Disqus - Latest Comments for Steven Clark

Re: CSS Best Practices

Steven Clark — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 03:53:53 -0000

Just t a stab I'd suggest reset isn't best practice, but it's common practice now.

Also, margin: 0 auto; may not always work, particularly in some older browsers we won't mention - margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; display: block; should get you out of that bind.

Resetting font size to em I'd suggest putting size: 100% on the body element and then using em through your CSS - I believe it may solve an IE bug that using pure ems can cause.

For clearing floated containers I'd avoid using clearer divs. Try putting on the container div something like overflow: auto, overflow: hidden or display table. Note that my experience with display table has been flakey in some versions of Firefox so it's my last option.

Also, I'd add that writing source code in it's logical order, rather than presentational order is highly beneficial. And enforcing the separation of style from content using external CSS files would be best practices. Split logical parts of your CSS into separate files, but also understand that due to HTTP requests you don't want them to be too small - look at the context and maintainability... I'm sure there are many more... well laid out stylesheets are a benefit when passing them over to others. I usually like an index at the top to state where each section of styling exists...

It's always good to see more basic articles about best practices come out because often it's these fundamental ideas that are missing in the trenches.

Re: Creative Commons Adds Deed Seal

Steven Clark — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:09:30 -0000

Hi Jonathon
Long time no comment, I've been waylaid with uni and work. Good to see you're going stronger every time I've come by though. I tend to reference people over this way whenever the issues arise though. I'm amazed how many people (especially at universities) think that free means they can say they did it and not attribute the authors / creators / legal copyright owners.

It would be good to see some kind of base level program out there explaining to students that plagiarism and theft don't just apply to an assignment at university. It's been a very frustrating year for battling that mental paradigm in people. Their first reactioin is usually just to try and hide the evidence and scrape the obvious code identifiers away.

Any ideas on how this could be proactively pursued. Education is key to at least letting people know its wrong and they will probably be caught, if not now then eventually.

Re: Creative Commons Adds Deed Seal

Steven Clark — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:12:11 -0000

Yes I have to agree sadly. The international full fee paying student economy seems to have, in many schools, paved the way for this issue to proliferate.

My sister, who works at a catholic university in Queensland, attended a cultural awareness course. She said many Koreans / Chinese for example believe that plagiarism is a mark of respect. They culturally believe that using your work is an honour to you. I find this in a Korean student on my software project for 3rd year - filching at all costs. And they don't accept criticism, he threatened to kill me for criticising him earlier in the semester (which is a concern).

IMO we wonder why the software industry has gone to crap - we need to make that mark at the root of the problem. This guy, for example, has used other people's work for an entire degree by filching code and templates and designs. Academically WTF?

It would be nice to see some kind of proactive effort put towards the academic sector. But I'm probably dreaming (after a bottle of shiraz and an exhibition opening).

Anyway, how have you been going? Appears your doing well.

Re: Lizzer: A Copyright/Hotlinking Disaster

Steven Clark — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 19:29:35 -0000

Hi Jonathon, I had such a problem with my old links blog Pig Pen and Myspacers hotlinking to images that I ended up first feeding them advertisements, and then when it got too time consuming I just closed the site and deleted the database.

Google Image Search has a lot to answer for.

I did want to mention my other concern. While doing subcontract web design / template work a few months ago the organisation who contracted me almost demanded that I just get free images off Flickr. Whereas I usually would use iStockphoto, or my own stock photography collection that I take myself.

This same demand came very early in the year from a multinational corporation as well.

Now my concern with Flickr. Does someone necessarily ( I don't mean legally, but morally ) understand that they are making these images available to be used? I'm of the opinion that regardless of what they are tagged on Flickr the majority of users are not super clued into tech, law or even common sense. For example, look at the number of family / children photos, or crowd shots of people. or any number of images that would both surprise and outrage someone if they turned up in a Coke ad or a Cigarette commercial or on someone elses desktop or private collection.

My concern is that people, being unaware to a great extent, have made available all these private images without "wanting" them to be displayed, used or ogled over. Ignorance I admit, but this is essentially a non-tech world.

So, I just won't use images that are out there for "free" because I am very aware that the vast majority weren't explicitly put there for people to use. They just chose Flickr to upload images, didn't read the fine print and hey their 3 year old is being viewed by old men in Russia.

I have also been a Google Images victim on numerous occasions, although by deleting my old blogs and starting again it's improved.

Interesting article. I'd like these tools to clearly find ways to ensure that only images "intended for reuse" are shown, as opposed to just legally available.

Re: Myspace: Set to Private

Steven Clark — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 04:58:04 -0000

Being locked out is a worrying response. A similar experience several years ago... I had just released (within 24 hours) a client's website. An original design / layout with a very nice pallette - hand coded. So within that one day my stats showed that someone had linked to the client's site, only when I went there it was a quite famous american web standards web design business - they'd taken that layout / design and the only thing changed was THEIR copyright in the footer.

My first response to the quite famous person who talks at conferences... and whom I otherwise respect. I sent an email politely asking for them to remove their copyright and could they please explain.

Reply... a polite email that said sorry but we only wanted to lift the pallette. And the site was thereafter locked behind a username password.

The frustrating thing about that is if I'd said nothing I could have watched it get pilfered then called them out on it publicly. As it was, I moved too fast as a reaction to the copyright they'd put on MY hard work.

So, I agree totally. The mark as private setting is just a way of hiding the crime from you and depriving you of any chance to rectify or even prove the case. As in my circumstance, if the guy only wanted the pallette then why lift the whole work and put their copyright onto it. I was just lucky some dumb schmuck had left the link in the footer back to the client's real website by accident.

It's a jungle... :)

Re: Copyright News Links - 11-29-08

Steven Clark — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 03:42:53 -0000

Just in case you haven't picked up on it yet, James Boyle's new book The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the M... is available as a free creative commons download.

Re: Episode 2: Brendan Eich and Arun Ranganathan on ECMAScript Harmony

Steven Clark — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 20:02:11 -0000

I agree that 2 versions of inheritance would be very confusing for the beginner programmer. Having learned Java and OO concepts at uni undergrad level I noticed that although inheritance (to me at least) was obvious, there were quite a few others in the early stages who found it really difficult. So, the cost of having 2 types of inheritance makes me think class inheritance in JavaScript is maybe not a great idea.

BTW I'm no gun JavaScripter. Thanks for the podcast guys.

Re: 27 huge publishers join to annoy web visitors even more

Steven Clark — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 02:41:59 -0000

Yes I've seen a bit about this lately. I see it as an industry that tried to get in our face louder and louder but as they've shouted so loud now we just ignore the incessant scream more often than not. So they somehow think that by being even louder again that we'll take more notice.

Mmm my guess is the firm that does this first will be noticed negatively... then there will be a reducing scale of being noticed until they disappear into their own scream once again.

They should sack these marketers and hire someone with a little smarter outlook about developing ongoing human relationships with customers and serving actual needs. I get the feeling these guys recommend spamming lol...

ha ha yes ad banners more than suck - it's like being poked in the eye with a bad joke and pushed down a steep hill with a bucket full of pig manure... so to speak. :)

Unless you are living in a jar strapped to a nine volt battery imagining I am commenting from the other side of the planet earth lol...

Have a good weekend Roberto.

Re: Templates and Stock Photos: A Dangerous Combo

Steven Clark — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:42:42 -0000

Hi Jonathan,
Too true, there is an almost complete industry apathy about the ownership of photography used in web design. The worst two issues though are that firms contracting will try to get you to use Flickr CC images, or even worse Google Images. I say to them, even if that were alright how do you tell that the person didn't steal the image and upload it to Flickr. Similarly, several stock sites have had stolen images uploaded into their directories. Not something to risk on a commercial website design, to be honest.

Similarly with stock, the designers often don't bother to read the fine print. Many get the false impression they now own the right to use it as they wish - cos its on their hard drive I guess.

So the education curve needed in the industry is huge. Even when you purchase templates you can't take it for granted that the other party had the rights to the images either... so in the end I purchased a better DSLR and slowly started pulling my own limited original stock and art photography together. As a business its really the only option - neither do I want to make stock websites that look like somebody else's...

Its really just business risk management 101 for small business. If you can't afford a lawyer you can't afford to risk needing one...

You make a great point, and one of my bugbears to boot.