Tag: HTML

bookmark_borderHow to make a cup of tea

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Further to my Too Simple post, and in response to the comment from Annie about the state of software manuals, I thought I’d try and give a bit of insight into the basic workings of my profession. Yes, that’s right I DO have a day job. I am a technical author and I write software documentation (actually I don’t like the “technical author” job title but that’s a different story).

Before I begin I’ll state that I’m not the most experienced technical author (there are people who have been doing this for 40 years), I’ve only ever worked in a software environment, and as in most professions there are a number of different methodologies and working practises which I can choose to follow. OK, caveat finished.

Ohhh and you may be wondering about the title of this post so let’s start there, how DO you make a cup of tea?

It’s a question I’ve used in a writing test (for graduate technical authors or those new to the profession) in the past, and it’s usually fairly effective at giving a rough first impression of how the candidate thinks in relation to product documentation.

Now, I’d warrant that most people reading this have some idea of how to make a cup of tea, but let’s presume that you didn’t, in fact, let’s presume that you haven’t even heard of tea. Starting to get a little tricky, isn’t it.
Continue reading “How to make a cup of tea”

bookmark_borderFirefox Extensions Revisited

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Been a while since I waffled on about Firefox, but with 2.0 in Alpha (no I’ve not tried it yet, and I’d suggest you leave it well alone too) I thought it might be a good time to look at the current extensions I’m using. I’ve tried many different extensions but have pared things down to what I actually USE, rather than things that might “just be useful” now and again.

Whilst it’s popularity is probably assured, Firefox is getting a little more heat from the competition these days, namely with the stream of news pouring from Redmond (Microsoft) about the version 7 of Internet Explorer. It looks like we’ll be back to some good old fashioned browser wars soon. Ohh and whilst I remember, and before certain people popup in the comments and remind me, there are other browsers available. Opera seems to have a good following but, for some reason, it’s never really broken through in the same way as Firefox. I’ve tried it a few times but never really felt at home using it.. not sure why, maybe it’s better aimed at the ‘more technical’? Dunno.

Tabbed browsing remains the core reason I stick with Firefox. It’s very easy to get used to, and once you learn some of the basic operations, and have tweaked the way tabs work to your requirements, it can be a real boon. To that end I’ll recommend Tab Mix Plus as my tab extension of choice, it includes a variety of useful options, including a session saver (remembers which sites you had open in which tabs when you close the browser), a loading status bar on the tab, rather than one common bar at the foot of your window (making it easy to see the sites that are taking an age to load), an “unread” indicator and a further swathe of options (you can download and import my options here to get you started – right-click, Save As…).

Onto the list then:

  • Autofill – Automatically fill out HTML forms
  • BugMeNot – Bypass compulsory web registration
  • Copy URL + – Copies to clipboard the document’s URL along with the title or the selected text
  • Download Statusbar – View and manage downloads from a tidy statusbar
  • DownThemAll! – The mass downloader for Firefox
  • Enhanced History Manager – Search Google for Enhanced History Manager
  • Ext2Abc – Alphabetizes your extension manager list
  • IE View – Open pages in IE via Firefox menus
  • ListZilla – Outputs an alphabetical list of extensions to a text, vB code, or HTML file (used to produce this list!)
  • Paste and Go – Lets you paste an URL from the clipboard and directly load it
  • Resize Search Box – Allows you to use a resize the search box
  • Sage – A lightweight RSS and Atom feed aggregator
  • Slim Extension List – Makes items in extension list shorter, so you can see more at once. Also, sorts them by name
  • Statusbar Clock – Display the date and time in your browser’s status bar (links to an old extension, but you can find an update one for 1.5… somewhere… maybe…
  • Stop-or-Reload Button – Turns the stop and reload buttons into a single button
  • Tab Mix Plus – Tab browsing with an added boost
  • View Rendered Source Chart – Creates a Colorful Chart of a Webpage’s Rendered Source
  • Web Developer – Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools

So, there you have it. I’ve had many MANY more extensions installed, and looking back at my original post I’ve only got seven of that list still running which I’m sure tells you something… or not…

With 2.0 on the horizon I’m wondering if I’ll upgrade. At the moment I can’t think of anything that I’m missing, any one feature that would be a big enough draw. Security wise I’ve not had any problems, but I guess that’s only a matter of time (or usage) before I’m forced into an upgrade. Only time will tell I guess.

bookmark_borderCareful

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Just got my first “phishing” email which alleges to have come from PayPal. It doesn’t.

The subject line reads: Your account will be suspended!

It reads:

Dear Paypal User,
In accordance with our major database relocation, we are currently having major adjustments and updates of user accounts to verify that the informations you have provided with us during the sign-up process are true and correct. However, we have noticed some discrepancies regarding your account at Paypal. Possible causes are inaccurate contact information and invalid logout process.

We require you to complete an account verification procedure as part of our security measure.

It then asks you to click a link which, I can assure you, has nothing to do with Paypal. I’ve let them know about it, but I’d advise you to be careful if you receive something similar.

Top tip: If you use Thunderbird as your email client, the REAL email address is displayed, in this case whilst it looks like it’s coming from service AT paypal DOT com, it’s really coming from service AT mythtv DOT lan. Alternatively, switch your email client to use a plain text view as most of these “phishing” emails come in HTML format. You’ll soon see the real details hidden away behind the “click this link now!” text.

bookmark_borderPoshPaws

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Right, I’m pretty sure one of you clever types will be able to point me in the direction of a solution, preferably PHP or Javascript based.

What I’m trying to do is treat an image, and an associated block of HTML (text) as one block. I’d like to be able to swap blocks depending on a mouse click on a navigation link.

Clear as mud? Maybe a visual aid is needed:

visual aid

The orange and yellow bits are the “block”, and the “block” should change when I click one of the links. Sounds simple enough, right? Well I’ve been at this since 10pm to no avail. I’ve had enough. I’m off to bed.

When I check back tomorrow night there had better be some answers!! Or else I’ll … errrr… I’ll? … I’ll be left very very much where I am at the moment, stumped.

bookmark_borderSassafrassin Rassafrasser!

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This is driving me nuts.

It may be an issue with my WordPress installation, or my CSS, an example of the problem can, currently, be seen two posts down.

If I add a blockquote in WordPress, it adds [blockquote] around the area of text. All well and good. But if the quote has more than one paragraph, it adds a [p] tag within the blockquote, but only for the SECOND paragraph causing the blockquote to get all huffy (technical term).

Currently the CSS for the blockquote looks like this:
#content-float blockquote { color: #663399; padding: 8px; background: #F6FBF7 border: 1px dotted #CC99FF; font-style: italic; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; }

The [p] tag within the blockquote won’t inherit from it as [blockquote] is below [p] in the CSS hierarchy (I think) but I can’t seem to get my head around how to structure the CSS to cope with this, or should I be looking to the format of the HTML rather than the CSS??

Suggestions, corrections, amendments or even disbelieving comments about my stupidity all welcomed (well all apart from the latter, obviously, that’s just nasty…).