BubblesSOC

Clearing a float container without source markup.

Looks like I’ll be renovating my skins again. I’m still using the <br class="clear" /> to clear my floating elements.

I started feeling under the weather this past Saturday. I was scared it was the flu because I had body aches, congestion, and a sore throat. Sunday, however, I felt a lot better. Monday was ok, but that night, it hit me again like a ton of bricks. This morning, I woke up with no voice! I’ve never lost my voice before, so it’s the weirdest thing ever. I cannot talk louder than a whisper.

The Mac is back. While in target disk mode, I burned the contents of my hard drive to CDs. Afterwards, I tried an Archive and Install. It didn’t work, so I had to erase my hard drive and start from scratch. I still don’t know what caused the malfunction. I see it happening again, though, because I’m still having some problems. I guess it may be a hardware issue after all.

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I wanted to integrate my 404 page into my skins, but I needed it to be a .php file instead of .shtml (which is the default filetype I believe). So here’s how I did it.Open your existing .htaccess file. If you do not have one already, create a new file and save it as .htaccess. Add the following code to the file:

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.bubblessoc.net/404.php

You can change 404.php to anything you want. It can be error.php or mysiterox.php. And of course, you use your URL instead of mine

I’ve also integrated custom 404 pages for my subdomains as well using the same method. This is useful if you have hostees who want their own error pages. Just make an .htaccess file for each of your subdomains. Otherwise, the root .htaccess will take precedence.

If you want to display the name of the page that issued a 404 use:

<?php echo $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] ?>

Pretty nifty I think.

i have to type this entry in lowercase because my keyboard is acting up again

in my quest to convert my site to pure css, i’ve been working a lot with styled fieldsets using a great tutorial found here. i stumbled upon a bug that’s been bothering me for days. the textarea and submit button inside of my fieldsets keep getting shoved over in ie, causing the entire layout to collapse. the other form elements, however, are not affected.

here’s what it’s supposed to look like (firefox)
here’s what it looks like in ie

after tweaking the stylesheet a bit, i discovered that the textarea/button nested inside the fieldset was inheriting all other specified left-margins in ie. here’s an example of what i mean:

the code:

<div class="cont1">
     .cont1
     <div class="cont2">
          .cont2
          <fieldset>
               <textarea cols="10" rows="5"></textarea><br />
               <input type="button" value="Button" />
          </fieldset>
     </div>
</div>

the css:

.cont1 {
     background: blue;
     margin: 0 0 0 10px;
     padding: 5px;
}
.cont2 {
     background: yellow;
     margin: 0 0 0 15px;
     padding: 5px;
}
fieldset {
     margin: 0;
     padding: 0;
}
fieldset textarea {
     margin: 0;
     padding: 0;
}

the textarea and input button are shoved to the right by 25 pixels (the left margin of cont1 + the left margin of cont2). i haven’t had time to do thorough research, but as far as i know, there is no workaround for this bug. i did find someone else who had the same problem, however. someone suggested in the comments to enclose the elements in an arbitrary div, and that seemed to work for me.

new code (same stylesheet):

<div class="cont1">
     .cont1
     <div class="cont2">
          .cont2
          <fieldset>
               <div class="arbitrary">
                    <textarea cols="10" rows="5"></textarea><br />
                    <input type="button" value="Button" />
               </div>
          </fieldset>
     </div>
</div>

the arbitrary div idea is fine for now, but i’d like to find another way to remedy this bug. has anyone else had this problem? if so, how did you fix it?

this is the last week of the semester! hopefully i’ll be back to blogging regularly by next week

Well, I’m almost finished with my switch to WordPress. I still have to sort out my separate archives file and figure out why Dodo’s Threaded Comments aren’t working It will take a while to get used to WP… I already miss my beloved b2! There are a lot more features available for WP, however. I can’t wait to dive in to the pool of Hacks/Plugins.

The skins are down for now. Don’t worry, they’ll be back sooner or later. There’s a lot of old b2 template stuff that I have to update. My first CS 124 project is due in less than 48 hours and I’ve yet to start on it That’s what stinks about getting sick… your routine gets messed up. I’m probably going to pull an all-nighter to make sure that I get all my homework finished. I hope I can keep my eyes open, I’m so sleepy already!

I don’t know if I’m dehydrated or what, but I’ve drank a case of cokes within the span of 3 days. Come to think of it, I’ve eaten a lot, too. Maybe it’s just that time of the month. My you know what is quite irregular… it comes and goes as it pleases. The bad thing is that I never know when it’s gonna show up. I just hope that I’m not wearing white pants that day.

BTW – if you’re interested in switching from b2 to WP and you want to import your old files from b2, you may run into trouble. The directions on doing this are kind of hazy. I got confused and had to start from scratch a couple of times, so I thought I’d post a short tutorial on how to do so.

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