compliant code for external links opening in a new browser window

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/standards-compliant-world/3/

Just wanted to log this somewhere. Although I'm using Transitional XHTML for thejct.net, I'd still like to be as strict as possible re standards...best to learn the hard way then bend the rules when I need to...

re the live Launch into Fitness site - I've had a lot of problems since launch in January with 000webhost.com - the free domain names they provide are great, but as soon as you want to point one of your own at something stored with them, they can't seem to handle it. It worked intermittently over the last few months, but has now stopped completely. They say the nameservers aren't pointing to them but I've triple checked with Sue, who even called GoDaddy, and nothing seems to be wrong at our end. I've chatted to Sue re getting paid hosting for the site, but in the mean time the live site is at http://www.launchintofitness.comxa.com/

At the moment having fun getting my portfolio site up and running. I might continue to use this blog for internet build notes. http://www.jetsyketsy.blogspot.com/ can be for game development notes. Tempted to start another for specifically Flash development stuff, but haven't really needed notes up to this point - but then haven't really delved into the code side yet so that might change...

Blah

OK, clearly haven't done anything in the last couple of months on this (which I feel quite bad about). Have been sucked into the animated world of Flash. Its lots of fun actually, but really time consuming. Basic actionscript ok. Drawing everything in Flash - challenging.

Will ge back to this soon, I swear...

Reset

OK!

Survived (and kicked ass!) last semester, had a great month break where I rediscovered my talent for vegetating in front of the TV and drinking. Now onto the next semester.

I'm not actually doing any coding subjects this term - lots of flash and a bit of techno-philospophy, but I am going to finish off and launch the Personal Trainer website. Plus I'd like to build my nephew a website so he can stay in touch with the family in Sydney.

I enjoyed logging my coding thoughts in this blog so much during DMT, I've decided to keep going with it. Plus its a handy receptacle of all of the info I find I need along the way - I find my own information receptacle (my brain) is less reliable these days. I'm blaming my conflicting talent for drinking for that one...

So...a couple of quick notes, then I'll leave production until Sunday (for old times sake...)

In the last month:

• the free web hosts have been great. I'm really happy with the service and have had no troubles once i got it up and running. I would go with them again, for sure...
• I received actual content from the client. I freaked out because it looked like she wanted to turn my lovely site into a shouty ad. Had to remind her of her target market. Have agreed on a compromise. Will spend approx 10 hours uploading content, tweaking the pages and creating a new testimonial page (this is all gratis, so I had to actually draw up a scope!) Plan to do that before the end of August as after that, with uni demands, my time will be at a premium
• The client has registered the domain name www.launchintofitness.com. Through an american site. Not sure why. Local help desk support may be useful one day...oh well, lets deal with that if/when we need to...

So, onwards and upwards!

That's enough for now - have to start thinking about animation ideas for class tonight. Oh the pressure of choosing your own term project! Sometimes I get bogged down by too may options...

I think I might cry

My lovely wonderful website that has been working magically is currently under review by the web hosts to check for malicious content. the error page that appears says it will only take 2 - 4 hrs, but its been like that all day. PLEASE let that be sorted by tomorrow...freaking free web hosting...

Just can't stop...

Ok - i've solved the IE issue!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! yayayayayayayayayay!

The separate css file did the trick. Plus I went and stuck a black border around all of my divs to work out exactly what the hell was going on. ie was adding the padding twice or something and completely throwing all divs out of place. Apparently this works differently on ie versions earlier than 7. I am testing my site on version 7 and all looks good there. I applied the Tanteck hack in the hope that it will also solve earlier ie version issues. won't know for sure until i find a machine with an earlier version. Will do for now though...
http://www.positioniseverything.net/articles/ie7-dehacker.html

In fact, it looks better re alignment on the ie version now, so I'm going to go back and stick black borders on everything in the normal css file and see what it looks like. Should probably wait until I get home though so I can test on Safari at the same time.

This all being said, the site actually looks fine as it is right now in all the browsers I wanted it to work in. Perhaps I should just leave it and work on my actual assignment instead...that woudl make sense! I wonder if you ever feel like something like a site is ever 'finished'...

just taking notes...

Sites that have helped today:
http://bonrouge.com/br.php?page=faq#haslayout
which sent me to

http://www.satzansatz.de/cssd/onhavinglayout.html

In theory, my problem lies with the hasLayout issue. I tried a couple of their hacks, but it wasn't working for me. They did prompt me to thinking maybe I should just add in a separate style sheet for IE. Much cleaner solution...

The other good thing about this site was it helped me track down the Holly hack http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?page=1&cid=C37E0
which had disappeared from a couple of the other places i tried to track it down. I think the creators have written a book and want you to buy that instead...

It also helped me track down http://www.positioniseverything.net/articles/ie7-dehacker.html
which I'm sure is the page that Rustum had put forward with some solutions.

Better read that before just diving in and mucking around with new css files...

Ironing out the last few bits and bobs

OK, I've sorted the form re wording of pop up messages, formatted the text for the warning messages and sorted out the container sizes for the two side bars so everything now fits in without mucking up the rest of the page format.

I've checked the XHTML and CSS validity of all of the pages (and stuck my little sticker thing at the bottom of the pages). All good there.

Last thing off the bits and bobs list (and the biggest scariest one) is sorting out the IE issues. One of the things IE was doing (creative little beast) was sticking an outline around all of my image links. Got rid of that with some simple CSS (thanks to this handy site http://bonrouge.com/~faq)

Now I just have to work out how to sort out the way it stuffs around the text positioning on the page. I know its got something to do with the way its popping out the div sizes or margins or something. I noticed Rustum had posted a link on someone else's blog with what i think was the solution to this problem. Unfortunately I can't get into the dmt blog list site, the link's down or something. Time to trawl the brains trust i.e. google