Creating OFT templates for Outlook 2010
I wrote an article a few years ago on creating OFT files for Outlook. This was written for Outlook 2007, and since then, Outlook 2010 has been released and things have changed. The ability to view web pages within Outlook 2010 has been removed and the UI has also been redone, but fear not, the ability to make OFT files still exists, although it’s not as straight forward as it used to be.
Email newsletters in Lotus Notes and table width
Lotus Notes, or Locust Notes as some of my colleagues like to call it is probably the hardest email client in wide use to code for. Depending on which version you are trying to support, you may be in for a real nightmare. I recently marked up a very basic email newsletter that had to work in Lotus Notes 6.5 and I still had a lot of trouble getting it to work. The same rules apply to Lotus as that of Outlook 2007, build your emails with a slew of tables and spacer gifs and use as little CSS as possible, this is especially true for older versions of Lotus notes. I wanted to share one particularly nasty bug that I squashed, and that is how Lotus deals with table widths.
How to use Drush with Drupal
I was recently at Drupal Camp Toronto which is a conference on Drupal. It was a fantastic place to learn about what other modules and strategies people are using with Drupal. Having only created a couple of Drupal sites myself, it was great to be around so many people that build Drupal sites for a living. Out of everything I learned at Drupal Camp the single most amazing tool had to be Drush. I still have a lot other modules to research that I learned about from the conference and Drush isn’t even really a module, but it’s still a lot of awesome.
Doing JavaScript pop-up windows the right way
Some would argue there is no right way to do a JavaScript pop-up since it disrupts the natural flow and usability of the web. I would tend to agree, but like all things web, there are exceptions to this rule and it may not be your choice anyway. That said there definitely is a very wrong way to do a JavaScript pop-up, and unfortunately there are literally hundreds of tutorials showing you how to do it the wrong way and even more websites implementing it wrong.
How to write super clean CSS
Everyone who works with (X)HTML probably knows how to use CSS to some degree, but not as many know how to write clean CSS. Cascading Style Sheets are probably one of the most powerful tools a web designer/developer can master. It’s hard to find a site today that doesn’t benefit from the capabilities of CSS, and with the slow arrival of CSS3 that is unlikely to change. That said I still constantly come across style sheets that could be cleaner, more optimized, and more elegant.
iMac OS X wifi issues finally solved
I had been facing brutally slow Internet speeds lately on my iMac. It’s a 27 inch 2009 iMac9,1 model, but a quick search shows many people are having wifi issues with a range of iMacs made in this time frame. The first year was alright, but then slowly I began losing connectivity and getting degrading speeds followed by exceptionally high ping speeds and major packet loss. The tipping point forcing me into all out research mode to find a fix for this issue was when Star Craft 2 starting lagging. I mean I can handle slow downloads, but slowing down while conquering the Zerg? That’s where I draw the line.
Zen Coding – a new way to write HTML lightning fast
The other day I purchased a new editor called Coda. I might review this fantastic little piece of software at a later date, but one of the reasons I purchased it was to use some of the many plugins the community has created for it. One of these plugins has been produced for several editors and could change how you code. It’s called Zen Coding, and it will make you write large chunks of HTML a lighting speeds.
What is Zen Coding?
Zen Coding is hard to explain, but if you have been working with HTML and CSS for awhile now you should be able to pick it up very quickly. It’s easy to learn and best shown by example, so lets start with an example.
Outlook 2007 losing font-family declaration
Email clients are one of the pinnacle frustrations for web designers. The limitations are far greater than those of web browsers and you can always count on Microsoft’s Outlook 2007 being at the forefront of compatibility problems and bug issues. If you create emails that have to support Outlook 2007’s wonky Word rendering you may have noticed on occasion that your specified font-family disappears. There’s a few ways to fix this, but some are better than others.
How to fix floated images and list overlap
The other day I was looking at my blog and saw that one of the posts had a left floated image followed by a bulleted list. The problem was that the list was not indenting properly the way it did when next to a paragraph without a floated element. After a bit of searching and hair pulling I found a discussion that solved my problem.
Creating simple pure CSS buttons
This week I played around with some pure CSS button techniques. This style of button is clean looking and easy to set up, it even has slightly rounded corners. This is not the sliding doors technique which allows you to have full rounded corners, but it a variation, a little simpler and requires only one image and one div tag in the markup. Check out the working demo and read on.
