If you need to add various characters to your waves, and are familiar with HTML entities, then the Character Entity bot might be what you need. Add character-entity@appspot.com to your wave, and whenever you write a character (in the format &code;) the bot will happily convert the code into the correct characters for you.

Here are a few to try:

• © becomes ©
• ↔ becomes ?
• ∴ becomes ?

(A more detailed list can be found at Intuitive Systems)

Character Entity Bot [Google Code]

Add characters quickly to a wave is a post from: The Geekorium

I’d not call myself a website coding guru. In fact, my learning has only really started. In creating the [design for my site->claim theme], I’ve learned a couple of important CSS coding tricks that I had to learn from disparate sources all over the web. I hope by putting them here that I’ll cement them in my own brain, and maybe they’ll help you too. They’re elementary things but they may not be obvious at first glance.

Understanding “position:absolute”

In my theme, I wanted to attach the post meta-information in its own seperate column on the left there. In the flow of the page, the meta-information sits above the entry.

This is my HTML:

<div class="post">
	<div class="postmetatext">
		<p>Post meta-information</p>
	</div>
	<h2>Post Title</h2>
	<div class="entry">
		[...]
	</div>
</div>

The problem with positioning elements is that if I move the “postmetatext” element to the left, the following heading and the “entry” div get shifted as well. What I want is to keep them in the flow, but move the “postmetatext” div outside the margins of the “post” div.

To force the div marked “postmetatext” outside the margins, I had to use position:absolute, but then the text sat in a position that was absolutely aligned with the top of the page. By marking up the “post” div with position:relative, I reset the absolute positioning on the “postmetatext” child element.

The CSS:

.post {
position:relative;
}
.postmetatext {
top:0.3em;  /* This shifts the text down to align with the top of the heading below */
left:-10em; /* This shifts the text to the left */
position:absolute;
}

Don’t use “padding” for positioning when “margin” will do

Internet Explorer will give you grief if you rely exclusively on padding for positioning. I can’t think why you might, but one of my rookie mistakes was using padding a little too liberally, and fantastic layouts were entirely ruined on IE. By using the margin selector where it made no difference otherwise, I created a layout that works in pretty much every browser I threw at it.

But don’t use “margin” for positioning absolute elements

The cure-all: clear:both

OK, so it’s not going to fix all your problems, but when you’re using floats, clear:both will help put everything back in it’s place when everything is riding up all in your face. A floated element will sit to the right (or left) of the previous element unless “cleared” You can clear to the left or right, but clear:both tells the element to shove down and stay below the previous element regardless of what else is going on. Perhaps I over-use it in my designs, but it seriously solves so many problems I just can’t help myself.

I know, I know

CSS Positioning Tricks for Beginners is a post from: The Geekorium

I’m researching what might be the best approach for creating a web page for a client with some limitations (i.e. html only hosting). Probably the most fantastic approach I’ve found so far is CushyCMS. CushyCMS lets you define editable areas in your plain HTML then lets your client edit a page’s content without touching the page itself.

It’s similar to Adobe Dreamweaver or Contribute’s template functions, where users can only edit the sections you define as editable. Unlike Dreamweaver though, it’s cross-platform, and doesn’t have a $400 price tag. An extra bonus is that the client doesn’t have to buy it either. I’ve also looked at a number of similar programs — Rapidweaver, iWeb, Frontpage (and its progeny Expression Studio), and they all have the same fatal flaw in this case, I work on Linux and Apple, and the client works on Windows. So I could create the site, but there’d be no easy way for them to edit it without learning to get around a HTML editor, or letting them touch it in Dreamweaver. I’ve also looked at creating a CMS for them — but their hosting is HTML only. Really, CushyCMS is the closest I’ve come to a solution that keeps it simple, while giving me the options I need.

Of course there are downsides. The client has to use a third party site to edit their pages — which to some people might not be as ‘professional’ as they’d like. The system also relies on the uptime of CushyCMS — if it goes down when a client wants to update — there’d be nothing I could do about it. Another restriction (although the creators say it’s a design choice for now) is that a client could not create a new page themselves on the fly. Creating a new page requires uploading a new one and setting it up for editing by the client. It’s an easy task, but not fantastic for quick site changes.

All in all though, it looks good. And it’s made by an Australian company — Stateless Systems, creators of Bugmenot, Retailmenot, and a few other sites — which gets it bonus points. It’s free at the moment. In future they might offer paid plans — and I might even pay a bit extra to put my branding on it, or host a version on my own site.

CushyCMS — easy website editing is a post from: The Geekorium