http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/category/colophon/ Posts related to the design, redesign, typography, graphics, markup, maintenance, and management of this site. en-us Colophon Copyright 2000-2008 Shirley Kaiser, SKDesigns. All rights reserved. Shirley Kaiser 2006-10-09T21:07:20-08:00 720 daily 2 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://backend.userland.com/rss http://brainstormsandraves.com/xml/brainstorms88.gif http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/category/colophon/ 88 31 Posts related to the design, redesign, typography, graphics, markup, maintenance, and management of this site. Building on the previous post, User-friendly Contextual Navigation with Simple PHP Includes, I thought I'd take things one small and simple step further by using PHP once again, this time to add a CSS class for the current page. Then it's easy to use this CSS class to create a helpful visual cue within your navigation. Read the entire post for a simple way to accomplish this, PHP code, markup, CSS, and graphic examples. (1001 words, 5 links, 4 images) http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2006/10/09/navigation2/ http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2006/10/09/navigation2/ Shirley Kaiser 2006-10-09T21:07:20 We're live on the new server! In a nutshell, I'm thrilled. Moving this website to the new server has been frustrating at times and certainly time-consuming for both my ISP and for myself, but it's definitely been a worthwhile adventure. Preliminary good planning and organization helped us tremendously and made all the difference. Today's post relays some of the details about making the move. I've definitely learned a lot through this process, too. (2212 words, 35 links, 1 image) http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2005/08/07/move/ http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2005/08/07/move/ Shirley Kaiser 2005-08-07T22:55:30 For the past several days, my ISP and I have worked on moving all my domains to one of their new servers. Next on the agenda is moving my Movable Type installation to the new server and getting that all set up. I'm hoping for some tips or assistance, so I'd greatly appreciate comments here, via my contact form, or email me directly (for those who know my email address). Below I've also included some helpful resources that I've found researching this server move. (676 words, 19 links) http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2005/07/26/mt/ http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2005/07/26/mt/ Shirley Kaiser 2005-07-26T15:27:40 Today marks four years for Brainstorms and Raves, which I started December 7, 2000 with my post, First Post! Four years ago blogging wasn't widely known. At this point, weblogs or blogs make international news, and even major news sites and companies have taken up blogging. Much has changed in these four years! (54 words, 1 link) http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2004/12/07/birthday/ http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2004/12/07/birthday/ Shirley Kaiser 2004-12-07T20:13:59 Many have asked me about the code and markup behind the collapsible navigation links in the right-side column, the most recent inquiry in a comment from my previous post. I usually just refer people to my Colophon's Other Features section where I've mentioned this with some links but I thought I'd mention something here, too. (174 words, 7 links, 1 image) http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2003/12/28/navigation/ http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2003/12/28/navigation/ Shirley Kaiser 2003-12-28T14:22:50 Friendly, lasting URLs are easy enough to manage when you create the site architecture and URLs yourself, but with the increasing popularity of weblogs and content management programs there's been increasing interest in what can be done to ensure friendly URLs that can be permanent regardless of programs used, changing servers, or changing programs. Today's post looks at a few possibilities and pitfalls with Movable Type. (995 words, 12 links) http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2003/09/28/urls/ http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2003/09/28/urls/ Shirley Kaiser 2003-09-28T16:26:29 As much as I love using Movable Type, a few things have bothered me about MT, too, such as MT generating absolute URLs for internal links when relative URLs should be used. Stepan Riha's MTRelativeURL plugin is an incredibly easy way to generate relative URLs with MT, thankfully, wherever the plugin tags are used. Today's post explains how to use it and why it matters. (589 words, 14 links, 1 image) http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2003/09/07/relative_vs_absolute_urls/ http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2003/09/07/relative_vs_absolute_urls/ Shirley Kaiser 2003-09-07T16:13:23 One of the features I added to my website when I recently converted to Movable Type is a Cited Links listing. ... In essence, I've set up this plugin to collect the links within all the entries and then create an archive page for each of the websites linked. That way I can click on a colleague's site in the archive, for example, and see all the posts that have linked to that site, including the actual links... Not only does it collect the text that's hyperlinked, it also collects images surrounded by hyperlinks, such as amazon.com book covers... How To Replace Images with Corresponding ALT text (520 words, 7 links) http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2003/09/03/mt_replace_image_with_alt_text/ http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2003/09/03/mt_replace_image_with_alt_text/ Shirley Kaiser 2003-09-03T09:19:42 First, some recent articles about semantics, markup, and standards: Jason Kottke wrote last week Standards don?t necessarily have anything to do with being semantically correct. On Semantics and Markup by Tim Bray Markup, Namespaces, and Meaning, also by Tim Bray New Reference on Semantics, HTML, XHTML, and Structure I?ve posted a new article and reference, Semantics, HTML, XHTML, and Structure, that provides some basics of using good HTML structure for your documents, such as using the P element rather than the BR element for paragraphs. (200 words, 10 links) http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2003/09/01/semantics_markup_and_standards/ http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2003/09/01/semantics_markup_and_standards/ Shirley Kaiser 2003-09-01T18:46:06 I've started a new Reference section at Brainstorms and Raves where I'll be posting templates, snippets, and possibly other items to help in some way. I've started with a few templates related to Movable Type, including a template to convert your posts from Blogger to Movable Type. For lots more, visit the Movable Type resources section here and the Movable Type archives. (64 words, 3 links) http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2003/08/26/new_reference_section_mt_templates/ http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2003/08/26/new_reference_section_mt_templates/ Shirley Kaiser 2003-08-26T07:41:35