Letter Spacing
Posted: Tue 21 December, 2004 Filed under: Geeky 1 Comment »OK, that’s one of the problems sorted out. I was having issues with how WordPress was spacing the letters in d4d™, and couldn’t find the correct CSS Selector for it.
Should anyone else be having similar problems, it turns out it’s as easy as
#content p {letter-spacing:0px;}
*sigh*
Resolutions 2
Posted: Tue 21 December, 2004 Filed under: D4D™, Festering Season, Resolutions 3 Comments »The second part of the resolutions (or as close to them as I get) were as follows (and can be seen in their original format here)
- New Tattoo
- Pass the fucking Driving Test
- Redo D4D in
Movable TypeWordPress- Lose weight
- Spend the Festering Season™ away from the UK
So – how did things go this year?
- Nope
- Halfway – at least I got the Theory test sorted out
- Done – still tweaking, but done, and you’re looking at it
- Ish
- See below, but no, not seeing it out abroad
However, during the year I’ve also :
- Printed up my own photos, and had other people want them
- Been paid for commercial photography work, now published in an Annual Report
- Been to Iceland
- Finished at my current workplace (well, that’s tomorrow technically, but hey ho)
- Developed new sites and systems for a bunch of people
- Started to believe in myself a fair bit
- seen D4D™ get another 150,000+ page views
- various other things
- and made a lot of plans for the start of ’05, including new location, new job, new domestic situation, and new lifestyle
So overall I reckon I’ve done a lot more than a simple list of resolutions indicates – but there’s likely going to be a new list for ’05 too.
Resolutions
Posted: Tue 21 December, 2004 Filed under: D4D™, Festering Season, Resolutions Leave a comment »So, last January I wrote about some of what I planned to do in 2004. One of those was what I intended to do for Christmas.
- Go somewhere sunny – and possibly non-christian.
Now this one appeals, knowing my need for sun, and my desire to avoid as much of Christmas and it’s traditions as possible.- Go somewhere snowy
Prague still really appeals, and the entire thing of going somewhere that’s capable of a “proper� christmas- Stay home, and work a soup kitchen or similar
Done it before, and I’m pretty sure I’ll end up doing it again. Maybe not in ‘04, but definitely before long. We’ll see though.
And what’s happening for Christmas? None of ’em. Instead I’ll be down in Norfolk, with the family of Herself.
However, I did manage to do some work with soup kitchens over the last couple of months, so that’s that one kind of fulfilled.
WordPress Problems
Posted: Tue 21 December, 2004 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky 2 Comments »There’s one thing where I’m currently getting really pissed off with WordPress. The login section seems to be – frankly – utterly fucked.
Currently, ’til I get something figured out and/or fixed, I’m having to reinstall it every day, so that it gets a new admin log-on. That means that I’m needing to backup the database, delete it, and start from scratch before installing the DB again. The WP forums have been – frankly – fuck all use, despite posting the problem, and keeping on following up with new stuff I’m figuring out.
I’m almost at a point where I’m considering going back to Blogger ’til WP is more sorted.
Does anyone else have this problem with WordPress?
Still To Do – WordPress Migration
Posted: Mon 20 December, 2004 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky 6 Comments »- move other sections to new CSS styling and PHP
figure out some of the font issues(Firefox, for example, seems to have some issues)- sort out sweary/non-sweary styling
- put some of the other stuff back into the right-hand side-bar
redesign that “navigation image” – it’s shit, but it’ll do for nowsort out a script for putting in the titles on posts that don’t have ’emupgrade to 1.2.2 from 1.2.1– please god it’s painless (it was!)
Still Chuffed
Posted: Mon 20 December, 2004 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky 3 Comments »Bloody IE.
I thought I’d got the column problem sorted out, with the menu and links not over-writing the other stuff. And I had, in everything except I-fucking-E.
Rethink is needed. In the meantime, I think I’m going to turn off the side-bar. It’s more hassle than it’s worth.
UPDATED : Hmm, interesting. I think I’ve now fixed all the spacing problems cross-browser (including fucking IE). How did I do it? By letting the browser work out more stuff instead of using defined widths for a couple of the columns.
Now I just need to sort out this letter-spacing issue. (and probably loads of other things too, I know)
House.co.uk
Posted: Mon 20 December, 2004 Filed under: General 6 Comments »As most readers of d4d™ know, I’m going to be moving house between Christmas and New Year (although a lot of it will be going on through January, but that’s just the way it’s worked out this time) so as part of that I need to close off my account with British Gas (who also supply my electricity). So I thought I’d make my life easier and do it all online at the site British Gas created for this kind of thing www.house.co.uk. Dear Christ, I wish I hadn’t.
The site is bloody awful. Not content with making it so it only truly works with Internet Explorer, the style sheets are so fucked it means that using Opera or Firefox with it is nigh-on impossible – text is superimposed over other text, and it’s basically just a sack of shit. To rub salt in the wounds, they bang on about how accessible the site is.
So I sent a complaint email to them, asking why it couldn’t be used in anything except IE. And the reply I got was – shall we say – complacent.
Thank you for your enquiry regarding the problems you have encountered on our web site when attempting to register impending house move. Please accept my apologies for not being able to give an earlier response to your enquiry.
Unfortunately the web site is only tested for Internet Explorer and at present you would not be able to use Firebox or Opera. When you have moved out of your property if you could take a reading from the meter and contact our Home movers section on 0845 6091133 and they will take the reading from you.
I hope this answers your enquiry
Perhaps rather more incensed by this than I should be, I enquired about how they could justify banging on about accessibility when they blatantly didn’t give a shit about anyone using any other browser than IE.
No, this doesn’t really answer the query. Your site blathers on about being accessible and so on – so why is it only tested on IE? And (from the look of it) designed with only IE in mind?
As someone who works with accessibility issues all the time, I’m interested to know how British Gas justifies their claims against the simple fact that the site isn’t accessible to those who prefer to use a browser with as many known security issues as IE.
Today I got a response from the scrofulous twadgeknockers.
Thank you for your email to house.co.uk, my apologies for any inconvenience caused regarding this matter.
Website designers will build their sites around the Internet browsers they expect their websites customers will be using. However, their expectations can be incorrect.
Microsoft Internet Explorer version 4.1 and above is the only browser that is fully supported by the House website. This is detailed in the website terms and conditions section under the heading Using the website. Whilst you can access the site using other browsers, the availability of some parts of the site may be limited.
We are constantly updating and upgrading the site to ensure that people using other currently unsupported Internet browsers can access all areas of the site. This is backed up by our commitment that all new areas added to the site should be fully compatible with a wide range of Internet browsers and once this has been achieved, then the compatibility will also be made fully retrospective.
Once again, please accept my apologies that you have experienced regarding this matter
I know there’s going to be another reply (perhaps something about “Well check your CSS layouts then, fuckface”) but maybe that’s slightly aggressive.