Redswish

Carefully crafted banter

Firefox 100% Height Bug Fix

Hello I have to post this because I want to spread the word. I haven’t had this problem for a very long time because of the designs of my sites. But today I’ve been working on rebuilding someone’s site with valid mark-up, and while converting the table-based layout to semantic divs – I encountered the dreaded Firefox Height bug. This problem is when you have a ‘container’ or ‘wrapper’ div that has a background image, colour or border that you want to repeat to the bottom. Unfortunately, specifying 100% height in your CSS for the html or body just doesn’t cut it – the background will only stretch to the bottom of the viewable window and no further when you scroll, or for some reason just doesn’t even display at all. Anyway, after lots of hunting and stressing out, I’ve found a fix which wonderfully works! As so: #wrapper { width: 775px; min-height: 100%; margin: 0 auto; border: 1px solid

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Sorry for my bad links

For some reason, for the past few weeks I’ve been directing links from my blog articles by going ‘click here’ or something similar instead of properly describing the link. I’m really sorry! It’s not like me and it’s only when a good friend pointed out that I was throwing out these heinous links that I realised I’d been doing it. So, from now on it will be back to good standards and accessibility – don’t click here, instead visit the W3C website for more information on web standards and accessibility,  and here’s a good article on accessible link text.

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Just Ignore Pagerank

I used to be obsessed with Google Pagerank – constantly checking my sites to see if they’ve been upgraded, using SEO tools to analyse predicted future Pageranks and researching how long it had been since the last update and when we were due for the next. But how reliable is Pagerank really? Please excuse my language but I find it to be f**king useless. The reason I’m just mentioning this is because, after months, Google seems to have thrown out some page rank around the web. But it’s so inconclusive. Some of my websites that are attracting ten times the amount of traffic as others are getting half the page rank credit and some sites that I’ve done no SEO on are getting an initial rating of 3 or 4. How is that a useful guide to Google’s measure of your site’s importance? A lot of professional SEOs (which I far from claim myself to be) will probably mention that

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Why does IE render text so much better than Firefox?

Why does it? I love Firefox to bits but the fact that I could lick the text off a site on IE, but run away whenever I see the terribly anti-aliased massacre through Firefox gets me down… just a little bit. You all know what I mean. And if anybody has the answer, or perhaps a miraculous little add-on that enhances the quality of Firefox text – please let me know. Please Please Please! The example above isn’t the best, but I just grabbed it quickly because it’s off a site I’m currently working on and prompted me write this miniature article.

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Dangerous Photography

This is actually in relation to a post I made on the Digital Photo Group website a few months back regarding pushing photography a little bit further. To be honest I’ve neglected my photography recently which is an absolute sin. The purpose of the original post was to comment on another dimension of photography. Photography is an art. Different people appreciate different types of imagery and style. I’m personally fond of landscapes, abstract and exciting photography. Saying that – in my bedroom I do have portraits of Frank Sinatra, Miles Davis and Steve McQueen alongside the famous ‘Eating Above Manhatten’ (you know – the one with the workers on the girder suspended hundreds of meters up from like the 40s.) Anyway, to return to my point. When judging photographs – many aspects are taken in such as composition, positioning, contrast, exposure, colour and levels, blur and focus, brightness, atmosphere etc. But a concept that interests me is the length the

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Google Health

What will they think up next? The latest addition to Google’s plethora of tools and services created to enhance your life in general – Google Health. I honestly wouldn’t have seen this coming. Like everything Googley, Health is pretty cool. It allows you to add and store your medical records and history online, decide which health service providers can access it and also provides a huge database on health topics – offering insight and advice. It is in effect a virtual portable doctor! I’ve not used it yet, I’m signing up as I write (well after I’ve wrote), more than anything to see what benefits lay in store for me, and of course just to add another tool to my Googlebox (my name for my Google toolbox, which currently consists of email, analytics, adwords, webmaster, blogger and a few other bits). What real benefits it will provide, I do not know. But in Google we trust

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Facebook set for Makeover

I would hate to be the one to pass one false news to the masses, so I do hope I’m proved correct. According to a local radio station this morning – Facebook (I’m sure you’ve heard of it!) is lined up for a design makeover. I personally don’t mind Facebook, regardless of rants I may have had in previous posts regarding social networking sites and their lack of consideration towards their millions of users. But it has remained pretty much the same, visually at least, since it was launched. Or perhaps since I started using it a while back. And a refreshing update is good for anything. I’m not entirely sure what this new makeover will entail. From what I gathered from my reliable Manchester radio station; it will include both aesthetic and usability upgrades. I guess that’s good enough. Facebook did actually make a new years resolution, as can be seen here. Whether this new refreshment is to tackle

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