So, in a sense, I’ve returned to my roots and in the process, become once again (ah, bliss!) an end user. We all know how much fun that can be.

One idea I’ve been toying with is that of setting up this site in particular and possibly all of my sites so that the user can select a style or theme. I know I was contemplating doing that early on in the design phase of Techismo.

What I thought I’d do was link stylesheets from a dropdown menu. In other words, I might design different features, or say, different styles of menus for the page, then let users who were curious and interested enough choose the versions of things they liked best. There was Javascript involved, naturally, but in most if not all cases there would be a different version of a stylesheet downloaded as well. While I was initially concerned with things such as versions of menus, I considered taking the whole idea as far as re-creating a theme or skin.

This is not a totally novel idea, even for websites; I believe I must have seen it done somewhere.

Well, I still think these are all good ideas, but as I’m coding at best very part-time, I try to keep paring away at the piles of unfinished posts and pages while paying attention to styles and coding as much as I can or must.

I say as much as I “can or must” because one bad practice I find resurfacing is my old tendency to make code changes too late in the evening. The end result is inevitably disaster, and then I have to spend at least half an hour, usually more, going through the panicky process of first trying to fix it, then doing a restore if my fixes don’t work right. (That late in the night, they seldom do.) About 20 years ago, I made a rule for that: don’t code past 10 o’clock at night or when you’re overly tired. But that’s a subject for another editorial, and I digress.

As an interim measure, I’ve decided to risk appalling my readers (does either of you really mind?) by changing the look or theme of this site; that is, using this site itself to illustrate themes that I find interesting. That doesn’t mean they’ll be my own themes; it’s going to be a while before I find time for that. Since I became a beginner all over again when I started using Wordpress, I’m still trying to find the time to convert the page designs I originally did for Techismo over to Wordpress themes. I’ve gradually gotten to do enough peeking under the covers of Wordpress to comprehend how I would go about that, but it’s going to take a really sustained bout of creativity to pull it all together, and I don’t anticipate having such uninterrupted stretches of time in the foreseeable future.

So I’ll be selecting new themes such as the one introduced today—Shades of Gray, by Leslie Franke—on a totally arbitrary schedule, then perhaps tweaking or altering it to show how easily it can be customized.

All of which brings me back to something I mentioned in a previous post: the use of the Sandbox theme. As I think I’ve said before, I’d like to convert my original Techismo page designs to work within Sandbox on Wordpress. Oddly enough, a step in that direction is installing Shades of Gray, which is in fact a Sandbox design. That is, Shades of Gray can be installed just like a regular theme once you have the Sandbox theme installed.

As you can see, this is a very cool idea.

So basically, when you install Shades of Gray, all you’re doing is substituting a more sophisticated style sheet for the basic one provided with Sandbox, which relies largely on browser defaults. We haven’t seen those in so long we tend to forget just how ugly they are.

For the moment, I’ve converted this web site to run the Shades of Gray theme (or, more technically, CSS design) just as it is “out of the box.” Someday soon, I’ll replace the default image (a photo of 1911 Akron, Ohio taken from the Library of Congress collection) with something of my own design or choosing (like maybe my original Web Developer’s Notebook header image, if I can still resurrect it from the flotsam and jetsam of my fried laptop hard-drive).

Also, you should be aware that Shades of Gray is one of the 46 CSS designs entered in the Sandbox Designs Competition. The submission deadline for that competition has now passed, but as of this writing, the winners have not been selected yet. There are many other worthy designs that were submitted, so go on over and check it out.

These designs illustrate the beauty and simplicity of providing a Wordpress theme that is readily altered through CSS alone, though it does supply additional horsepower through the class structure provided by the functions. More about that some other time when I’ve had a chance to play with it.

Meanwhile, use the Live Preview feature at the competition site to check out designs you might like to download yourself.

Please take a look and tell me what you think.

This is from a theme called Feather 1.0 by Andy Mathijs. Perhaps the best thing about the theme (and I personally find it stunning) is its developer. If my own experience is any indication, Andy supports the product fully and promptly.

My own problem with the theme was that as downloaded, it did not work right in Firefox or Opera, though it was splendid in Internet Explorer—essentially a one-browser solution, which I can’t use, since I don’t want to leave out the FF and Opera users even on a non-developer site.

The fix was easy enough. The sidebar—which floats left—did not have a width specified. (I had thought that was a problem for IE, not the other two, but I’d been away from writing style sheets for a while. Eventually I remembered that whenever you float something, you have to specify a width. IE is the one that doesn’t conform to the specs, so it was the one that didn’t choke. Firefox and Opera worked properly, refusing to float the sidebar that didn’t have a width. The width, in this case, specifies the space for the text.)

Presumably Andy did his development and testing with IE (usually the problem browser, after all) and missed that little detail in at least one released version of the theme. His mistake, not mine. But I thought his handling of it was impressive.

Not only did his reply to my email contain the details of the fix, but it concluded with the sentence–and I quote—”Just let me know if you do/don’t know how to edit the css file, if you don’t know how to then I’ll help you out with it.”

Wow.

I responded with some stupid questions (things I could have figured out for myself if I’d taken ten minutes to half an hour to browse the code) and he was never condescending or impatient. What’s more, he was amazingly prompt! Granted, we had the time zones working for us. I would email my question late in the PM my time (EDT) as he was presumably about to start his day in Belgium, and when I got up the next morning, there would be his response: clear, concise, and to the point.

It just doesn’t get any better. I give Andy Mathijs an AAA+++ as an overall rating. We all have our own design viewpoints, and whether or not the version I’ve almost settled on is an improvement or a desecration of his original design, I’ll leave up to my readers. (Please do let me know what you think.) It does still look slightly difference (colors only) in IE and Firefox, a situation I haven’t gotten to examine yet.

Since my intention really is to move toward a three-column design (always my preference) I might not even keep this theme for Health Spectator. I might decide to modify it to my three-column needs or just start afresh with something else. (I’m trying to find time to work with Sandbox, as I mentioned in an earlier post. It’s too ugly for me to use with just the defaults, but once you merge in your own favorite style sheet, I imagine it really sings.)

But I wanted readers to know that they can do a lot worse than to download Feather 1.0 or probably any other design by Andy Mathijs at Mindloop.

I still haven’t re-installed FireFTP, since I’m still happy with Filezilla when I need ftp, but I can report that on the new Vista machine we have in our office, Firefox has been the least of our problems. I’m running 2.0.0.5 with different extensions for different users, and so far it’s been running rock-solid.

Thought I’d better set the record straight for anyone who saw the earlier posts.

There are a number of reasons for that rule, including the fact that the first release of a new version of the Windows operating system always seems to be buggy, and it takes at least the x.1 release to make it really usable. As an aside, I’ll remark that this is proof of my contention that Microsoft is a marketing-driven rather than a technology-driven company: fixing the existing bugs never seems to have the same priority as coming out with something new that we have to buy. Hence, the company’s success.

But it’s more than that. Especially now.

Vista, I think, is the full-blown expression of Microsoft’s (read, Bill Gates’s) desire to rule the world. In the name of security and a few other sacred cows, Vista basically won’t let you do anything. The Apple commercial where the actor representing the PC has a security person standing behind him with the “Accept, Confirm, Reject” interruptions was mildly amusing before I’d had my first experience with Vista. Now it’s either totally hilarious or not so funny, depending on whether my current mood is to laugh or to cry.

For surely there is plenty of motivation for both. I really want to love Vista—it has so much to offer in some ways. Yet I must admit I was surprised and mystified when, standing by the Best Buy service counter the other day (the Geek Squad, I’m talking about) a man actually came up and wanted to know how soon they could install Vista on his (apparently older) computer.

“What! Are you crazy?” I wanted to ask, since at that point my experience with Vista was either nonexistent or consisted of one highly frustrated evening trying to install the drivers for a printer I purchased only about six months ago (okay, maybe nine) and which installed totally without incident on my XP laptop. I honestly don’t recall just how far along I was in my Vista journey—whether it was zero days or two—but either way I was horrified at the notion that someone would volunteer to go through the OS upgrade process unbidden, much less demand to know how soon they could be subjected to that process.

“Install Vista? Are you kidding?” I nearly shouted, and had I not maintained my polite silence, I might have saved another soul from unwarranted purgatory. But alas, I didn’t know what I know now…

Seriously, this post has been sitting around unfinished for perhaps a couple of weeks now while I compiled notes intending to compose a thorough report. Since I’m not ready to do that yet, let me just say that you’ve been warned—upgrade to Vista only because you simply have no choice. (We all—as I did—have to buy a new machine now and then.)

But while you’re in the store, check out the older models that might still come with XP. There’s a chance they’ll even be cheaper just because they don’t have Vista installed. You might even pass it by the salesperson: “Say, this doesn’t even have Vista—guess it must be an older machine—how ’bout I take it off your hands for a discount?”

You never know. It might work.

In any case, you’ve been warned.

During the design phases of Techismo, for example, I spent a lot of time developing styles in CSS, coding HTML, and perfecting Javascript routines to help me with collapsible menuing systems and navigational themes. When it came time to begin production, I was still tweaking these themes across browsers. Those issues, combined with a little real-life complexity, led me to hold off plans for a launch of what I would call Techismo the magazine, but I did nevertheless pound out an occasional episode of what I think of as Techismo the blog.

Meanwhile, choosing the same blog design for this site quickly proved a form of compromise, given that the originally intended subject was one that lent itself more to a page-oriented developmental approach, since so much of what I planned to discuss was issues in design and implementation of actual, functioning web pages. As detailed in an earlier post, I chose Wordpress as my blog vehicle, and as recent readers of these pages will be well aware, I chose to use the default theme, Kubrick, at least while I learned the ropes.

Of course, the blogs soon took on lives of their own, at least in terms of interests, since I soon found myself reporting on the legal, political and economic issues confronting us as users of technology, whether that technology be the latest in web technologies or streaming music. That was within the pages of Techismo, of course, where I found the vicissitudes of Internet radio a compelling issue in itself, not to mention its ramifications for pieces I had planned and even written on subjects such as streaming radio and hardware devices.

Through all this, my abandoning painstaking page design to become a novice at what I regarded as sort of a page-generator package (Wordpress) was both a source of frustration and of relief. Frustration because I felt removed from the design process that I considered an organic part of writing for the web; relief because it essentially freed me from those frustrations, particularly as they concerned cross-browser compatibility (though not completely) and enabled me at least to focus on writing.

I was delighted therefore, when I began to look around a bit at alternatives that might free me from the self-imposed Wordpress constraints that I had taken on much as a Buddhist monk might declare a vow of chastity. I found a few ready-made themes that held promise, some because they gave me three columns readily, others because they achieved a level of elegance in design itself that was both exhilirating and refreshing.

While I hope to talk about all of these in future installments, for the moment I am delighted to report my experience in the remaking of Health Spectator as a more mature product, at least in its presentation and packaging. So far, for that purpose, I have chosen the theme Feather 1.0 by Andy Mathijs, a Belgian developer with Mindloop, while considering others such as Bob’s Big Blue and Chris Pearson’s Cutline 3-Column Split 1.1; even a few themes from plaintext, such as Scott Allan Warwick’s Barthelme, which you (most likely) see here. I say, most likely because I have been flipping back and forth between Barthelme and Bob’s Big Blue for this site. Barthelme is I think, by far the cooler, while Big Blue gives a genuine 3-column layout and feels customizably homey.

So, for the moment, Health Spectator is stunned out in Feather 1.0 with a few of my own modifications, while this blog and Techismo are heading towards Barthelme. Actually, for Techismo I have been downright experimenting with Sandbox, a cruder-looking quantity right out of the box, but readily customizable just with CSS. I already find myself enchanted.

So however briefly, I’m at least getting to experience the joy again of getting my fingers into the code and making it do what I want, standing on the backs, as I do it, of other good designers.

A death in the family, other examples of life—see our first post—and almost nothing goes as planned. Still, it’s all been exhilarating, and I find new things to write out of it, if not the sorts of things I was intending to write when all these things happened.

From the first, this site (still simply a blog) was intended to be a running commentary on what I discovered while working on other sites. It so happens that back when I first got the idea to produce it, I was conducting a lot of testing and intensive coding rather than simple posting, so a lot of the work I was doing at the time seemed worth sharing with others. And still does—if only I can get back to it.

Since then, however, my concerns have been more from a practical end-user perspective as I have attempted to make steady enough posts on at least one site (Health Spectator) so that a sense of presence can be established. That’s where Lennon’s reference to life as what happens while you’re making plans came in.

My wife had been supporting all these efforts not only with encouragement, but by keeping the wolf away from the door (though he could be heard howling, not too distant). Then, through a bit of beautiful corporate double-cross, she found herself out of work.

Then her mother died. This was not entirely unexpected, but happened in a sudden enough way that it was wrenching. Pat barely had enough warning to be by her mother’s side during the final week or two of a protracted illness.

What, you are wondering, does all this have to do with web development? Well, my own meager contribution to all these proceedings was to show up and stumble through the exhausting parade of family obligations, all the while trying to do research and file posts pretty much literally on the fly. We stayed in a bed-and-breakfast, we slept in spare rooms. That’s what portables were made for, right?

And, indeed, my faithful laptop—by now the only family computer because our backup machine had recently fried and there was now no budget for replacing hardware—rose admirably to the occasion. I became, as one does under such circumstances, an expert tracker of wifi signals and a usurper of others’ machines with dial-up connections when necessary. I was prepared to write at any time in any place, given the opportunity. There just weren’t enough opportunities.

Then, while wandering around in a fog after yet another sleepless night and readying to spend the coming day at a different in-law’s, I dropped my laptop. Hard. It was still working when I picked it up—it had not shut down yet—so I breathed a sigh of relief and put it back in its case, making sure to zip it securely this time.

Only to find it would not revive when I was ready to use it at the next stop. From the messages I was getting, it was clear the hard drive was disabled. I couldn’t tell if it had just jarred loose (pray, pray!) or was total toast. The main motherboard (well, ROM BIOS, at least) and the display still seemed to be performing.

That was the day before we came home. So now, in job-search mode, we had no computer. I do have a Palm TX, which has wifi built in. But its uses are limited and I was stretching it to those limits.

In the process, I discovered how you can—horror of horrors—maintain a blog (at least barely) without currently possessing your own computer. It isn’t fun and it isn’t pretty, but it will get you through if you have to do it.

Most of us work in environments where we have heavy backup from corporate IT, but those who are vulnerable to a little computer downtime—even just a sustained loss of electrical power—might do well to consider preparations for such emergencies, which I will detail in a piece to follow.

I will also mention, for those who have been following this blog, that I have begun the (so far, painless) upgrade process to Wordpress 2.2.1. I may also add a post on this, if time permits. So far, as I say, there doesn’t seem to be much to report, however.

My other discovery—hardly unique—was the lesser horror of dealing with a new computer and a new operating system (Windows Vista) which I hope also to describe for those who may be interested. As always with these “upgrades,” I found some good and some bad. For the moment, I’ll just say that Windows Vista is very pretty.

As to how good the Geek Squad turn out to be at servicing disabled laptops, only time will tell. I can report that they’re about four days behind schedule so far.

Not to be confused with categories, tags allow the user great flexibility in organizing content semantically and aid search engines in cataloguing the site.

We recently installed the security upgrade to a couple of our sites without realizing that the due date for version 2.2 was at hand. So we’re going to wait for the release version and do the remaining updates all at once. (Not that Wordpress upgrades aren’t easy–but haven’t you got plenty of other stuff to do?)

The previous release date for 2.2 was supposed to be April 23–just a few days away. It appears that we need only wait at most a few weeks to benefit from the enhanced features that this next major release will provide. Matt is saying “a week or two,” but we’re not holding him to it. Judging by the posts we’ve seen elsewhere, the user community seems unanimous in wanting things done right rather than holding to an arbitrary schedule.

Compare one or two weeks with the delays one expects with Microsoft releases–and these Wordpress guys are volunteers!

I, for one, am willing to wait. I think it’s going to be worth it.

Right now we’re missing the pages that show you what tricks I’ve discovered (not necessarily of my own creation) and just generally pages that demonstrate how a web page can look and how to get it to look that way across browsers. I hope to make the meaning of that clearer once I come out of this flying low phase and can touch ground long enough to think, contemplate, test and plan again.

There are actually a few article ideas in the can that just need finalizing and sprucing up. We’ll get there eventually.

Not that I’m not having fun. But it’s a bit frustrating that even these blog pages (which are being written, after all, for a readership that presumably knows a lot more about building websites than the average web cruiser) are running with more or less out-of-the-box defaults because I haven’t had time to customize. (Though that may be just as well, since Health Spectator, which so far has gotten all the customization, is starting to suffer from it. In other words, even with blogging software as easy to use as Wordpress, you really do have to find time to read the instructions!)

I won’t go into any further details yet—it’s too embarrassing. But good changes are coming, I promise.

There are some great commercial products out there, such as WS_FTP Home and WS_FTP Pro. In fact, so far as I know, these are the gold standards for ftp client software. I’ve used them both and highly recommend them to anyone who has $39.95 or $54.95, respectively, to shell out. What’s more, Ipswitch will give you 30 days each to try them out before you buy, so you have nothing to lose.

But personally, with four websites underway, I’m running on a shoestring until at least one of them starts turning a profit!

Even if you’re happy using FireFTP as I was until recently, Filezilla is definitely worth the effort to download if you’re not going with one of Ipswitch, Inc.’s premium products mentioned above. The interface is slightly different from FireFTP’s–primarily that it’s drag-and-drop rather than select file(s) and push a button–but it only took me a couple of minutes to figure all that out and get going with it.

The thing I like best about it, I guess, is the fact that it’s a standalone program, so aside from it not bringing down my entire browser and any pending emails should it crash, the interface just feels roomier. I always have so many tabs open in FireFox and so many toolbars active that FireFTP feels like it’s crammed in and lacks adequate space compared to Filezilla. (Of course, I originally went with FireFTP so that I wouldn’t need to run yet another standalone program–don’t think I haven’t recognized the irony of that yet.)

The Ipswitch products are faster and have more features, but I think I’m going to be using Filezilla for a while now as my primary ftp client. Sometimes second best is good enough.

filezilla
FireFTP

Until recently.

I don’t know if the problem is that my Firefox installation has become bloated with all the new stuff I’ve downloaded for clipping and bookmarking (especially the so-called “social bookmarking”) and this is interfering with FireFTP’s operation, or what. (I seem to have a congenital inability to visit the Forefox Addons page without downloading something.)

All I know is that lately, FireFTP has been behaving strangely. It often doesn’t load cleanly and needs to be loaded more than once (separate tabs).

When I then attempt to close the now-useless perpetually loading tab, Firefox tends to crash. In fact, the crashing is quite reliable(!). Having lost a lot of partially finished emails and that sort of thing, I’m now in the process of installing Filezilla to see what that has to offer. I like the convenience of FireFTP, but want to try isolating the problems.

Has anyone else had similar difficulties with FireFTP?

FireFTP