Wednesday, January 26, 2011

A Little CSS Curious.

Tutorials: I just need to know ONE thing.

I had heard many a great thing about CSS: You change one thing on a .css file and it changes on every page linked to it. It allows much greater control over just about everything. The biggest selling point to me was being able to get the look of Bob and Tom, Max PC, Bunny and Ravy, Bob and George, and so on and so forth.

I had been able to emulate the look with tables. Tables can be extremely difficult, sloppy, non-transferable, and I have even read that they block search engines. When working with tables to try to place everything in its proper place is frustrating. Adjusting cell height and widths, making, deleting, combining, splitting cells. Inserting images of the same background as placeholders. Then bits of formatting show up at random causing huge amounts of empty space or forcing objects outside the table. On the rare occasion I get one looking right I copy and paste it to a new page and hell breaks lose. All the formatting I spent hours getting right is gone. On top of that, I read in a tutorial that information contained within a table cannot be indexed. A little Google search of Rosenkreuzstilette proves this. The only two articles appearing in the top 150 are the ones that have no formatting what-so-ever. You have to get around to 200 to find one that is formatted with tables. Admittedly I doubt there's anybody that can remain interested or even awake all the way through Article Two. Much much less the other three.

Apparently CSS can solve all my problems, or some guy in Nigeria tells me. First thing I do is download web pages that look good to me and pick them apart to learn how's it done. I start with Bob and Tom and open it up in my editor and boy does it look nothing like how it's displayed in a browser. I do this to a few more sites and each one doesn't help. So I start Googling CSS Tutorials.
My frustration with online tutorials goes back to learning how to make flash videos. Of course I wanted to use sprites, but I couldn't find one that told me how. All the tutorials would tell me how to draw with the tools in the Flash Toolbox. How do I import sprite sheets and use them. Can't be all that hard. It's all over Newgrounds. (Yes, I did download that page as well.) Then after months of searching I found one. The results are my usual fare.

Most CSS Tutorials start out with "Here's how to do background color, and now here's you do foreground color." Not mentioning that foreground is also called font. I understand starting off with the basics and working up. After a dozen or so sites that tell how to do background colors, I need more. When we do go indork, it's all about navigation, divs, images scroll or not to scroll. Good to know, but what I need to know is how to get the look of a table but with CSS.

I was smart enough to pay attention to the parts of the tutorials that talked about linked style sheets and inline styles. So I go back to Bob and Tom's page and open up the CSS file. I really didn't get much of it, but, when I opened up the actual web page and looked at the code I knew where to look. First I had to find the section that was formatted the way I wanted, then look at the code. It was linked to a section marked "container." I copy and pasted that code to a new file and a new web page and it turned up just the way I wanted.

I have since implemented this style as I go along. All the pages in Season 2011 will be formatted the same way. I still have problems with copy and paste, formatting mysteriously appears for no reason screwing everything. I'm not going to go back over every page to implant my new knowledge. They look good enough as is and nobody really bothers with the archive anyway. Maybe someday when I feel this overwhelming urge that my my life can go no further unless I do this: I may fix Season 20 and get it looking the way I really wanted.

One thing I did do: I looked up CSS Container code to make sure it wasn't just for Bob and Tom. I don't need the Friggemall Lawyers coming down around my ears for stealing their lines of code. But hey, why would they care about some obnoxious blogger and his very much unknown sprite comic hidden in the deepest, darkest, dankest, dorkest corners of the internet?

12 comments:

Morty Gleckman said...

It has come to my attention that you are in use of web code that is also currently in use by my clients. I am sure that we can negotiate a fair settlement that can prevent this from going to court and maybe even prevent the revelation of certain embarrassing personal details of yourself.

MooMaster said...

Good luck with it, Mr. Morty- Mr. Joe has been stealing material for almost a decade without any remorse or showing any signs of willing to stop doing it.

All attempts to make him understand that what he's doing is wrong always end up with Mr. Joe covering his ears, stomping on the ground and calling people "homos" or just laughing on their faces, forging some "laws" to justify himself and then stealing even more to prove he's more mature than his victims.

That or Mr. Joe would simply delete all complains from his blog to pretend he's not doing anything bad and he's in fact, a poor and misunderstood victim who deserves to sue you for everything you own as his just compensation.

Mr. Obvious said...

You see, Caller, what we have here is someone impersonating a character from a nationally syndicated comedy radio show.

Caller said...

I never made the connection. Thanks Mr. Obvious, you're a life saver.

Anonymous said...

I happened upon the BLOG by accidsent. I've looked over many of the entries and read all the very few comments. I have even checked out Mr Joes's comic.

I do not like anything Mr Joe has ever said, his comic is just not funny at all.

to those the other peopel, more likely person, that keeps making all those other comments, here's some advice; just forget Mr Joe. No one ever comes here, obviously no one ever reads his funny to him comic.

You'll find youself being a much happy person if you stay away from places you don't like and obviously hate.

Anonymous said...

I forgott one thing: Mr Joe, it's "Rosenkreuzstilette".

Anonymous said...

Odd, where's Mr Joe? He's quick with some witless sarcasm.

Joe said...

Me? I'm enjoying milky-tea, listening to some Elton John, getting ideas for blog posts.

Moomaster said...

Surerly smells like sockpuppet here.

Talking to yourself fits you really well, Joe.

Anonymous said...

>baaawww Nobody's posting on my shitty blog.
>baaawww I'll samefag and pretend I'm someone else to make it look like lots of people are posting on my shitty blog.

>baaawww I'm old, I have no job, no education, no future, no friends and no woman has even loved me.
>baaawww I 'll behave like a pretentious asshole to forget that at the end of the day my bed will still be empty and I'm dying alone.

>baaawww
>baaawww
>baaawww
>baaawww
>BAAAWWW
>BAAAWWW
>BAAAWWW
>BAAAWWW

Joe said...

Just think, I seem to have enough of a net presence that people will anonymously impersonate me on my own blog.

Anonymous said...

Boat for sale. Goes great with articulated python! I swear to God it does! Call my pager.

DB