new layout on wiki4d

[Adam Ruppe]

On 6/5/10, Stewart Gordon <smjg_1998 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Do you ever manage to get reasons (or even excuses) out of your clients
> for their ridiculous requests?

The fixed width one most recently was so it would "look good on the
iPad". Among older ones were wanting to use an elaborate background
image (fairly legitimate, assuming you accept such images as being
legitimate in the first place) and silly insistence that the columns
look the same as the fixed width psd.

> But if that's the case, they can resize
> their browsers!

Amen. Sometimes I feel that I'm the only person who doesn't run his
browser maximized. (In fact, I rarely maximize any individual window.)

> Others claim that some layouts just can't be made fluid.

The most annoying thing is the web is fluid by default - you have to
fight it to make it fixed width! But, meh, people are stupid.

> * set it as a max-width, so that nobody has to scroll horizontally as a
> result.

This is the compromise solution I usually go with, unless specifically
demanded not to.

> Yes, people who gratuitously do text as images are another silly thing.
>   But really puzzlingly, some people can't for their lives set
> appropriate alt attributes even on such images as these.

You know what annoys me? alt="image". Ugh. Or another bad one:
alt="logo". gah, these people have obviously never browsed the web
without images! Perhaps, worst of all, alt="left_rounded_corner". Ew!

> Text links can actually look better these days, now that we have
> ClearType.  And now that we have CSS, there's plenty of room for their
> links to be customised.

For my newest work site (the one rewritten in D from PHP actually), I
went wild with the css. The design had image links all over the place.
I replaced them with this:

<a class="button" icon="arrow" href="">Text</a>

The icon attribute there is rewritten on the server side to be an img
right before the inner text. I used a custom attribute to make the
code prettier.

Anyway, the css transforms that regular link into a button, with a
gradient background, rounded corners, an icon, fluid width and height
(height isn't ideal if it changes though, since the gradient is fixed
height. But it uses a solid background color to still look pretty
good), hover and active styles - it is really a beautiful result, with
the one exception of the icon, which doesn't scale well, being an
image.

But, best of all, it is easy to reskin without going back to the image
editor! (I also use a small D cgi program to generate the gradients
for me, because realistically, css gradients don't exist, so they are
specified in the css too.)

I really like it.

> - don't have to create a new image every time I want to link to
> something new

That's the best advantage ever. Going to the image creators wastes huge time.