Prevent JavaScript Elements from Breaking Page Layout when Following Yahoo Performance Tip #6: Place Scripts at the Bottom
By now, everyone is familiar with the Yahoo Developer Network’s 14 best-practices for speeding up your website. Certainly, many (if not all) of these performance optimization tips are ideal for high-traffic sites such as Yahoo or Google, but not all of them are recommended for smaller sites such as Perishable Press. Nonetheless, throughout the current site renovation project, I have attempted to implement as many of these practices as possible. At the time of this writing, I somehow have managed […] Continue reading »
New Mobile CSS Styles for Perishable Press
The amount of time I spend surfing the Web from a mobile device has steadily increased since the acquisition of my new favorite mobile device. Unfortunately, many sites have yet to implement (or even consider) support for mobile devices. Without proper formatting, such sites are virtually useless, requiring unnecessary download times, displaying unreadable pages, and serving unusable content. Given the inevitable ubiquity of mobile access to the World Wide Web, providing reasonable support for handheld browsers is becoming increasingly important. […] Continue reading »
Killer Collection of CSS Resets
Using CSS to style semantically meaningful (X)HTML markup is an important key to modern web design practices. In a perfect world, every browser would interpret and apply all CSS rules in exactly the same way. However, in the imperfect world in which we live, quite the opposite frequently happens to be the case: many CSS styles are displayed differently in virtually every browser. Continue reading »
Miscellaneous Happenings
Many changes around here lately — new styles, new software, new hardware, and a whole lot more. I will be covering several of these items in greater depth in future posts, but for now, here is an overview of some of the recent happenings unfolding here in Perishable land.. New Mobile Styles I finally took the time to throw down some tuff mobile CSS styles for Perishable Press. Before, the site was virtually impossible to use via mobile devices because […] Continue reading »
Position Absolute Horizontal and Vertical Center via CSS
Recently, a reader named Max encountered some scrolling issues while implementing our absolutely centered layout technique. Of course, by “absolutely centered” we are referring to content that remains positioned dead-center regardless of how the browser is resized. After noticing the scrollbar deficiency, Max kindly dropped a comment to explain the issue: the div solution works well, only one problem maybe somebody can help: if you make the browser window smaller then the div is -> the scrollbar doenst fit right […] Continue reading »
CSS Throwdown: Preload Images without JavaScript
Clean, easy, effective. You don’t need no stinking JavaScript to preload your images. Nope. Try some tasty CSS and (X)HTML instead! Here’s how to do it with only two easy steps.. Step 1 — Place this in your CSS file: div#preloaded-images { position: absolute; overflow: hidden; left: -9999px; top: -9999px; height: 1px; width: 1px; } Step 2 — Place this at the bottom of your (X)HTML document: <div id="preloaded-images"> <img src="https://perishablepress.com/image-01.png" width="1" height="1" alt="" /> <img src="https://perishablepress.com/image-02.png" width="1" height="1" alt="" […] Continue reading »
Standards-Compliance Throwdown: MS-IE5/6 DNS/404 Error-Page Redesign
First of all, congratulations if you are geeky enough to understand the title of this article. Many would be like, "CSS, MS.. IE, error ..what..?" Whatever. If you get the title, you will get the point of this utterly pointless exercise. If that is the case, prepare for a delightful romp through geekland. Otherwise, save your precious time and stop reading here (exit strategy). Continue reading »
Maximum and Minimum Height and Width in Internet Explorer
Behold the seventh wonder of the virtual world: max/min-height and max/min-width properties are possible in Internet Explorer! Indeed, by taking advantage of IE’s proprietary CSS attribute, expression, you too can whip IE widths and heights into desirable proportions. The CSS expression attribute enables JavaScript commands to be executed within Internet Explorer. JavaScript via CSS? Thanks, Microsoft! Continue reading »
Keep it Dark: Hiding and Filtering CSS
Hiding and filtering CSS rules for specifically targeted browsers is often a foregone conclusion when it comes to cross-browser design considerations. Rather than dive into some lengthy dialogue concerning the myriad situations and implications of such design hackery, our current scheduling restraints behoove us to simply cut to the chase and dish the goods. Having said that, we now consider this post a perpetually evolving repository of CSS filters.. Continue reading »
minimalist Theme
The minimalist theme is crisp and clean. Featuring a three-column satellite menu-page to reduce clutter and streamline usability, the minimalist theme is designed to present site content with sophistication and elegance. The minimalist theme is XHTML 1.1 strict, employs nearly valid CSS (ha!), and features browser-safe colors and universal fonts all delivered via concise, two-column liquid layout. Mindfully detailed and carefully prepared, the minimalist theme provides plenty of room for customization and expansion. One of my favorite theme designs. Continue reading »
Preloading Images with CSS and JavaScript
Fast-loading pages reduce errors, conserve bandwidth, and please visitors. One way to decrease loading times and enhance performance involves maximizing image display efficiency. Your mantra for achieving image efficiency should be “reuse, optimize, and preload.”. While each of these methods plays an important role, this article will focus on methods for preloading images. Consult your server error logs to identify web pages that may require image help. Note: preloading images does not reduce bandwidth! It only decreases apparent load time, […] Continue reading »
Firefox CSS Magic
Consider this post an evolving receptacle for Firefox-specific CSS tricks. Continue reading »
Theme Edits for IE7
This post is a working repository of code edits and other changes made to Perishable Press themes in order for them to function properly in Internet Explorer 7 (IE7). If supporting older versions of IE is your thang. Continue reading »
Extreme Makeover for Gravatars in WordPress
Gravatars have become a popular way of adding spice to the “comments” page of many WordPress-powered sites. So popular, in fact, that the gravatar server is often overloaded, bogged down with millions of gravatar requests every second. This immense server load effects user pages everywhere, resulting in slow loading times, unresolved server requests, and missing gravatars. Such broken presentations appear unprofessional, tarnish reputations, and may provoke confusion. This article provides essential solutions for an extreme gravatar makeover.. Continue reading »
Compressed CSS Compression
In this article, we discuss two practical methods for compressing CSS documents with PHP and/or .htaccess. See also: Compress CSS and JavaScript with PHP at WP-Mix. Continue reading »
Absolutely Centered Layout
This tutorial explains several techniques for centering content absolutely using (X)HTML. By “absolutely”, I am referring to an element (such as a <div></div>) that is centered on the page both horizontally and vertically. The techniques presented below explain how to center elements using CSS, frames, or tables. Continue reading »
