A Modest Construct

Posts tagged `css`

¶ Using YUI compressor in a web project

Last year, I moved our small programming department from using JDeveloper and editing shared files directly on a network drive to using Netbeans 6.x and a proper version control system (Subversion).

After the initial learning curve, this has all been going swimmingly. I merged my first development branch into the trunk yesterday, and this branch just so happens to dovetail nicely into the whole point of this post, which is the YUI compressor, an open-source javascript and CSS minification tool developed by Yahoo’s YUI team.

¶ Signs that you’re incorrigibly nerdy

Reading an 8-year thread of responses to a longstanding Gecko bug makes for interesting reading.
You can list at least four different ways to create italicized text on a web page, as well as the semantic importance of each
You laugh at the joke about the pluperfect subjunctive scrod.
You like xkcd; even worse: you understand the humor more than half the time.
Point releases are still very important.
Whenever you see a computer (real life or on television), you try to determine what operating system or browser it’s running.

§2032 · May 3, 2008 · 2 comments · Tags: css, nerd, personal, technology

¶ WordPress Post Classes plugin v0.1

This plugin has been superseded by the much-improved Semantic Classes plugin

I’ve written a small WordPress plugin that provides some new template tags that return a post’s tags, categories, author, and date; useful for CSS trickery.

You can view its page here.

This initial release provides the following items:

<?php generate_tag_class(); ?>: This function returns a space-delineated list of the post’s tags, prefixed with ‘tag-’; e.g. tag-politics tag-election-2008
<?php generate_category_class(); ?>: This function returns a space-delinated list of the post’s categories, prefixed with ‘category-’; e.g. category-personal category-random-thoughts
<?php generate_author_class(); ?>: This function returns the author name of a post, prefixed with ‘author-’; e.g. author-Heliologue
<?php generate_date_class(); ?>: This function returns a space-delineated list of the post’s date, prefixed with ‘y’ (year), ‘m’ (month), and ‘d’ (day).; e.g. y2008 m03 d11

§2004 · March 11, 2008 · 4 comments · Tags: code, css, open source, php, software, Wordpress

¶ Various and sundry technology stuff pertaining to work

I don’t usually talk about work on this blog, simply because I’ve read enough horror stories about blogging work matters to know how badly it ends. Granted, if I were to blog about my job, it would mostly consist of technology bits, but it’s still one of those grey areas I avoid out of propriety.

Yet, I find myself at home, with a White Russian and the urge to opine.

¶ Using jQuery to extract blockquote metadata

5 Nov. 2007 • I’ve formatted this code as a plugin, too. Go to the project page.

Blockquotes, by definition, can and should in most cases have a title attribute and, if possible, a cite attribute. The former is the actually name of the quote’s source. The latter is the URI to the quotes location, if it was retrieved online.

For instance:

<blockquote cite="http://heliologue.com" title="A Modest Construct">
 
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Integer arcu ligula, tempus vel, dignissim at, molestie ut, leo. Etiam luctus, ipsum sit amet tincidunt malesuada, magna nisi feugiat eros, in tempus libero justo sed dui. Aliquam bibendum pulvinar turpis. Ut iaculis gravida nibh. Quisque elementum ligula vel nibh. Sed leo augue, tempor sed, nonummy in, interdum at, quam. Ut cursus tincidunt felis. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Integer pharetra vulputate nunc. Cras nec felis ornare augue tempor fermentum. Nullam rutrum malesuada nunc. Aliquam vel purus. Aliquam faucibus malesuada orci. Nulla sit amet nulla sit amet tortor fermentum euismod.
 
</blockquote>

This is all well and good for search engines, but it doesn’t do much for human readers (who are arguably more important, though it depends on who you ask). A human might want to see something like this:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Integer arcu ligula, tempus vel, dignissim at, molestie ut, leo. Etiam luctus, ipsum sit amet tincidunt malesuada, magna nisi feugiat eros, in tempus libero justo sed dui. Aliquam bibendum pulvinar turpis. Ut iaculis gravida nibh. Quisque elementum ligula vel nibh. Sed leo augue, tempor sed, nonummy in, interdum at, quam. Ut cursus tincidunt felis. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Integer pharetra vulputate nunc. Cras nec felis ornare augue tempor fermentum. Nullam rutrum malesuada nunc. Aliquam vel purus. Aliquam faucibus malesuada orci. Nulla sit amet nulla sit amet tortor fermentum euismod.

A Modest Construct

Which I achieved by appending

<cite class="source">
     <a href="http://heliologue.com" title="A Modest Construct">A Modest Construct</a>
</cite>

to the blockquote.

But nobody wants to hard-code a citation into every blockquote, especially when it’s technically correct to attach the information to the semantic element in question (the blockquote, for those of you not following along). So, how to be structurally correct when using blockquotes, while still allowing human readers the benefit of such data?