Web design & FOSS

Yes, it's that end of time feeling again, when lazy repeats masquerade as best-of-the-year. My DejaVu experience is somewhat more prosaic. A current client has a job designed using the DejaVu Sans font, a free download based on Bitstream Vera.

I also took the opportunity to look at the equivalent fonts in the Microsoft® ClearType™ Font Collection. These are the fonts which ship with Microsoft Office 2007, so they're installed on a large number of Windows boxes across the globe (you can install them on your Linux or Mac machine, although be sure not to fall foul of the licensing).

So, for the first time, my CSS includes these proprietary fonts when defining the font-family:

'DejaVu Sans', Corbel, 'Trebuchet MS', Verdana, Arial, sans-serif

It's worth pointing out that Trebuchet, Verdana and Arial are also proprietary fonts, licensed by Microsoft though available for Linux.

I do it for myself, I do
and that's what really helps
[apologies to Radiohead]

Very often I'll write a blog entry that contains useful information for me, that I think other people might find useful. For example, a list of Firefox extensions and my favourite linux software.

I'm currently hard at work on a new Joomla! web site, and I have been using JoomlaPack to create incremental backups of my work. I have also been configuring a generic base-install of Joomla! on my own development server, so that I can have my favourite Joomla! extensions ready and waiting. I've made this base-install available (you will also need to upload kickstart.php into the same empty directory and get the script running).

I have also configured Joomla Content Editor, a must-have multi-functional uploader and styler of text and images. I've altered the Editor Layout in Components > JCE Administration > Groups > Default to get to the nitty-gritty controls (see screengrab). And, to boot, I've made available a download of all the JCE components and plugins for Joomla! 1.5, such is the wonder of Free Open Source Software and the GPL :)

So, this will be yet another post that I bookmark and reference myself.

A friend of mine has coined the verb "to perpetate". This means to discard an item of shopping in the wrong place once you've found something better.

Similar behaviour can occur with complex Cascading Style Sheets ;)

I'm in the process of building a simple web site for Rob at Waste Utilities. Whilst in the midst of building, I was struck by the sleight of hand illusionist principles employed -- a drop shadow here, a fading in there. It's quite a simple design, based on Blogger (it was my experiment to see how the eminent Douglas Bowman created the design, idolatry rather than mimicry ;)

So, here is a step-by-step account of how it's all done. No doubt I'll be kicked out of the Magic Circle of Web Designers...

1. The Background

2. The Header Wrapper Background

3. The Header Background

4. The Header Branding

5. The Global Navigation

6. The Content

Apologies for the un-anti-aliased text; I have it that way so that I can clearly read the tiny programming font that I use :)

I simply wanted to share my delight and OS-centric fervour by telling you about tabbed browsing in a file manager. Oh yes, Ubuntu’s done it again, in Intrepid Ibex 08.10 there is delightful tabbed browsing, a simple ctrl+T opens up a new tab and you can drag and drop files between tabs. Simple but oh so delightful.

On another bright and cheery note, I have been struggling somewhat with the Filezilla FTP program, trying to seamlessly edit text files without annoying dialog boxes popping up asking me what to do all the time. Luckily I remembered my old chum Charles had told me that I could mount an SSH connection as a networked server using FUSE, so that it appears on the desktop.

This was a while ago, and better than that, I now find that this functionality is now built in to Ubuntu! Simply go to Places > Connect to Server..., enter the server info and away you go. You can even add the server as a bookmark for quick and funky access. Remarkable.