The site was developed on a Windows Vista machine checked in all major browsers and both main operating systems – Windows and Mac OSX 10.6. The browser bugs were sorted and the whole check list of things before going live was addressed.

Firefox recently has updated to version 3.6, so all sites were checked again on the main browsers and everything once again seemed OK.

However, checking on Firefox 3.6 on Mac and not PC there was a clear discrepancy. The Flash file at the top ( Windfarm) seemed to be a single 1 pixel out. After trying to debug and trying numerous different positioning methods, it turned out to be a FireFox bug. The incredibly strange thing about this bug is that its only seen in different widths. So you can manually resize the browser and it can then appear or disappear depending on width. Very, very strange and can certainly be described as “buggy”

Go ahead and try giving the element

#my-element-id { overflow: auto; }

Which is reported to solve it in some instances. It didn’t work in my testing however.

The only way this can be fixed is if Mozilla sort this properly is if they do it themselves.

What to do?

Please post in the comments below and also go to the Mozilla Firefox bug page and leave a comment. This will make them aware of the problem. The more noise people make about it, the more emphasis will be on them to take action, which will reportedly, be addressed in version 3.6.1.

A few quotes and what i took away from the interview:

We dont mention accessibility with clients

Some may initially wonder about this but he is simply stating that it should be a given with any website. He explained it very well by comparing it to

The plumber asking if its ok to use that specific wrench on your sink when called out to repair a pipe.

Also some clients may not have heard about web accessibility and they should be trusting you to do a competent job while doing the right thing for their audience.

HTML5 is very backward compatible and with HTML4 it validates fine.

There are some tags that have been deprecated in HTML4 but in a practical way most modernly built XHTML1 or HTML4 with will pass the w3c test. There are also some new tags in HTML5 that can used such as the new input types.

Using a javascript library is something i do myself and it saves reinventing the wheel

After initially being a little hesitant using a library due their first load ( file size), we have been using Jquery for over 2 years and love it! Its great to hear someone so experienced as Jeremy using a library and now validating our choice for Jquery when we evaluated the different options such as Django, Prototype and Moo Tools.

I think of web accessibility of not destroying accessibility rather than creating it.

This is in referral to properly structured and semantic HTML being accessible, while Javascript can break that accessibility if not properly used and planned.

It was an hour very well spent and he was as informative as ever. I highly recommend you hear him talk in person if you get the chance. In the meantime listen to the Webaxe episode 75 podcast in which he is interviewed.

When placing an absolute div within a relative positioned div, in IE6 and IE7 that div disappeared. The content within the div and the div just would not show. An immediate response would be to think of the stack and z-Index but after a few tests it wasnt that.

The Fix: Simply surround the absolute div with another empty div.

Did it work? Another similar problem? Leave a comment.

WordPress is a great tool for a small website requiring regular editing. While using the loop i wanted to find a way to exclude the current pages url from a list of links. There is no point in a page linking to itself!

By using the the post__not_in function its easy to do.

<?php query_posts(array('showposts'=> 6,'post__not_in' => array($post->ID)));
while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
<?php endwhile;?>

Did it work? Any problems? Post a comment below.

There are a few problems to the solution however:

• The main being it doesnt work in any version of IE ( See image below )
• Its riddled with inline tables and the code is a mess
• Any text within the pop gets anti aliased by IE making it ugly

I thought that it would be a shame to waste the original authors time and my own after taking a few hours to get it working. Is there a solution to get round these three problems?

Yes there certainly is: Very simple just use a gif image with transparency. View the demo.

While this solution isnt ideal* it works in all browsers, and the code is so much cleaner. To make the method accessible either add an “alt” or “longdesc” tag with a description of what’s in your pop up box.

*You are of course limited to colours with gif images but in most cases its generally text thats going to go in the pop up box anyway.

Did it work for you? Leave a comment…

We only looking to sell 2/3 products at one time so we didnt need the power or functionality of a full e-commerce system. A plugin we thought should be sufficient for our needs.

After many hours of searching and reading reviews it came down to two choices. Wp-Commerce or Shopp.

It seemed that lot of the reviews found bugs in Wp Commerce and we found no different. While it claims to be a cutting edge e-commerce system, it seemed to have some glaring glitches with the inventory and site structure. It seemed to be a system that needs more development time, but certainly has potential. Just not for us.

Paying $55 for the standard install of Shopp we were quite hopeful this would work. It installed ok with no problems. In WordPress its controlled by its own section within the admin section. After looking through all the options we were a little stumped where the prices for the products were set up. After a few G searches it was no surprise that they were supposed to be in the product section. Since the admin is powered by some well thought Javascript and Ajax we thought there must be a conflict with a plugin. (Probably the biggest and most found error when it comes to functionality of WordPress or any other Website coding platform.)

Going through the tedious procedure of uninstalling one plugin at a time then testing the cart options we found it. Wp Lightform Since the validation of that form is controlled by only Javascript it isnt the best of contact forms to use anyway. Spam can get through it quite easily!

To accept payments online, the easiest is Paypal Express. This method sends customers to the Paypal site to make payment either through their own Paypal account or through a credit card. The customer is then returned to your own site to confirm transaction. After inserting the details for Paypal API for the their Express shopping facility it was time to test the site out.

For some reason we were getting page not founds on the products. There seemed to be a problem with the permalink structure of the products. After searching through the Shopp Forum it was suggested that we resave the cart page. That worked and seemed to reset the permalink structure to what it was meant to be.

Styling and setting up the layout is controlled by an over riding template system. It seemed to work well enough. Since we only had two products we simply set up featured products on the default shopping page. There were numerous options that could display categories and other options but we didn’t explore those areas.

There are options in the system that include taxes and delivery but we also didnt have the need to explore full functionality. It would be in these areas that the site could fail, as that’s where really complex coding is required to satisfy the functionality required. If it worked like the rest of the plugin however it should all work as its meant.

After thoroughly testing the cart in numerous browsers and platforms the shopping cart system was ready to use.

Quick Summary:

If you are looking for light e-commerce system that can take payments through the web using Paypal then give Shopp a try. There are enough options to sell successfully online just don’t expect it to have the full customisation options of a stand alone shopping cart such as Zen Cart, Magento or Cube Cart.

4/5 losing a point due to the small problems we had with other plugins ( not Shopp’s fault) and the small problem with wrongly pointed links

1.) I wanted to get rid of the border on the input fields within a form. You would naturally try input: border:none; However and strangely that didnt work.

The Fix:
input: border-width:0;

2.) IE7 and below were showing the scrollbar within a textarea even with the textarea having a absolute height

The Fix:
overflow:auto;

3.) The strangest one of the 3. I wanted to get rid of the default text in a submit button. ( There has to be text for accessibility). I tried text-indent:-9999px which worked perfectly in Safari and Firefox.

The Fix:
text-indent:-9999px; color: transparent; text-transform: capitalize;

I hope that helps anyone coming across any of these bugs in Internet Explorer. Did it work? Leave a comment.

1. Clear your cookies
2. Clear your cache
3. Rename the plugin directory ( /wp-content/plugins) to something different

Hopefully that will help a few people out. Did it work? Leave a comment!

Good:

• Can run multiple pop3 and imap accounts through it, all located in the one single interface
• Search facility is fantastic, find anything in seconds
• iPhone access- works a treat on the iPhone
• Speed – its usually lightening quick to load and read
• Web space – it now has 12GB of space – iv only used 12% of that with many large files
• Its a free service
• Even the ads can be useful, iv seen me finding some great sites and articles from the ad links

Bad

• There really is only one bad thing i can say about and thats the downtime im suffering from right now. Iv used gmail for over 2 years and apart from the occasional “service is down” message its worked a treat.
• Ill add the ads in here as well as for the good. They do take up a little bit of screen space but its a minor bad point.

12:13p: You can get your gmails through your mobile such as iPhone. It seems only the web interface is down for now.

What do you love about gmail? Is it worth it even with todays downtime?

http://shouldiusetablesforlayout.com/

Benefits of CSS::

• Faster loading pages
• Easier to update the whole site
• Accessible – making the site available to all
• Content picked up easier by search engines
• The list could go on…

Cowboy builders use tables for building websites.