Month / February 2009

by Aaron

CSS Style Naming Recommendations

From Six Revisions, “CSS Tip #2: Structural Naming Conventions in CSS.”Sears Tower

 

In a nutshell, they recommend naming CSS classes based on the structure of the document instead of a commonly used presentational style. For example, you could give a DIV an id of “rightColumn.” That implies that the div (and corresponding CSS class) must be the right column. Sure, until your designer decides that the column should instead be located on the left side in a new version. The structural approach would be to name the column based on the use of the column, not based on it’s presentation. For example, it might be called, “navigationColumn".

I know I’ve used a mix of presentational and structural naming conventions in the past in CSS, but I’m definitely inclined to follow this general advice of going with structural names.

There’s plenty of other examples and details in the post here.

What’s your pattern for naming styles?

by Aaron

E-mail verification, still a necessary evil?

It’s tax time in the United States. Many have already submitted our taxes, some are working on them, and others waiting.

Here’s my e-mail inbox for one of the e-mail accounts that I maintain:

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Seeing that, you’d probably think that I’ve been working on my taxes and submitted them …. Well, nope. We haven’t started yet. However, someone named Nicole did work on and successfully complete her taxes yesterday (and congratulations Nicole, the return was accepted!).

Until we move to a more universal form of online identification, like Open ID, a Facebook account, Windows Live, etc., is there a better way? My paranoid side says though that I would be uncomfortable linking my financial accounts, my tax returns, my healthcare records, to a common “social” account, but when I skip making that link, I’m back to needing e-mail verification. Would you make that link and use a common account?

By the way, H&R Block did not send an e-mail verification to my e-mail account for Nicole.

I did try to find a reasonable way to contact H&R Block to notify them of the issue, but they seemed to want every piece of personal information about me just to hear my contact that I decided not to:

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And there appears to be no way to contact them about their web site – so it wasn’t clear that giving out this information was going to actually help Nicole.

Sorry Nicole.

by Aaron

Kindling 2

I broke down and decided to pre-order a Kindle 2 today. image Here’s what Amazon had to say about it:

New Features & Enhancements

  • Slim & Lightweight: Just over 1/3 inch and 10.2 ounces
  • Books in under 60 seconds: Get books delivered in less than 60 seconds; no PC required
  • Improved Display: Reads like real paper; now boasts 16 shades of gray for crisp images and text; even reads well in bright sunlight
  • Longer Battery Life: 25% longer battery life; read for days without recharging
  • More Storage: Take your library with you; holds over 1,500 books
  • Faster Page Turns: 20% faster page turns
  • Read-to-Me: Text-to-Speech feature means Kindle can read every book, blog, magazine, and newspaper out loud.
  • No Wireless Bills: No monthly wireless bills, data plans, or commitments. Amazon pays for Kindle’s wireless connectivity so you won’t see a monthly wireless bill.
  • Large Selection: Over 230,000 books, plus U.S. and international newspapers, magazines and blogs available
  • Low Book Prices: New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases $9.99, unless marked otherwise

Here are my reasons (in addition to those above):

You can check your wireless coverage here.

by Aaron

Most expensive satellite mount, ever.

I was looking for a few old photographs this morning and found this gem from quite a few years ago.

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This was taken back during the first Internet DotCom boom – money flowing freely – excess, etc. Our neighbors were getting satellite installed one day.

I hope that they later paid him to actually tilt the thing up at the sky though …