mouse pi-lot » Code

3 posts before failure

Simon Stevens — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:48:36 +0000

Ugn!! I swore that this 3rd attempt at a blog would be successful, and that I’d update it regularly with insightful and useful comments to amuse and inform.

3 Posts in the first 2 days of my new site, and then silence… this seems to indicate that I am not cut out for blogging. I shall however persist, and today’s very short post shall contain 2 things, a link to the tools from the old mousepilot website, and a list of future posts which I shall complete.

So, the link. At 3DPixel.net we combined my two very simple tools from the old site along with a couple of others and created our tools website 3dpx.net. Mainly just as a place where things we use every day can reside, but also as a tool for anyone else to use.

….and now the list:

Complaining post about the complete lack of consideration and awareness in society, particularly focusing on muppets in Sainsburies and plebs on the road
Tutorial on how to right a funky jquery/php application to upload, resize and crop images
Complaining post about benefits

I swear to the gods of beer and pizza, that I’ll update again soon

Very Excited about CSS3

Simon Stevens — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 20:43:15 +0000

After spending a portion of the weekend coding my shiny new site I’ve really got the CSS bug again. So I was delighted when I checked Smashing Magazine for new articles and stumbled on their latest article about CSS3!

As usual, their article is an amalgamation of many many sources and very comprehensive. Wide support for attribute selectors is particularly good news as it means no more damn id’s on inputs! Psuedo classes look particularly useful for lots of things, but support for odd/even in table rows is pretty cool. Columns, Shadows (text and background), Border Images, Word Wrap are all very cool, but what I’m bowled over to see is multiple layered backgrounds. It’s a feature I’ve craved for so long, but honestly never expected to see, AND IT’S HERE!

A new beginning without Internet Explorer 6

Simon Stevens — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 20:32:09 +0000

At 3DPixel made the decision a few months ago that 7 years was a pretty good run for Internet Explorer 6, and that enough was enough. So we killed support for it in all future projects.

At the time, I don’t think I really considered the implications this would have to future designs, but 2 projects down the line, I have to say THANK GOD. I feel like a coder reborn (cheesy I know), I’ve rediscovered the joys of transparency, inline-blocks, and padding that doesn’t make me want to tear my own face off.

I’m also actually taking the time to look into CSS3, now that there’s actually a chance I’ll use it. Rounded corners are a godsend!

So I’d encourage any other coders out there to follow in the footsteps of 3DPixel, Facebook, Apple.. and numerous other big name websites, and lets kill it off for good!

CSS Rounded Corners

Simon Stevens — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 16:26:10 +0000

My first post on my shiny new blog is being written whilst I’m actually coding the template.

The CSS3 spec gives us access to rounded corners without the need for images and loads of xhtml. Just add the following to the appropriate

. I’ve absolutely no idea whether this works in IE7+ but I suspect it doesn’t and as it’s for my personal blog, I don’t care. Internet Explorer users deserve to look at shitty looking pages tbh :p

-moz-border-radius: 5px; -webkit-border-radius: 5px;