It’s been awhile since I had a new design update. Drupal projects currently make up a bulk of my workload. WordPress is limited to one day theme implementations and whenever I feel like working at home.

Still, change must go on. So while I’m hashing out the layout, I present to you a refresh of the blog title and mascot.

Taking a picture while typing a WP post, listening to music on Pandora, and checking my email. Try doing that with your iPhone.

The design itself will be in the backburner as I will spend the majority of the time implementing the features like custom content types and a revamped templating system.

Stay tuned as you and I both learn a little something about WordPress and web development.

Update: Scratch that. Old theme restored. That’s because someone actually likes the header, like yesterday.

“I am at peace with IE6″. Here I am watching a preview of IE9 and wondering why IE6 is still a bane of my existence? Oh sure, I know how to deal with every IE6 issue, but as the complexity of the site increases the quantity of IE6 issues go up. Just because I know how to fix it doesn’t mean it won’t drive me nuts.

Inline-block is the shiznit It still is. Just that its biggest flaw, a 4 px gap between inline-block elements makes it tough to build commercial sites, which require pixel perfection. Plus, going back to working with floats makes me believe they are not as terrible as once believed. Fortunately, I have time to develop my belief in inline-block layout and make it work on all sites.

But if there is one thing I am glad about is the widespread adoption of JQuery. Every single job I’ve interviewed for, including the one that I have now, requires it. Can you imagine if I start going crazy over Javascript cross-compatibility issues?

CSS3 introduces the rgb and rgba background properties. Simply put, instead of hexes, colors can be determined by their rgb values.

This is background:rgb(0,0,0); , which is black.

That’s nothing special. rgba, however, combines background color and alpha value, or opacity.

This is background:rbga(0,0,0,.6); , which is black and 60% opacity.

Please note that rgba only specify a specific element, whereas opacity property define an element and its children. The latest Firefox and Webkit browsers support this, IE8 and below… not so much. It only supports rgb.

CSS Tricks has a whole list of browser support. This is a handy property that replaces the 1px translucent background image.

Clients love zebra patterned lists and tables. They love it, something to do with readability. Whatever. With CSS3, it’s a snap. For instance, in a typical table:

table tr td:nth-child(2n) {
background:#eee;
padding:10px 0;
}

This will add a background and padding every even number of cells. N equals all whole numbers.

table tr td:nth-child(2n + 1) {
padding:10px 0;
}

And just to make things tidy, this is how to do odds. No need to add “alt” classes.

In the future, no longer will one exchange barbs with a client over the effectiveness of zebra tables. Just do it and collect paycheck.

My blog didn’t work on mobile until today. Let’s get that out of the way. I suck. Next.

Smart.fm needs an Android app. Congrats on the iphone app and the transition to a Javascript based app. But not only is Smart.fm slow as hell, it doesn’t work that well on the Droid. If this is true, then you should be already making an Android app.

Where is tweetdeck? Yes, they have an iphone app, I could use an Android app. Please?

It’s mobile, not iphone or pda. They’re not the only devices on the market anymore, so get your mobile names right Continental.

This shit needs to be charging all the time. Only took one day to realize I’m a power user. So now I have a charger in my bag at all time and a car charger in whatever automobile I’m in.

I can actually give accurate information to people who ask. Strangers like to ask me for directions in NYC for some reason. At least now, instead of leading them astray, I can give them accurate information. Yay strangers.

Google Navigation FTW. Garmin and TomTom are dead.

More to come…

Chances are one of someone will be using a command line SVN client and that person will be flustered to see messed up code because you were coding on a PC using Windows formatting.

Spare your fellow co-worker’s pain. Go to Edit > Preferences > Code Format and make sure your are using Unix line breaks (might want to agree on indenting too while you’re there).

Sure, receiving an IM written in caps may or may not be funny, but the message is clear. Don’t be an idiot, get your line endings right.

For now, if you want to see it on your desktop, it’s at http://areyoudesign.mobify.me/blog/. If you are viewing this from a phone, you’re already looking at it.

Happy viewing!