What’s weird is that the back button symbol is a list all the typically popular sites (google, youtube, gmail ), however the forward button’s symbol results feels sleazier (redtube, myspace, and hotmail). I don’t know what this says about the habits of people that use the forward button over the back button, but google is collecting that data.

Henchman’s helper got a lot of attention this last week when it was posted up on boingboing.net. It was just a simple idea to bring world domination to the internet, so evil henchmen could have their lair anywhere they are. People liked it, and it sort of took off!

In other news my new best friend Alex over at neatorama launched a new amazing wordpress endeavor called the upcoming Queue.

I’ve been a follower of the neatorama since I picked up my first issue of Mental_floss a few years back. They were doing some kind of cross promotion at the time and I was interested enough to check out neatorama. The website is sort of a giant collection of things that make you say “Oh, that’s, uh… odd!“. The site and magazine suit each other.

Since I love wordpress so much and I am always amazed at what it can do, I want to point out that the Queue is totally WP based runs independently from wordpress on something called varo cms (Thanks Jim). My friends at Automattic, one of the bigger developers for Wordpress were impressed with the ingenuity as well.

Well from one friend to another, way to go Alex! From one blogger to his readers, I’d suggest you give the Queue a go, see if you like it.

Take a look at the question, and if you’re a Metafilter member, chime in!

This is a pretty good method of laying out a CSS page and one that I use myself. I love antonio’s techniques, and I would recommend anyone beginning in CSS work should take a look at what he’s teaching.

In addition to this, he touches on using the CSS selectors to make them as specific as possible. This is something that can be further explained in detail. If you look at the CSS for the UVic web site you may notice, after the reset and build up, that all of the CSS selectors are on a single line and that each one builds upon the one above it.

What I mean is, I use the CSS selectors to help organize the CSS itself both for improved readability and for fool-proofing the system.

Here’s a short example.

    /*----BANNER----*/
    #banner {overflow:hidden;}
    #banner .center {height:4.5em;}
    #banner .center .left {	float: left;}
    #banner .center .left img{ float: left; }
    #banner .center .left img .red{ background:red }
    #banner .center .right {float: right;}
    #banner .center .right img{ float: right; }

You’ll notice that you can easily see that you are working in the banner section just by scanning the page. This example method also prevents the user from putting the class “red” on an image outside of the banner’s left division.

This exapmle shows that the class of red is only intended to go on images in the left hand side of the banner, putting it anywhere else would be totally harmless. If the designer intended this class to be used anywhere inside the banner section then it would be moved up an couple lines and the specific selectors would be removed. If this is a global class, it would get out into the global class section.

Doing this makes the CSS easier to read, as well saving the user from accidentally using classes that are only designed for image layouts on something other than an image, or using classes that are designed for some sort of layout on a block of text.

For the last 7 months or so I have been heavily involved in the creation of the University of Victoria’s website Redesign. This site is the culmination of months or research and many months of development.

Our small team did a fantastic job tying it all together and creating something dynamic and energizing for external audiences, and something that’s fresh and organized for internal staff, faculty and students.

Working on the site was a small agile team of one information architect, one graphic designer, several content writers, a couple back end developers, one front end developer (me), one guy trying to organize it and an entire university of 25,000 staff students and faculty suggesting how it could be improved.

Working on the project allowed me to focus on polishing the “save the president” style of site structure (modular and recursive horizontal pancake divs and one center div inside each of those) and I was able to better develop a cohesive CSS system that allows for a more plug-and-play style of recursive site structure – this was inspired the the modular system that was created for uni-form and adapted, scaled up and expanded upon to include everything a web developer could need, including uni-form. I’ll get into this one later when my head isn’t filled with sleep.

Anyhow. Big congratulations on a successful launch!

The SMPTE test pattern was reworked last night. It’s lost a couple lines of code and works in every browser known to man!

Previously, I had each row sliced into bars equally, I had to shave off a tiny bit so IE could render the page, if i had them all equal 100% IE would try to make the last one wrap. This left a tiny white line at the right side of the screen. That always annoyed me.

Last night I realized that I didn’t need the last slice, and I could just colour the row behind the bars, and float the bars left. So simple! It even removes a couple lines of code.

The white bar is gone, and the page renders perfectly in the 44 browsers I tested it in. Take a look! If only i could find a way to reproduce the 1000khx tone…

Feel free to steal the test pattern and use it on your own site, Just credit me in the code.

I’ve launched a new site, All You Could Eat!

This is the best place to go to for reviews on all you can eat restaurants in Vancouver. My friends and I have always LOVED all you can eat, and we all hope to share this joy with everyone. We’ve got a highly scientific algorithm that will allow us to find the best all you can eat places for your money. A big map so you can find the ones closest to your house and a rating system.

I’ve done some neat stuff with the typical wordpress installation and added a great Google maps plugin that will allow you to see all the posts at once on a single screen.

If you love all-you-can-eat restaurants and have any suggestions on hoe the site can be improved, send me an email.