Sean O Sears http://www.seanosears.com/blog Just another pressurer blogger ... Tue, 25 Aug 2009 17:49:40 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.1 en hourly 1 Are you one of the 80%? You are now … http://www.seanosears.com/blog/2009/4-out-of-5/ http://www.seanosears.com/blog/2009/4-out-of-5/#comments Tue, 25 Aug 2009 17:45:55 +0000 admin http://www.seanosears.com/blog/?p=26 Ok … So I just read this today from Josh Bernoff, who is a VP-principal analyst at Forrester Research. To repeat:

More than four out of five online Americans are active in either creating, participating in or reading some form of social content at least once a month.

That’s huge! And yet another compelling reason validating why it’s important for businesses to engage users through social media … that’s where they are. Go meet them.

Don’t believe me? Read it for yourself : http://adage.com/digitalnext/article?article_id=138618

]]> http://www.seanosears.com/blog/2009/4-out-of-5/feed/ 0 Auto-width Margins for centering http://www.seanosears.com/blog/2009/auto-width-margins-for-centering/ http://www.seanosears.com/blog/2009/auto-width-margins-for-centering/#comments Thu, 06 Aug 2009 16:24:08 +0000 admin http://www.seanosears.com/blog/?p=14 Ok. For years I’ve used div align=”center” to horizontally center one container within another container. I know it’s on the “depreciated” list, but all the browsers still respect it – and it’s just always how I’ve done things. However, I was working in a friends CMS (un-named), and realized that it was changing my code to  div style=”text-align:center” which I KNOW is not the correct way to do things (even though I have used it in the past with some success centering block-level elements). Like you know, there are usually 100 different ways to skin any cat (sorry cats) and depending on what day of the week it is, I will use different methods. However, I needed to find something to add to my “only way I will center from now on” list.

So after digging around and testing in as many browsers (mac and pc) that I have around, here is the “proper” way to do it today (thanks to bluerobot.com).

Let’s say you have a div id=”container” where the width is 100%, and you want div id=”content” that’s 500px wide horizontally centered in it?

Set the margin style for the #content div to be: margin:0px auto.

Now even though IE5/Win does not respect this (almost wanting to say “WHO CARES”),
there is a very simple work around. See: http://www.bluerobot.com/web/css/center1.html

Enjoy.

]]> http://www.seanosears.com/blog/2009/auto-width-margins-for-centering/feed/ 0 Wordpress and the blank slate http://www.seanosears.com/blog/2009/wordpress-and-the-blank-slate/ http://www.seanosears.com/blog/2009/wordpress-and-the-blank-slate/#comments Sat, 01 Aug 2009 19:02:14 +0000 admin http://www.seanosears.com/blog/?p=1 Ok. I’ve actually done it. Under pressure (and with much resistance) I’ve entered the realm of  “all things blog”. Why? Like I said: “pressure” from some people who want me to “say something” … but for those who know me, I don’t say all that much. So consider me a “pressure blogger”.

Another reason I jumped off the blogging edge was to give me and excuse to play with Wordpress. After investing a few hours, (and finally finding the right resources) it ended up being surprisingly easy to customize. There are a bunch of great themes out there you could use if you wanted – more than you could imagine. However, being a designer and having my own site design already, I wanted to start with a “clean theme” – and there are a few  people out there who have created some really nice stripped-down Wordpress themes.

If you’re like me and want to create a theme from scratch, I recommend a 3-part video series by Chris Coyier at css-tricks.com. It will take a couple hours, but it’s one of the best WP tutorials I’ve seen. In the video, he walks you through installing Wordpress, installing a “clean” theme, and converting his Photoshop sketch into the Wordpress theme – all on his actual live site.

(In the video he mentions using “Starkers” blank theme … but since the video, WP 2.7 came out … and Starkers is lacking a few things. I chose “blank slate” by Shawn Cope.)

The nice thing about the “blank slate” is that all the “markup” is removed, leaving you with the basic PHP functions and variables – making it easy to “build your design” around it. The CSS is also clean and setup as a basic “reset” CSS file – again, there are about 5 or so really good ones out there. I looked through them all and chose one by Eric Meyer – but any would work.

Although the CMS gives you some fairly good control over content, it’s not what I would recommend for building and maintaining a large website as the main CMS. Unless you want to limit yourself. But for small sites (and obviously blogs) – yeah, sure, why not.

So all that said, I spent a couple hours to figure it out … and there’s plenty more to do. But hey, it’s a start.

Resources used:

3-part Video Series starting from scratch:
http://css-tricks.com/video-screencasts/25-designing-for-wordpress-part-one/

Eric Meyer’s CSS Reset:
http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/css/reset/index.html

Blank Slate by Shawn Cope:
http://shawncope.com/2008/12/17/wordpress-blank-slate-theme/

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