February in a Nutshell

Another busy month for skiFFie in terms of content. This update documents all the articles that have been written since the first of February and any other changes to the site over the month. My aim was to publish 2 documents a week throughout the month, however I.S.P. issues prevented me from achieving this goal.

Code changes in February, 2008

I made a few minor tweaks to the CSS for the site. I am sure this will be an ongoing process though. After viewing the site in browsershots I discovered a few flaws with my detection script. Investigations got underway to try to irradicate this error.

Articles submitted in February, 2008

Apache Rewrite Requests To Subdirectory: This snippet shows an easy way to rewrite every request to a sub-domain. This can be very useful if you are, for example using a CMS and doing an upgrade but you need the URLs to remain unchanged after the switch. This article assumes that you have the rewrite module enabled on your server - which is Apache of course. Read more.
Loop through Array with Alternating Colors: This PHP snippet shows 2 methods for displaying alternative row colors while looping through an array. In the examples listed here only the font colors are changed. In reality you can change anything you like based on the outcome of the calculations. Read more.
HTML Lists: Lists can be a vital part of a semantic layout of your web pages. Lists add some meaning to the text provided, for example they are ideal for menus. These snippets show a variety of ways to display lists. Read more.
MySQL Replace: I have decided to post this little snippet as I have been searching how to replace certain text within certain fields for quite a while. The basic syntax is very simple. Read more.
Formatting text: This simple extract show how you can format your text to prevent it from breaking when served as application/xhtml+xml. This is pretty important as malformed XHTML can really maul your site. Although the built-in corrector helps the automatic line breaking input type setting can be a killer. Read more.
Open A New Window with Valid XHTML: This little HTML/JavaScript snippet shows an accessible way to open new browser windows that validates to XHTML standards. It would be better to use event handling however this is a simple of example of using JS inline. See related links for those kind of examples. Read more.
Accessible Links: This page is inspired by a recent visit to a major web site and the problems that I faced while browsing / interacting on site. The article may well seem like a rant but this is an example of some the issues that myself and others are trying to irradicate. Listed are some of the pitfalls of AJAX based pages and dynamically created URLs. Read more.

Updates posted in February, 2008

Drupal v6 - Second Thoughts?: 3 weeks of playing with Drupal v6 later here are a few thoughts of what I have seen so far. The overall appeal of Drupal is still there, though there are still the same inevitable hard-ships that make you wonder is this really worth all the hassle?. Please bear in mind that most of the development is geared towards the accessibility module and some of my gripes may not be that critical to others as it is to me. Read more.