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  1. Dave says

    I’m glad that it is inadvertently highlighting a gap in CSS handling of fonts: Sometimes, designers need to specify settings as complete, all-or-nothing sets.

  2. hax says

    color perception… like woah, dude! what if what i see as green is really what you see as blue!??! what if what you see as red is what i see as white!? this is trippy beyond belief.

  3. Javier Julio says

    Have you looked into using cfflush? But not sure if that tag solves the problem you are having. You also have cfsavecontent which seems to be really what you are looking for. It acts the same as your buffer custom tag now that I think of it. Let me know if you have any questions. Feel free to email me.

  4. Stephen says

    I have to disagree. It’s the responsibility of both web developers and web surfers to not cave in to browser vendors. We could have stopped advancing 6 years ago when IE6 was full of CSS bugs. We could have said “Just use HTML/tables because CSS is not fully supported by everybody,” but we didn’t. People (including you) developed solutions that would work both on modern and older browsers. Sure, some of the hacks were ugly, but the end product was something that would work for as many people as possible, and that was the most important thing.

    I see scripting as a similar thing. Even as it stands now, scripting and the DOM is incredibly useful when used properly, and I don’t think it’s necessary to give it up just because the vendors won’t work together to support a standard.

  5. Kenneth says

    Hi – nice to se you really are back. I have visited your site freqently over the past few years and have learned alot about new standards from you. Thanks !

  6. Pietro says

    What you say it’s partly right. But: what’s the core/critical functionality of Youtube? Well, it doesn’t rely on HTML.

    Maybe there are exceptions, after all.

  7. Dale Novak says

    Speaking of not using javascript, i have seen a css only dropdown menu at http://www.grc.com/menu2/invitro.htm that even works in ie6.

  8. anavoizillono says

    rosie@triad29.com

    rosieponder@verizon.net

    Not only do they try to rip you off, they send your email out and you get a ton of junk mail.

  9. Ruthsarian says

    Pietro:
    YouTube could offer direct links to video files for those users who don’t have Flash installed. This would allow all users access to the critical content/feature of the site even if they don’t have Flash enabled.


    Dale:
    The problem with GRC’s dropdown menus is that they abuse IE6’s support of the :hover pseudoclass for anchor tags. Dropdown menus (in the form of UL/LI elements) are placed inside anchor tags. This is invalid HTML.

    Now he gets around w3 validation by using conditional comments, a proprietary IE feature. The comments add bloat to the page, trigger other bugs in IE (http://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer/dup-characters.html) and still serve invalid HTML to IE.

    And as I’ve said before, the use of JavaScript in my Ruthsarian Menus is there purely to provide enhancement to IE6 (and IE5) users’ experience. It does not deny them access to core features. Without JavaScript IE5&6 users would simply have to deal with an added click (or more) to get to the content they are after.

  10. Albandi says

    Hi Ruthsarian,
    here is a menu-trick for the IE8-Beta:

    ul.rMenu li ul a {z-index:90;
    background-color:#fffde8}

    In the IE8 there are transparancy problems between the menu and the submenu.

    Albandi

  11. Albandi says

    a ie8-fix for the rmenu (transparency problem):

    ul.rMenu li ul a {
    z-index:90;
    background-color:#fffde8
    }

    bye

    Albandi

  12. Galwanizernia says

    Thanks. Very interest post.

    Regards,

  13. Colin says

    Marvelous! It works fine in latest Firefox, (Safari and Camino) too.

    It’ll be useful as the template for portal type pages on our site, where you want to get lots on the page.

    But to integrate it with the rest of the (SkiddoTooRedux) template we use, the right navigation column will have to be moved to the left.

    I’ve downloaded it for a look.

    Thank you once again for the professional quality templates you give us.

    Very much appreciated!

  14. Peter says

    Comic looks really nice – tested it and redux in a number of browsers – but it behaves terribly in Visual Studio 2008 (even the Redux does). Decided to keep the redux layout, since it is very stringent.

    If you ever get any time, pls look at implementing the redux layout for Windows Mobile 6 Explorer, and if you find out what is wrong with the redux in VS2008 – that’d be perfect.

    Thank you so much for your effort and release in the public domain.

  15. Shannon Erin says

    Amen, brother!

  16. Colin says

    Peter’s comment about Comic and SKTooRedux not working well in MS Visual Studio 2008 is actually Good News!

    We used the SKTRedux template for our site because of it’s wide browser compatibility, no problems with any browser we have tested it with.

    VS is used by “Dodgy developers”, scrapers, and plagiarists, so keep it excluded please Eric! :)

    Normal browser users will have no serious bugs using Eric’s excellent templates.

  17. Colin says

    Works fine for me in Asia. PPC Mac /FF

    You mentioned downloading speed, how does enabling gzip compression fit in to page design?

    I understand you can set the site server if you own it.

    Can somebody on a virtual host do anything on-page to enable it and increase download speed?

  18. George says

    Just installed IE8 on my laptop. It seems to mess up the H1/H2 headings in the masthead on gargoyle/blog layouts.

  19. Colin says

    Thanks for your review.

    I had a serious try with Linux about 3 years ago, before Ubuntu emerged.

    I struggled with Mandrake Linux for a year, before switching to a Mac.

    Problem solved :)

    Linux really need somebody sensible to take charge of it. It’s just a free-for-all-mess.

  20. michael kucker says

    The Comic layout is great. I can’t believe how compatible it is, even Mac Explorer. I’m trying to use it on a site for children. The fact that the fonts and colors can be changed might even make it easier to read the text for some children.

    u/d75/his/shack/comic/intalgebra.htm

    I was unable to change the background colors correctly first try but will get back to that later. Part of the fun of using such a layout is learning new things as you go along.

    I did not link back on the page, I hope that is alright. I would not mind putting a link back in the source and will do that next revision if you would prefer. I am already working on a second page using the comic layout and will eventually change my entire student site as long as there are no issues with compatibility that I have not found yet.

    Thanks for putting your terrific work in the public domain.

  21. Colin says

    Thanks for the alert Eric!

    I tried this in both FF 3.0.1 and Safari 3.1.2. I went to PayPal through your link and came back, even reloaded, but it didn’t work, no red bar across the screen.

    But I will certainly disable browser history. Never use it anyway.

  22. Ruthsarian says

    Odd. I’ve tested (and just re-tested) Firefox 3.0.1 and it works fine as long as browsing history is enabled.

  23. Colin says

    That’s FF 3.0.1 on a Mac, I tied it twice before posting the comment, and browsing history was enabled. I disabled it now though :)

    Perhaps it’s something to do with my Asian location?

  24. Ruthsarian says

    Possibly. Does PayPal redirect you to a different domain like paypal.jp or something other than paypal.com?

  25. Mister Peabody says

    You’re leaving me hanging!

    Your post ends with: “The gray box in”

    Is it a typo, or is there something more to come?

  26. Ruthsarian says

    GAH! Sorry about that. My failure with adding a closing quote to an HREF attribute killed the rest of the post. It’s been fixed.

  27. Colin says

    The PayPal link your test uses takes me to paypal.com in my address bar, and I don’t notice any local PayPal addresses redirects in the status bar. Not to worry. Thanks for the warning to disallow browser history.

  28. djmaniak777 says

    does this work in ie7 or do you have to use gif instead of png?

  29. Ruthsarian says

    It should work with any image format so long as you properly declare the data format. For example the example in this post begins with “data:image/png;base64″ but if you wanted a GIF image you’d simply change “image/png” to “image/gif” or “image/jpeg” for JPEGs and it’d work (assuming the data is from a GIF or JPEG as well).

  30. Colin says

    Thank for the Hack update Eric.

    We appreciate your diligence.

    I’ve updated our modified version of Skidoo_Redux with them.

    Even after editing out your helpful comments it resulted in 22 lines of css hack code becoming 70 lines of css hack code!

    I’ve asked before, but is there anyway people on a virtual server can employ gzip to speed up loading of their sites?

    We failed on the YSlow site-speed test before we added the new css hacks, I daren’t test since :)

    PS. I hear ( from William Blum at killinghope.org ) that AOL are dumping their site hosting soon, so will their browser finally be consigned to the Museum of Tchno-Horrors?

  31. Ruthsarian says

    This is a test to see if the new CAPTCHA works.

  32. Ruthsarian says

    Remote CAPTCHA test

  33. Mat says

    Scary just how much a web site can gain from reading you history file. Definitely glad my history is switched off.

  34. Sudeep Tamrakar says

    Thanks for the useful menu sample.

  35. Fred says

    The example to obtain admin privileges is not very good since how would you know the “isadmin” variable was the one to set!? Answer, you would not. Sure you could fire away hundreds of them but if the variable was called “admin3453454524lk343423423sdsdsdsksuryfndc” then would you find it then?

  36. Colin says

    Eric, I wonder if this article about Fluid Grids will inspire the next Skidoo update…
    http://www.alistapart.com/comments/fluidgrids/
    eg. max-width: 61.75em; /* 988px / 16px = 61.75em */

    It sounds as though they have greatly reduced the number of IE hacks required, but still have bugs with images.

    I’m grateful your first fluid Skidoo persuaded us to make our site “Fluid”. We have since upgraded to your latest version, and I’ve recently viewed it on various tiny mobile devices for the first time; it looks great thanks to you.

    The first thing you have to do reading a site on an iPhone type device is increase the font size.
    That’s when you see the benefit of letting go of tables, fixed widths, and font sizes, as you encouraged us to do.

    I look forward to a Skidoo refinement based on Fluid Grid thinking too.

    Colin

  37. Colin says

    I wonder if this article about Fluid Grids will inspire the next Skidoo update…
    http://www.alistapart.com/comments/fluidgrids/
    eg. max-width: 61.75em; /* 988px / 16px = 61.75em */

    It sounds as though they have greatly reduced the number of IE hacks required, but still have bugs with images.

    I’m grateful your first fluid Skidoo persuaded us to make our site “Fluid”. We have since upgraded to your latest version, and I’ve recently viewed it on various tiny mobile devices for the first time; it looks great thanks to you.

    The first thing you have to do reading a site on an iPhone type device is increase the font size.
    That’s when you see the benefit of letting go of tables, fixed widths, and font sizes, as you encouraged us to do.

    I look forward to a Skidoo refinement based on Fluid Grid thinking too.

    Colin

  38. Ronald says

    @Fred: complete and utter bollocks. Your example is the perfect example of going for security through obscurity, while better methods _should_ be encouraged.

    If the product is commercially available, people have insight in the source code and can know the variable name.

    If the product was developed in-house, it may still be possible to get to the source code because of other security bugs to view file content or so.

    Also, did you even wonder about the amount of entropy in coldfusion variable names? Do you encourage developers to use your proposed naming scheme? I doubt it. Even for completely blind attacks the amount of entropy in variable naming is not that big and you might indeed be able to brute force it.

    Your proposal for ’security’ boils down to using plain-text passwords with a non-existent password policy biased to syntactically sugared strings.

  39. Mike says

    Very neat trick, this underscore hack. I am mostly using conditional statements these days, but it’s still good to know there is another way Thanks Mr. Ruthsarian.

  40. Web Templates says

    Thanks for keeping us in the loop about programming changes. Its incredibly frustrating to struggle for something you think YOU are doing wrong only to learn its a bug!

  41. Peter says

    HOw did you determine the 300? Is there a way to select a region on a page have the rectangle be determined?

  42. Ruthsarian says

    I determined the 300 by trial and error. I’d start at 500 and see how close I was to my target, then add or subtract as needed until I found a value that loaded the page right where I wanted it to be.

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