cssvault - inspiring creativity

Tired of writing boring XHTML and CSS code at the beginning of every slicing project? The XHTML / CSS Markup Generator is a web based tool that allows users to enter very intuitive, shortened syntax in order to generate corresponding XHTML and CSS markup, speeding up your work.

Sample input looks something like this:

#root
 #top
  #logo
   a[href="/"]=Markup Generator
  form#search
   fieldset
    label[for="query"]=Enter keyword:
    input[type="text" name="term"]#query
    button[type="submit"]=Find
 #header
  h1=Markup Generator
  h2=Nifty tool for XHTML/CSS coders
 #content
  #primary
   #about
  #secondary
   #contact.box
   #notify.box
   #bookmarks.box
 #footer
  p=Copyright (c) 2008 xMS.pl

This will result in the following XHTML and CSS code:

(XHTML):

<div id="root">
    <div id="top">
        <div id="logo">
            <a href="/">Markup Generator</a>
        </div>
        <form id="search" method="post" action="./">
            <fieldset>
                <label for="query">Enter keyword:</label>
                <input id="query" type="text" name="term" />
                <button type="submit">Find</button>
            </fieldset>
        </form>
    </div>
    <div id="header">
        <h1>Markup Generator</h1>
        <h2>Nifty tool for XHTML/CSS coders</h2>
    </div>
    <div id="content">
        <div id="primary">
            <div id="about"></div>
        </div>
        <div id="secondary">
            <div id="contact" class="box"></div>
            <div id="notify" class="box"></div>
            <div id="bookmarks" class="box"></div>
        </div>
    </div>
    <div id="footer">
        <p>Copyright (c) 2008 xMS.pl</p>
    </div>
</div>

(CSS):

#root {  }
 #top {  }
  #logo {  }
   #logo a {  }
  #search {  }
   #search fieldset {  }
    #search fieldset label {  }
    #query {  }
    #search fieldset button {  }
 #header {  }
  #header h1 {  }
  #header h2 {  }
 #content {  }
  #primary {  }
   #about {  }
  #secondary {  }
   #contact {  }
   #notify {  }
   #bookmarks {  }
 #footer {  }
  #footer p {  }

Microsoft has finally made Internet Explorer 8 Beta publicly available for download, and all I can say is: WTF?

First of all, IE8 can only be installed in Windows Vista SP1, XP SP2, 2008 Server, and 2003 Server SP2. Which leads me to think that this is nothing more than a business ploy to get people to upgrade their *cough* legal *cough* Microsoft OS.

Next, what happened to passing the ACID2 test? After bragging about this milestone months ago, it is still failing for some. The exact reason is still unclear, but this inconsistency is disappointing nonetheless.

Third, what about SVG support? The web community has been stuck with raster formats LONG ENOUGH! How much longer must we wait until we arrive at a standardized vector format?

Finally, let’s look at IE8’s “new and exciting” features:

Activities

Activities are contextual services to quickly access a service from any webpage. Users typically copy and paste from one webpage to another.

Kind of cool, but plugins / extensions / add-ons in Firefox do the trick just fine.

WebSlices

WebSlices is a new feature for websites to connect to their users by subscribing to content directly within a webpage. WebSlices behave just like feeds where clients can subscribe to get updates and notify the user of changes.

Again, sort of cool. I am all for microformats, but RSS feeds are already a standard across all modern browsers in different platforms including mobile, so I doubt web developers will want to develop widgets that will only work on IE8.

Every “feature” listed after Webslices is basically pointless or a replication of a Firefox, Safari, or Opera feature. It’s sort of like the marketing team had to try very hard to come up with something to sell IE8 with. Nothing “new” or “exciting” here.

Favorites Bar

In Internet Explorer 7, the Links bar provided users with one-click access to their favorite sites. The Links bar has undergone a complete makeover for Internet Explorer 8.

So basically, the team spent countless hours designing a new favorites bar that looks just like every other favorites / bookmarks toolbar and added a new menu item that saves favorites directly into the bar and called it a new feature.

This feature, for one, has really left me speechless.

Next!

Automatic Crash Recovery

Automatic Crash Recovery (ACR) is a feature of Windows®Internet Explorer® 8 that can help to prevent the loss of work and productivity in the unlikely event of the browser crashing or hanging. The ACR feature takes advantage of the Loosely-Coupled Internet Explorer feature to provide new crash recovery capabilities, such as tab recovery, which will minimize interruptions to users’ browsing sessions.

Finally IE8 gets a feature that has been in Firefox for AGES! I guess this is their way of admitting that their browser crashes all to often.

P.S. How long did the designers come up with such a cool name as “Automatic Crash Recovery”? If I were them I’d try to trademark that before someone else does.

Improved Phishing Filter

Internet Explorer 7 introduced the Phishing Filter, a feature which helps warn users when they visit a Phishing site. Phishing sites spoof a trusted legitimate site, with the goal of stealing the user’s personal or financial information. For Internet Explorer 8, we are building on the success of the Phishing Filter with a more comprehensive feature called the “Safety Filter.”

I can’t believe this made it to the “New and Exciting Features” list. The marketing team is really on a roll.

Activities, WebSlices, Favorites Bar, Automatic Crash Recovery, and now Safety Filter? What’s next, the Super Cool Browsing History Manager? Seriously who comes up with these names?! While renaming Phishing Filter to Safety Filter would prevent Grandpa Joe from getting a migraine while trying to imagine why he must bring a filter the next time he goes fishing, I must say that this only leads to more confusion.

It would have been much more intuitive if the Phishing Filter were moved as an option below the Security Filter, because the Security Filter does so much more than prevent phishing attacks. For one, there’s the group policy option for blocking unsafe sites, and two … well that’s just about it.

That’s really just about everything that there is with the new IE8 Beta. If this is any indication of what the final product is going to look like, then I guess we are better off without it. As far as web developers are concerned, it’s just another browser to produce hacks for. Speaking of looks, it looks exactly the same as IE7. At least the Mozilla Firefox team made the effort to come up with a new look in Firefox 3.

On a serious note, hard core developers may wish to take a look at the IE8 Beta 1 Whitepapers, which as of today appears to be central to a single new feature: Better AJAX Development. Hooray. Yeah I know I said this was a serious note. But really guys, WTF?

YUI 2.4.0 has finally been released and boy do they have a huge list of new features, which include the following:

• Selector Utility
• Charts Control
• Get Utility
• Profiler
• JSON Utility

As well as the following new widgets:

• Button
• Calendar
• Drag & Drop
• Rich Text Editor

Head over to the download page.

Nothing can be more disappointing than discovering that all those hours you spent laboriously getting your website to display properly on Firefox and IE7 does not work on IE6. As developers we definitely need to have IE6 and IE7 running side by side on the same machine. That’s how I discovered Multiple IE.
(more…)

Yes! Gone is the simple blue box with the letters “Ps”, replaced by a speech bubble and a “P”. Add in a tagline and you got yourself the re-brand of the century!

Uhm, oookay, I’m sure there has got to be some very good explanation behind the logo. Or maybe we all just need to stare at it until that “Eureka!” moment when we finally “get it”.

More details and interesting comments on John Nack’s blog and on the official Photoshop website.

In other news, Paypal has jumped into the rebranding bandwagon and launched a new site sporting their new logo. Expect full coverage soon.

Astyle is a freeware visual CSS editor that shows promise. Those who do not have money to spend on expensive software should definitely check this out.

Seeing photos of the Meebo Mini just gets me excited about this wonderful little app. Check it out!

And they just launched Meebo Rooms a couple of months ago. Man, they just keep getting better and better!

Meebo

CSS Guru Eric Meyer has just released CSS Sculptor, which works with Adobe Dreamweaver to create standards-compliant, CSS layouts quickly and easily.

Tim Gaunt of TheSiteDirector tells his horror story about how his carefully and lovingly-crafted CSS got “fixed” by Microsoft’s Expression IDE.

“… I noticed that my nice, neat and tidy CSS file of around 190 lines was suddenly closer to 300…”

Microsoft Expression Web and CSS -is it all it’s cracked up to be?

For the social networking addicts out there, Flock over and and grab your copy of the Flock 0.9 Beta!

I am not sure about the reason for skipping 0.8 (they are calling the 0.9 betas 0.8.xx.x), but the new features sure look promising.