JamesM's Comments
That's gonna be a ball of fun once the batteries start corroding.
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"just a guy
September 25th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
I read the guy’s retelling about how this happened when he was driving, etc…
I wonder why he didn’t just pull over and wait it out, rather than trying to ‘pay close attention to his surroundings’ while it went on for a half-hour."
Because Migraines aren't something that just come and go. You get home and hope it passes in time after depriving yourself of any sensory stimulation. If you're driving, you're pretty much boned until you are able to get someplace quiet and dark. The longer you are somewhere else, the longer the migraine will last and the more potentially severe it will become.
September 25th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
I read the guy’s retelling about how this happened when he was driving, etc…
I wonder why he didn’t just pull over and wait it out, rather than trying to ‘pay close attention to his surroundings’ while it went on for a half-hour."
Because Migraines aren't something that just come and go. You get home and hope it passes in time after depriving yourself of any sensory stimulation. If you're driving, you're pretty much boned until you are able to get someplace quiet and dark. The longer you are somewhere else, the longer the migraine will last and the more potentially severe it will become.
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I get migraines (actual migraines and not just headaches) and the best way I've found to describe to people what it's like when one starts to come on... is to describe the "flickering" part like being in a room with a ceiling light and a ceiling fan spinning under it. Stare at it for a long enough time, turn away and try to read something... You pretty much can't. The residual flickering and fatigue in your eyes makes it difficult. Compound that with a major, throbbing headache and oversensitivity to light and sounds... and you're about halfway there.
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"dananswers
September 16th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
In Davis, CA near the campus of UC Davis there was a place called Murder Burger for a long time. But I drove by there again in June after many years gone and the old billboard now says Redrum Burger. So perhaps the P.C. crowd in Davis has gotten their way?"
There was one in Rocklin, CA as well, when I went back for a visit... the place had shut down. The sign also changed since my visit to.. Yep. Redrum.
Too bad people in NorCal can't just take a cheeky name and have fun with it.
September 16th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
In Davis, CA near the campus of UC Davis there was a place called Murder Burger for a long time. But I drove by there again in June after many years gone and the old billboard now says Redrum Burger. So perhaps the P.C. crowd in Davis has gotten their way?"
There was one in Rocklin, CA as well, when I went back for a visit... the place had shut down. The sign also changed since my visit to.. Yep. Redrum.
Too bad people in NorCal can't just take a cheeky name and have fun with it.
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I'm deaf in one ear and hard of hearing in the other. Not to sound like a stupid troll going on a forum post rant here, but Deaf "with a capital D" people can just kiss my ass.
When I was younger, there was an attempt to switch me over from regular school classes into a combined deaf/special education type class with deaf schooling in the summer. Deaf kids, even that young, were extremely hostile towards anyone who had ANY hearing whatsoever... Including the teachers who bent over backwards to be able to communicate with them by only the methods they would allow people to talk to them.
I had never known such a group of angry, petty, foolish and short sighted people in my life. (And I've lived in many different parts of the country) If you had a hearing aide, often the completely deaf kids would shun you if you were seen to be trying to talk. Even then, if you signed, or in my case... didn't sign, the attitudes would flip on a whim. I frequently encounter groups of Deaf people in bars (and this has been true for every city I've been to)... Most often they stay to themselves, don't communicate with other people, become hostile towards those who try to be friendly and throw fits when someone doesn't understand them. Throwing fits to the point to where all they do is angrily sign more and frightening people around them. Don't you even DARE to suggest they write down a drink order.
As a result of my one year that people tried to "help" me with deaf classes, I refused to be involved any further and insisted that I be put back into regular school classes. While I did often have trouble following the curriculum due to my hearing, I still managed it.
Deaf people who see me, and on the rare occasions they even do try to talk to me, respond very badly to my saying "I don't know how to sign." Instant turning of the back and subsequent snubbing.
It's not a culture. You have a handicap. Do what other people do in that case, acknowledge that your handicap may put you at a disadvantage and find ways to make it work... DON'T segregate yourself and limit your interactions on the basis of a birth defect! Unless, of course, you absolutely can't help it and even then, people with handicaps generally are very receptive to those who don't try to treat them special. Treat them like any other person. Don't call attention to it. It's appreciated.
Deaf people generally behave as if society should bend over for them and become hostile to those who don't automatically know what to do for them.
Not to broadly paint a group with one brush, I've had other friends with various levels of hearing issues... whether impairment or total deafness. Most understand and accept that's how life is for them and don't hold it against others... but the "Deaf Community" as an organization behaves otherwise.
The worst example I've ever encountered personally was a married Deaf couple who debated whether or not they would abort a child if they knew it was going to be born without deafness. *sighs*
When I was younger, there was an attempt to switch me over from regular school classes into a combined deaf/special education type class with deaf schooling in the summer. Deaf kids, even that young, were extremely hostile towards anyone who had ANY hearing whatsoever... Including the teachers who bent over backwards to be able to communicate with them by only the methods they would allow people to talk to them.
I had never known such a group of angry, petty, foolish and short sighted people in my life. (And I've lived in many different parts of the country) If you had a hearing aide, often the completely deaf kids would shun you if you were seen to be trying to talk. Even then, if you signed, or in my case... didn't sign, the attitudes would flip on a whim. I frequently encounter groups of Deaf people in bars (and this has been true for every city I've been to)... Most often they stay to themselves, don't communicate with other people, become hostile towards those who try to be friendly and throw fits when someone doesn't understand them. Throwing fits to the point to where all they do is angrily sign more and frightening people around them. Don't you even DARE to suggest they write down a drink order.
As a result of my one year that people tried to "help" me with deaf classes, I refused to be involved any further and insisted that I be put back into regular school classes. While I did often have trouble following the curriculum due to my hearing, I still managed it.
Deaf people who see me, and on the rare occasions they even do try to talk to me, respond very badly to my saying "I don't know how to sign." Instant turning of the back and subsequent snubbing.
It's not a culture. You have a handicap. Do what other people do in that case, acknowledge that your handicap may put you at a disadvantage and find ways to make it work... DON'T segregate yourself and limit your interactions on the basis of a birth defect! Unless, of course, you absolutely can't help it and even then, people with handicaps generally are very receptive to those who don't try to treat them special. Treat them like any other person. Don't call attention to it. It's appreciated.
Deaf people generally behave as if society should bend over for them and become hostile to those who don't automatically know what to do for them.
Not to broadly paint a group with one brush, I've had other friends with various levels of hearing issues... whether impairment or total deafness. Most understand and accept that's how life is for them and don't hold it against others... but the "Deaf Community" as an organization behaves otherwise.
The worst example I've ever encountered personally was a married Deaf couple who debated whether or not they would abort a child if they knew it was going to be born without deafness. *sighs*
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Peeves is dead on with that remark. You can see a very good approximation of one's character by how they view, regard and treat animals. If I go out on a date and the other doesn't go "aww!" when a really cute puppy is being walked or even gets annoyed that I want to pet it... Might as well call the date finished.
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The tech demo video on their company site is actually funnier and more interesting.
http://www.image-metrics.com/
Take a look at that one. For something that is a rendering based on video recordings rather than motion capture... it's actually quite stunning.
The big giveaways tend to be the lack of frown lines/wrinkles and such, but it's still impressive given the lack of super expensive equipment used in the process.
http://www.image-metrics.com/
Take a look at that one. For something that is a rendering based on video recordings rather than motion capture... it's actually quite stunning.
The big giveaways tend to be the lack of frown lines/wrinkles and such, but it's still impressive given the lack of super expensive equipment used in the process.
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@Ladyfingers: "Compression should occur on the user end. Compression used to be offered on car CD players, and it did a perfectly good job of commpensating for background noise. Now we have a format with 96dB or so of potential dynamic range using maybe 5dB and no reason to buy proper hi-fi for modern records."
The worst album I've found was one that I mentioned before. Uncle's "War Stories" album. The dynamic range, one song for example: Burn My Shadow, never goes beyond 2db in any given part of the song. There's a quieter section with a range of 2db and a loud section with a range of about 2db. Between the two, it might be 10db-ish, but within the sections themselves... You're watching a VU meter that never moves.
Great album, but horrible to listen to.
You're absolutely right about the user side of things. Compression should happen with the user's equipment, giving them a CHOICE to listen to it that way if they want to.
As-is? With a horribly crunched signal on the disc itself, you're stuck with the signal as it is presented. Garbage in, garbage out.
ReplayGain is a hack, but it oddly does the trick. Give the user the option. Unfortunately, ReplayGain, while it does balance out the overall volume across multiple tracks... it doesn't do a thing about the actual amount of compression used on the track itself. The signal is still ruined.
ReplayGain on an album from 1988: Erasure: The Innocents. +8db average increase.
ReplayGain on an album from last year: Erasure: The Light at the End of the World: -6db average decrease.
A difference of 14db just to EVEN OUT the loudness of the two albums. Ouch. Their album from 1991: Chorus, is an example of what I would say was the best mastering job for CD. That's the benchmark I use for everything I master myself.
@semi: "This problem has nothing to do with CDs. It’s simply the application of dynamic compression in mastering. And if you think this hasn’t been done for ages, you are wrong. The tools have simply become more sophisticated. The Beatles early songs were designed to cut through the noise and limited range on AM radio."
Good point, however, it should be noted that if you were to attempt to do the same compression/lack of dynamic range tricks that appear on CD now... but on tape or vinyl, the medium simply couldn't handle it. Tapes would saturate to the point to where fidelity is lost. Vinyl would have an issue with the needle flying out of the grooves.
Vinyl has strict mastering rules (due to the physics of a lightly weighted needle dragging in a groove) and if you break those rules... you have an unplayable record.
CDs, unfortunately, help to enable the crunch/loudness war through a signal that is a strict digital read. It doesn't vary and sound in/sound out is the same regardless of how loud it's mastered onto the disc itself. The only limit that a CD has for loudness is the hard clip of 0db... whereas analogue formats have a bit of headroom. Solution? Compress the hell out of it despite the fact that a CD has a much wider dynamic range (~96db "noise" floor) than tape (approx 40-50db hiss noise floor) or vinyl (about the same, depending on the quality/usedness of the record, but rumble through vinyl drag, I've seen it as bad as 30db for vinyl and 20-30db for multiple generation tape copies.)
Instead of taking advantage of the dynamic range capabilities of the compact disc format, they've decided to obliterate it... all in the name of marketing.
@ Love: "A good case in point is comparing the re-mastered release of Forever Changes by Love to the original CD release of it. The re-mastered one sounds like every instrument is turned up full and the whole album looses most of it’s dynamics. The original cd release sounds like the original vinyl release but clearer, the re-mastered one sounds like a demo tape in comparison."
This is a perfect example of the issue with the current process of remastering. It actually made an artist's back catalogue sound worse, despite the "limitations" of using analogue tape masters and dumping it onto CD. The Erasure boxed set single releases, for example, ended up CHANGING the mix of nearly every single track apart from how it was originally released. Nice subtle echo/delay effects on vocals or instruments that were on the original release? Completely gone. Broke my heart as a collector.
The worst album I've found was one that I mentioned before. Uncle's "War Stories" album. The dynamic range, one song for example: Burn My Shadow, never goes beyond 2db in any given part of the song. There's a quieter section with a range of 2db and a loud section with a range of about 2db. Between the two, it might be 10db-ish, but within the sections themselves... You're watching a VU meter that never moves.
Great album, but horrible to listen to.
You're absolutely right about the user side of things. Compression should happen with the user's equipment, giving them a CHOICE to listen to it that way if they want to.
As-is? With a horribly crunched signal on the disc itself, you're stuck with the signal as it is presented. Garbage in, garbage out.
ReplayGain is a hack, but it oddly does the trick. Give the user the option. Unfortunately, ReplayGain, while it does balance out the overall volume across multiple tracks... it doesn't do a thing about the actual amount of compression used on the track itself. The signal is still ruined.
ReplayGain on an album from 1988: Erasure: The Innocents. +8db average increase.
ReplayGain on an album from last year: Erasure: The Light at the End of the World: -6db average decrease.
A difference of 14db just to EVEN OUT the loudness of the two albums. Ouch. Their album from 1991: Chorus, is an example of what I would say was the best mastering job for CD. That's the benchmark I use for everything I master myself.
@semi: "This problem has nothing to do with CDs. It’s simply the application of dynamic compression in mastering. And if you think this hasn’t been done for ages, you are wrong. The tools have simply become more sophisticated. The Beatles early songs were designed to cut through the noise and limited range on AM radio."
Good point, however, it should be noted that if you were to attempt to do the same compression/lack of dynamic range tricks that appear on CD now... but on tape or vinyl, the medium simply couldn't handle it. Tapes would saturate to the point to where fidelity is lost. Vinyl would have an issue with the needle flying out of the grooves.
Vinyl has strict mastering rules (due to the physics of a lightly weighted needle dragging in a groove) and if you break those rules... you have an unplayable record.
CDs, unfortunately, help to enable the crunch/loudness war through a signal that is a strict digital read. It doesn't vary and sound in/sound out is the same regardless of how loud it's mastered onto the disc itself. The only limit that a CD has for loudness is the hard clip of 0db... whereas analogue formats have a bit of headroom. Solution? Compress the hell out of it despite the fact that a CD has a much wider dynamic range (~96db "noise" floor) than tape (approx 40-50db hiss noise floor) or vinyl (about the same, depending on the quality/usedness of the record, but rumble through vinyl drag, I've seen it as bad as 30db for vinyl and 20-30db for multiple generation tape copies.)
Instead of taking advantage of the dynamic range capabilities of the compact disc format, they've decided to obliterate it... all in the name of marketing.
@ Love: "A good case in point is comparing the re-mastered release of Forever Changes by Love to the original CD release of it. The re-mastered one sounds like every instrument is turned up full and the whole album looses most of it’s dynamics. The original cd release sounds like the original vinyl release but clearer, the re-mastered one sounds like a demo tape in comparison."
This is a perfect example of the issue with the current process of remastering. It actually made an artist's back catalogue sound worse, despite the "limitations" of using analogue tape masters and dumping it onto CD. The Erasure boxed set single releases, for example, ended up CHANGING the mix of nearly every single track apart from how it was originally released. Nice subtle echo/delay effects on vocals or instruments that were on the original release? Completely gone. Broke my heart as a collector.
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Compression and bad mastering. The last ditch effort of the record studios to convince you that a song sounds better simply because it sounds louder and you can "hear more"... nevermind that dynamic range has been completely obliterated (no valleys in between the peaks, usually drum kicks)
I pretty much stopped buying CDs as a result of this. It gets weird, though.
Labels started adding compression so their song sounds "louder" on the radio. As compression became more aggressive, it actually had the opposite effect. Since radio stations already compress their output for maximum fidelity over broadcast, if a song is TOO compressed, its average volume actually causes the radio station's own compressors to DROP the levels.
Then there's the whole "remastering" issue. Most of the time remasters imply that a recording was cleaned up of artifacts on old tapes (hiss, dropouts, etc) and then mastered digitally for CDs. Now it pretty much means taking the old recording, compressing each track individually and remerging it into a heavily compressed mix. The problem? The process actually changed the dynamics of the original mix. Sure. It's louder. Sure. You hear everything... but equally. There's no subtle details anymore. Everything is right there, blasting into your ear as loud as everything else.
As a result, I tend to buy what I really want, if it's available on Vinyl... and then record it myself digitally through my sound equipment. I can have a copy of the recording that HAS to adhere to strict mastering standards (The RIAA Curve, EQ curve for mastering to Vinyl. The only thing the RIAA was ever good for.) or the needle would literally fly out of the grooves of the record.
Here's where it gets really weird.
Now that it is common practice for labels to encode, from masters, MP3s and such for iTunes...
I'll rip a track from CD. It's overcompressed and hard limited, if not, then it clips on the disc itself. (A major no-no, having a source where the signal exceeds the capabilities of the medium. The signal at 0db is essentially all frequencies at maximum volume, white noise.)
But I've downloaded from band websites, the MP3 tracks of the same recording (before I bought the CD)... and before I copy it to my MP3 player, I run a replay gain adjustment application. A lot of tracks drop by more than 9db because the average volume was so loud.
Loaded up the CD rip into an audio editor program. The waveforms were damaged and chopped off (flattened at 0db).
Loaded up the MP3 that went through the replay gain (a good example is UNKLE's War Stories album).. and uhm...
Where there was flattened peaks on the CD... there was natural peaks on an MP3 where the volume was lowered in the MP3 headers for playback loudness. However, the source was EXTREMELY COMPRESSED, so it was still a bit hard to listen to with the constant volume sonic attack on the eardrums.
Loaded up the non-replay gained MP3 copy... Flattened, damaged peaks.
In the end, an inferior product (buyable MP3s) actually ends up having an advantage to the physical medium.
Responsible audio mastering essentially died around 1997-1998. Everything after has been an exercise in making everything progressively unlistenable.
BRING BACK THE DYNAMIC RANGE!
I pretty much stopped buying CDs as a result of this. It gets weird, though.
Labels started adding compression so their song sounds "louder" on the radio. As compression became more aggressive, it actually had the opposite effect. Since radio stations already compress their output for maximum fidelity over broadcast, if a song is TOO compressed, its average volume actually causes the radio station's own compressors to DROP the levels.
Then there's the whole "remastering" issue. Most of the time remasters imply that a recording was cleaned up of artifacts on old tapes (hiss, dropouts, etc) and then mastered digitally for CDs. Now it pretty much means taking the old recording, compressing each track individually and remerging it into a heavily compressed mix. The problem? The process actually changed the dynamics of the original mix. Sure. It's louder. Sure. You hear everything... but equally. There's no subtle details anymore. Everything is right there, blasting into your ear as loud as everything else.
As a result, I tend to buy what I really want, if it's available on Vinyl... and then record it myself digitally through my sound equipment. I can have a copy of the recording that HAS to adhere to strict mastering standards (The RIAA Curve, EQ curve for mastering to Vinyl. The only thing the RIAA was ever good for.) or the needle would literally fly out of the grooves of the record.
Here's where it gets really weird.
Now that it is common practice for labels to encode, from masters, MP3s and such for iTunes...
I'll rip a track from CD. It's overcompressed and hard limited, if not, then it clips on the disc itself. (A major no-no, having a source where the signal exceeds the capabilities of the medium. The signal at 0db is essentially all frequencies at maximum volume, white noise.)
But I've downloaded from band websites, the MP3 tracks of the same recording (before I bought the CD)... and before I copy it to my MP3 player, I run a replay gain adjustment application. A lot of tracks drop by more than 9db because the average volume was so loud.
Loaded up the CD rip into an audio editor program. The waveforms were damaged and chopped off (flattened at 0db).
Loaded up the MP3 that went through the replay gain (a good example is UNKLE's War Stories album).. and uhm...
Where there was flattened peaks on the CD... there was natural peaks on an MP3 where the volume was lowered in the MP3 headers for playback loudness. However, the source was EXTREMELY COMPRESSED, so it was still a bit hard to listen to with the constant volume sonic attack on the eardrums.
Loaded up the non-replay gained MP3 copy... Flattened, damaged peaks.
In the end, an inferior product (buyable MP3s) actually ends up having an advantage to the physical medium.
Responsible audio mastering essentially died around 1997-1998. Everything after has been an exercise in making everything progressively unlistenable.
BRING BACK THE DYNAMIC RANGE!
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That.
Is.
Freaking.
Awesome.
Is.
Freaking.
Awesome.
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@Zach: "That’s exactly what you DO NOT want on most mobile devices. This is why we use CSS positioning! So we can display the same content in different visual formats tuned to the relevant media (devices). Separation of content and presentation, like Demian said.
Having to scroll a web page in both the horizontal and the vertical on a tiny screen sucks the big potatoes! Your page layout that makes sense on a desktop with a huge screen doesn’t make any fricken sense on my phone running opera mini."
Actually, the benefit to having tables in a variable width layout is that it will collapse as needed for a browser as small as 320 pixels wide (if you design it to allow for such), the most average width for mobile browsers.
A lot of CSS sites will have alternate layouts for mobile browsers, but what happens when the browser outrights strips out the CSS? Pretty ugly. It doesn't fall back nearly as well depending on the needs for a mobile browser. The Opera Browser for the Nintendo DS, for example, is as far back as you are likely to get... when it comes to mobile browsing and generic apps on cell phones and such. So I like to use that. It supports CSS rerendering and stripping, so you get to see it both ways.
Here's the interesting thing:
Stripping CSS caused a lot of pages to lose the order of their layout. Things on the right side column ended up being the first thing on the page due to the habit of prerendering an area, through CSS, but backwards, to preserve text formatting around those div areas. It's one way to guarantee that text will wrap and fill its containers around overlapping/underlapping areas, but it's pretty horrible for anyone trying to browse on anything that doesn't support full CSS... and it happens a lot.
The Opera DS Browser will also to something else: Render the page to the DS's maximum width, dropping down table areas below and resizing images... no horizontal scrolling bars. A lot of modern (within the last 2 years) browsers do this.
At least with a well designed table layout with no minimum width, you can get away with the lack of CSS and preserving a layout and the order of its contents for mobile browsers to make it easier to read.
The catch is that like with desktop browsers, IE, Mozilla, Opera and Safari, CSS behaves differently on all three...
It's even worse with Mobile browsers. When it comes to CSS, throw logic completely out the window and just accept that you're never going to get a consistent layout depending on what's being used to render. (Which is pretty much the reason I have the Opera DS Browser, it recreates a lot of the mobile browser quirks I've seen.)
Tables work on darn near everything and due to the age of the feature and the spec it's part of, it's pretty rare for something to not render a table accurately unless the table itself was malformed/improperly coded.
It's a hack, but it works. CSS Purity is not going to be possible, or practical, for as long as inconsistencies exist between how it is renders... despite it being a spec that tells these browser makers how to render it!
So. I use tables. Shoot me. ;)
Having to scroll a web page in both the horizontal and the vertical on a tiny screen sucks the big potatoes! Your page layout that makes sense on a desktop with a huge screen doesn’t make any fricken sense on my phone running opera mini."
Actually, the benefit to having tables in a variable width layout is that it will collapse as needed for a browser as small as 320 pixels wide (if you design it to allow for such), the most average width for mobile browsers.
A lot of CSS sites will have alternate layouts for mobile browsers, but what happens when the browser outrights strips out the CSS? Pretty ugly. It doesn't fall back nearly as well depending on the needs for a mobile browser. The Opera Browser for the Nintendo DS, for example, is as far back as you are likely to get... when it comes to mobile browsing and generic apps on cell phones and such. So I like to use that. It supports CSS rerendering and stripping, so you get to see it both ways.
Here's the interesting thing:
Stripping CSS caused a lot of pages to lose the order of their layout. Things on the right side column ended up being the first thing on the page due to the habit of prerendering an area, through CSS, but backwards, to preserve text formatting around those div areas. It's one way to guarantee that text will wrap and fill its containers around overlapping/underlapping areas, but it's pretty horrible for anyone trying to browse on anything that doesn't support full CSS... and it happens a lot.
The Opera DS Browser will also to something else: Render the page to the DS's maximum width, dropping down table areas below and resizing images... no horizontal scrolling bars. A lot of modern (within the last 2 years) browsers do this.
At least with a well designed table layout with no minimum width, you can get away with the lack of CSS and preserving a layout and the order of its contents for mobile browsers to make it easier to read.
The catch is that like with desktop browsers, IE, Mozilla, Opera and Safari, CSS behaves differently on all three...
It's even worse with Mobile browsers. When it comes to CSS, throw logic completely out the window and just accept that you're never going to get a consistent layout depending on what's being used to render. (Which is pretty much the reason I have the Opera DS Browser, it recreates a lot of the mobile browser quirks I've seen.)
Tables work on darn near everything and due to the age of the feature and the spec it's part of, it's pretty rare for something to not render a table accurately unless the table itself was malformed/improperly coded.
It's a hack, but it works. CSS Purity is not going to be possible, or practical, for as long as inconsistencies exist between how it is renders... despite it being a spec that tells these browser makers how to render it!
So. I use tables. Shoot me. ;)
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Here's another aspect of things to consider with CSS:
Mobile browsing. On a PDA, A Nintendo DS, palmtop, iPhone, etc... You'll have different behaviours.
CSS tends to fare the worst. Pages that I've built with tables all retained their layouts/formatting even if the mobile browser abandoned CSS to render the page. Colors and font styles would be missing, but the layout was completely preserved. It's just another thing that people are now going to have to consider with the proliferation of cheap, portable mobile devices.
Mobile browsing. On a PDA, A Nintendo DS, palmtop, iPhone, etc... You'll have different behaviours.
CSS tends to fare the worst. Pages that I've built with tables all retained their layouts/formatting even if the mobile browser abandoned CSS to render the page. Colors and font styles would be missing, but the layout was completely preserved. It's just another thing that people are now going to have to consider with the proliferation of cheap, portable mobile devices.
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I'm gonna have to side with Alex here on his decision to use tables.
CSS simply sucks for consistent positioning. There's a whole slew of issues to consider if you're not making a layout that is absolutely fixed width in all aspects. Not just some, but all.
Neatorama does have a maximum width to its layouts, but it also has a minimum width as well.
A lot of pure CSS sites that look great, also look horrible for the same reason: I browse at 1200x1040 for crying out loud! Why should a website be absolutely fixed to 640 or 800 pixels wide?
I had a Movable Type setup for a blog. The program blew up when I relocated to a different server and I felt like it was time for something new. I wanted something that wasn't SQL dependent, so I tried out SimplePHP Blog. It works great for my uses, but I had one consistent gripe: All of their templates were fixed width.
So I tried to make a variable width template based on an existing theme that I liked well enough.
HHAAAA HOOOo ho ho ho... what a laugh.
I had one simple rule in addition to variable width: It had to look the same in every browser. With pure CSS, that will... NEVER... EVER... HAPPEN.
An example: All values for padding, size, placement, etc... inside of #page that affect both #sidebar and #content had to be in percentages totaling no more than 99.9% - Cause anything more than that would cause the sidebar to drop in Opera and Firefox.
In Internet Explorer, both 6 and 7, the sidebar always dropped if the percentages were above 98%.
This became a real problem if you were trying to use percentages as padding (0.5% for one side, 0.5% for the other, etc...) to make the math work out to total 100% of the browsing area.
The fix? I went into the PHP code, found the page generating bit, threw in some dummy CSS calls and replaced the layouts with TABLES using styles to define the table colors, border types, fonts, etc...
The moment I did this, saved the file and hit reload... the page rendered perfectly and identically in -every single browser that I threw at it.- Every single one.
CSS, in concept, is great. But the way it is implemented, both on the creation side and on the browser side, is horribly flawed if you're trying to create any page layout with flexibility.
If you want a layout that is fixed at 640 pixels wide, permanently, regardless of the user's browser settings (I have a 1650px wide monitor. Pages stuck at 640px wide look, uhm. annoying. even at 1024 wide)... then CSS is great. Otherwise, it's tables for me, all the way.
And yes, it is possible to have a nice, solid, consistent layout without making the user aware that the site uses tables. The trick is to set only the width in the page and define everything else about the table using class="tableclass" with CSS.
Use PHP includes and you don't even need to have more than one page to edit to define (and change for all) table areas.
CSS simply sucks for consistent positioning. There's a whole slew of issues to consider if you're not making a layout that is absolutely fixed width in all aspects. Not just some, but all.
Neatorama does have a maximum width to its layouts, but it also has a minimum width as well.
A lot of pure CSS sites that look great, also look horrible for the same reason: I browse at 1200x1040 for crying out loud! Why should a website be absolutely fixed to 640 or 800 pixels wide?
I had a Movable Type setup for a blog. The program blew up when I relocated to a different server and I felt like it was time for something new. I wanted something that wasn't SQL dependent, so I tried out SimplePHP Blog. It works great for my uses, but I had one consistent gripe: All of their templates were fixed width.
So I tried to make a variable width template based on an existing theme that I liked well enough.
HHAAAA HOOOo ho ho ho... what a laugh.
I had one simple rule in addition to variable width: It had to look the same in every browser. With pure CSS, that will... NEVER... EVER... HAPPEN.
An example: All values for padding, size, placement, etc... inside of #page that affect both #sidebar and #content had to be in percentages totaling no more than 99.9% - Cause anything more than that would cause the sidebar to drop in Opera and Firefox.
In Internet Explorer, both 6 and 7, the sidebar always dropped if the percentages were above 98%.
This became a real problem if you were trying to use percentages as padding (0.5% for one side, 0.5% for the other, etc...) to make the math work out to total 100% of the browsing area.
The fix? I went into the PHP code, found the page generating bit, threw in some dummy CSS calls and replaced the layouts with TABLES using styles to define the table colors, border types, fonts, etc...
The moment I did this, saved the file and hit reload... the page rendered perfectly and identically in -every single browser that I threw at it.- Every single one.
CSS, in concept, is great. But the way it is implemented, both on the creation side and on the browser side, is horribly flawed if you're trying to create any page layout with flexibility.
If you want a layout that is fixed at 640 pixels wide, permanently, regardless of the user's browser settings (I have a 1650px wide monitor. Pages stuck at 640px wide look, uhm. annoying. even at 1024 wide)... then CSS is great. Otherwise, it's tables for me, all the way.
And yes, it is possible to have a nice, solid, consistent layout without making the user aware that the site uses tables. The trick is to set only the width in the page and define everything else about the table using class="tableclass" with CSS.
Use PHP includes and you don't even need to have more than one page to edit to define (and change for all) table areas.
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The news was that they found oxidizing compounds. The planet is basically one giant source of rocket fuel.
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October 6th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
The Clinton Democrats got us in this mess. The Pelosi Democrats have perpetuated it. And the Democrats want us to vote for Obama? Are they mad?"
Bzzzzt. The bill to deregulate the financial market (which is pretty much what pushed us straight into this mess) was written by Republicans and passed the veto-proof Republican majority in the house AND senate before it was sent to Clinton to sign into law. Again. Veto proof.