension that disables JavaScript and plugins. However, it allows you to turn them on for the ones where you need it. This can help make your browsing more secure and also better by preventing undesirable scripts from displaying.
Quartz PDF Plugin: This extension will allow you to view PDF files directly within Firefox, without having to download or open up a separate program.
There are also many themes that one can use with Firefox. The one that I like to use on the Mac is iFox Smooth.
Mac Browsers, what to look for? October 11, 2008
Posted by macfoto in General, Mac Websites, Web Design.add a comment
There are many different browsers out there for the Mac, Firefox and Safari being the main ones. Some of the things that I like in my browsers are tools for web designers and also capabilities for limiting the use of Javascript on websites as I find on many sites I find it unnecessary and sometimes intrusive, like pop-up ads activated using Javascript. The browsers that I?ve used and what I found about them:
Camino: For a long time I used this browser. It is based on the same rendering engine as Firefox so web pages will work the same. Camino is built only for the Mac and so it has a native Mac UI and takes advantage of Mac features. Its also an excellent choice for older Macs as you can run the latest version of Camino on Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later
Opera: I used Opera for a while. It has options built in for controlling the type of content, such as Javascript, that will be run on a site. It also has web design tools built into it. While not too much of a problem, I did find some sites that didn?t work well with it. This isn?t necessarily a problem with Opera, but of web designers that require certain browsers.
Safari: Apple?s browser. Version 3 has a few web tools that can be activated by selecting the “Show Develop menu in menu bar” checkbox. This gives access to the “Inspector” and a few other options.
Firefox: I?m currently using Firefox as my main browser. As many say, the add-ons are part of what makes it a great browser. I don’t particularly like the standard theme, however, I found an excellent one that I’ll mention in my next post on Firefox extensions.
Still yet to come for the Mac is Google’s Chrome browser that will be interesting when it comes out.
With Apple’s WebKit and Mozilla’s Gecko there are also some other browsers, have you used one and have a comment? What do you look for in web browsers? Do you stick to one browser or have you switched in order to find the features you were looking for?
Welcome, Bonjour and Bienvenidos to the Macfoto Life July 15, 2008
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This is my first post to “The Macfoto Life” a blog that will be focused on technology, particularly Macintosh and Apple related, web design and photography.
David
