All posts by Robin

I'm a woman in my early thirties living in North Carolina, USA, and I have a lot of varied interests; I love creative writing, music composition, web design, surfing the Internet, thinking out loud, and gaming. And yes, my glasses are crooked. :)
Wednesday in the Word

Be Gracious, Not Vindictive

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Proverbs 24:17-18
17 Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when he stumbles, do not let your heart rejoice, 18 for the Lord will see and disapprove and turn his wrath away from him.

“Now wait a minute,” you might be thinking. “Aren’t we allowed a little laugh at our enemy’s expense, especially when they are justly punished for things they’ve done wrong to me?” We like to rejoice in our enemy’s misfortunes–after all, they’re our enemies and we don’t like them, thus, it’s good when something horrible happens to them, because they deserve it.

Is that right? Certainly I’ve laughed behind the wheel when I see that a police officer has stopped the guy who harassed me on the highway for 10 miles straight, all because I wouldn’t go 80 miles an hour like he wanted me to. It feels GOOD to laugh at that guy, and anybody else who crosses us and gets his or her comeuppance.

But while that feels good to us emotionally, it is decidedly not Christian. These two verses, which advise us not to gloat about an enemy’s fall, are part of the “Sayings of the Wise” in Proverbs, which instruct us about Christian and non-Christian living. As hard as it is (and believe me, it can be VERY difficult), if we are going to be Christians, we have to express sympathy and empathy for those who are suffering, even if they are or have been our enemies.

Take the example of the nations of Edom and Israel–Edom rejoiced over Israel’s destruction, and was soon transformed into a desert as punishment. God saw that the nation of Edom gloated about its good fortune and Israel’s ill fate, and Edom soon found out that Israel’s misfortune had nothing funny about it. We, too, may come to understand an enemy’s suffering all too well after we’ve laughed at them. This is not God doing evil acts to us, but instead reminding us that we are no higher or better a person than our enemies.

When we are gracious to our enemies rather than vindictive toward them, we are living more as Christ asked us to live when He said in Matthew 5:39, “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.” Instead of retaliating in anger and then laughing over our enemy’s defeat, we should continue to treat them with the same serene grace and love that God has given us so freely. THAT is what sets Christians apart from others in the real world outside our churches–acting as Christ taught, showing what Christian love and forgiveness looks like, regardless of how much we want to rejoice in our enemy’s failures.

Tuesday on the Soapbox

Cage Shoes and Bootie Heels: Like Wooden Clogs, Only Weirder

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There’s a new trend in shoes that I just really don’t get: the trend of caging one’s foot in fabric or leather, either in straps or in larger pieces of fabric, that come together to ALMOST form a boot shape, but not really. I’ve seen it referred to as a “bootie heel” or a “peep-toe bootie”. I call it like I see it–a “cage shoe” or “clog.” And even real wooden clogs are not this odd.

First, we have the “cage shoe” look, in which thick straps of fabric are woven or stretched across the foot, sometimes almost-completely encasing the foot, sometimes not.


Your feet ain’t goin’ anywhere.
Now you see your foot, now you don’t
Trying to be a sandal?
Going for the woven look?

Strange cutouts in the toe area…painful to look at
Stuck between a cage sandal and a bootie wedge

Then we have the “peeptoe” bootie, which is almost-but-not-quite a full boot, except without the fabric rising above the ankle that would make the shoe actually look nicer on the leg.


It might have been cool if it was just a high-heeled ankle-high boot
Not really a “bootie,” but not really a wedge heel either. And that color combo… :/
Almost a feminine boot, but not quite

Thirdly, we have the “full-coverage” bootie, which isn’t a style of pants but a style of shoe, covering the whole foot but forgetting the flattering ankle fit.


Clogs with leopard print on them. Really?
Clunky in the front, spiky in the back–the shoe version of a mullet.

We also have the “hiking-boot” style bootie heel, which attempts to blend feminine and masculine shoe styles together…um, yeah.


Clomp, clomp, clomp.
It has Grandpa’s laces, but it matches the granddaughter’s wardrobe better.
Strange angular shape to this bootie…

Strangely over-masculine…I think it’s the leather color and the laces that makes me think that.

And lastly, we have the “backless” bootie, which might be the strangest-looking shoe of the whole bunch:


The shoe version of a backless top, I guess…?
WHAT. In the world. Is this. I don’t even.

The above photos show the variety these strange shoes come in–they are in all colors and all fabrics, and either high-heels or wedges, but they always look like a hiking boot or clog gone wrong. They manage to make even the thinnest of legs look violently cut off at the bottom of the ankle; they somehow strike a horrid balance between strange couture and vagrant chic.

Is it just me? Is it a marker of my growing-up years and my culture, that I prefer shoes that DON’T look like cement blocks made in fashionable colors? I’m not sure. All I know is that these styles don’t flatter any woman’s legs at all, and they don’t look all that comfortable, either–I’m all too familiar with how multiple straps, thin or thick, can bind swelling feet when you’re standing in heels like that. And the peep-toe cutting straight across cramped toes–ah, the red marks of pain!

Basically, these styles of shoe offend two of my long-standing rules of fashion:

  1. Wear shoes that flatter your legs, whenever possible;
  2. Wear shoes that are comfortable to your feet, whenever possible.

Comfort and style are often at odds, even for me, but even the original Crocs boat-shoe look is better than this (and more comfortable to boot–pardon the pun).

Just thought I’d share this bit of fashion weirdness and ask your opinion on this kind of footwear. Are they more comfortable than they look? Are there instances where this style actually looks good with other items of clothing?

Monday in the HTMLab

A:Link, A:Visited, and A:Hover: Jumping Links through Hoops

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CSS pseudo-classes (ones like :link, :visited, and :hover) have been in use for quite a while in web designs. After all, it helps the user to know which links they’ve already visited, what parts of text are actually links, and so forth–it’s one of the ways we webdesigners make our sites interactive.

However, just because we can write CSS code for these classes doesn’t mean that there aren’t best practices for how to implement them. The following short write-up takes you through the ways we can make links work better in our designs.

  1. Using Different Colors for :Link, :Visited, and :Hover
    This is the first and simplest edit you can make–making the unclicked, clicked, and hovered links look different from the surrounding text and from each other.This was one of the mistakes I made early on in web design; in one of my earliest layouts, I made the body text and link color the exact same without realizing it. This is what the CSS code looked like:body {color: #000000;
    background-color: #FFFFFF;}

    a:link {color: #000000; text-decoration: none;}
    a:visited {color: #BBBBBB; text-decoration: none;}
    a:hover {color: #BCBCBC; text-decoration: none;}

    And, since I had removed the underlines from the links by using the “text-decoration: none;” declaration in my CSS, nobody could tell there were links within the text unless they hovered over them and saw the text change from black to gray. Thus, people were confused, and rightly so!

    If, instead, I had used a vastly different color (or a brighter color that tied in with my overall design’s theme), links would have been much easier to see. The following code is excerpted from one of my more recent designs:

    body {color: #000000;
    background-color: #FFFFFF;}

    a:link {color: #0090ff; text-decoration: none;}
    a:visited {color: #bbbbbb; text-decoration: none;}
    a:hover {color: #6aa6d5;}

    In this example, the text is black and the background is white; the unclicked links are bright, vibrant blue to match with the more colorful parts of my design. Clicked links turn gray, and when any link is hovered over, it turns a little bit lighter blue.

  2. To Use Underlines or Not to Use Underlines?
    It is Internet default to underline links, but for the most part, web designers of the past few years have eschewed underlining their links when designing their sites. It does look a bit clunky, almost like you couldn’t be bothered to mess with the default settings. So when is underlining a link ever appropriate?In fact, there are a few ways you can still incorporate underlining in your links–for sure, it sets off your links as different from the rest of your text.

    a:link {color: #0090ff; text-decoration: none;}
    a:visited {color: #bbbbbb; text-decoration: none;}
    a:hover {color: #6aa6d5;}

    In this code from the previous example, I showed some code where I took underlines off the a:link and a:visited class, and left underlines on for the a:hover class. This will introduce an underline only when the link is hovered over, to give it extra emphasis.

    You could also do the opposite: put underlines on the a:link and/or a:visited class, and take them off the a:hover class, so that your links stand out on the page, and change only slightly in format when they’re hovered over.

    a:link {color: #0090ff;}
    a:visited {color: #bbbbbb;}
    a:hover {color: #6aa6d5; text-decoration: none;}

    One other thing you can do is to use the “border-bottom” declaration within your link classes. This enables you to have one color for your link text and another color for the underline underneath it; you can also vary the width of the underline as well. This can lend a styled but not-too-elaborate look to your page. The following code is an example:

    a:link {color: #63af88; text-decoration: none;}
    a:visited {color: #2bab69; text-decoration: none;}
    a:hover {color: #63af88; text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 1px solid #b19d47;}

    Here, the link text is pale teal-green, and the border-bottom is one pixel thick and deep gold. This creates an unexpected but pretty contrast that still lets the user know he or she is hovering over a link.

  3. Bolding or Unbolding Links When Hovered Over
    For a while in web design (probably around 2005-2006), making links bold when hovered over was the main trend; a counter-trend was making links bold all the time EXCEPT when hovered over.Bolding hovered-over links was accomplished in the following way:a:link {color: #FF0000;}
    a:visited {color: #000000;}
    a:hover {color: #000000; font-weight: bold;}

    And to create the “unbolded” effect, you would do something like this:

    a:link {color: #FF0000; font-weight: bold;}
    a:visited {color: #000000; font-weight: bold;}
    a:hover {color: #000000;}

    Personally, this always made the rest of the page text jump around on the page a little too much for my liking–when link text suddenly became bold, normal text beside it or otherwise around it would be nudged out of the way, sometimes even bumping words to the next line. Not a really professional look, though I will give it credit for being an inventive way to make links different without having to change their color all that much. I feel at this point in web design that bold-on-hover is best for navigation links, which won’t knock normal text out of the way.

  4. Quick-Cursor-Change when Links are Hovered Over
    I had to do a little research on this one, because while I saw it in use quite a bit back in the day, I never knew enough about it to implement it in my own designs. W3Schools.com has a full CSS reference and a sandbox to test cursors in, for your further knowledge.  

    The basic premise of using this declaration is to change the cursor to something different when the user hovers over a link on your page. Generally, the default is to change the cursor from the arrow to the little hand-with-index-finger-extended icon when you move over a link, but webdesigners when I first started out liked to change the hover cursor to other options, like these:

    a:link {cursor: ne-resize;} (two-ended arrow going up from left to right)
    a:link {cursor: help;} (regular arrow with a question-mark out beside it)
    a:link {cursor: crosshair;} {black crosshairs}You can even change the cursor to a specific file you link to, using the “cursor:url” property, like so:

    a:link {cursor: url(‘sunshine.gif’);} (if you had an image called “sunshine.gif”, it would make it into the user’s cursor image when they hovered over a link)

    This can still be useful in today’s design if you’ve got certain types of links that give a user needed information.  The following example shows such a CSS class declaration, and usage of the class within a link in your document:

    .helpful {cursor: help; text-decoration: underline;}

    <a href=”helpfulresources.html” class=”helpful”>See a list of helpful resources here</a>

    Other than that, though, having different cursors in this day and age may only confuse users when you visit your page. You want your user interface to be as simple and uncluttered as possible; even though that ne-resize cursor may look cute with your page, it might be annoying to your users.

Summary

Links can be styled a variety of ways, ranging from the uber-sleek to the super-cute, and everything in-between. Experiment and play with how you’d like your links to look, and find the style that best suits your site’s design and your users’ needs; remember, if you end up not liking it, the Backspace key is your best buddy!

Saturday with the Spark

Art for Entertainment or Art for Meaning?

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It feels like an either/or choice for many artists, including myself. Do we choose to create something that will be marketable, useful, widely accepted, and easily profitable, or do we choose to create something personally and passionately meaningful and hope someone else understands enough to buy it or appreciate it?

As an artist who is currently not making any money off her artistic pursuits, be it writing, music, or web design, I know I don’t have much perspective on the financial part of making art. But I do experience the tug and twist of the decision every time I pick up the pen or sit down to the keyboard (musical or computer): do I make something entertaining, or do I make something meaningful? Do I make something universally relatable and instantly likable (and possibly trite), or do I make something relevant to me, filled with loads of “new” meaning, and wait for others to pull the meaning out of it?

Art for Entertainment = Art for Everyone, But Art for Money

This might not seem like much of a decision. Of course you make marketable stuff. Of course you’d choose to create something that millions of people can get into and understand. That’s how people like us (artists, I mean) make any money, after all. If you want to succeed as an artist, you have to make things that lots of people enjoy and get meaning out of, not just an elite few who are critics in their own right. Plus, you can still couch grains of personal meaning in your work as an entertainment artist, and no one has to be the wiser–and you might get more genuine response. It just has to sell first.

Art for Meaning = Art for Artists…Sadly, Often Literally

And yet there’s the flip side, those of us artists who choose to create art that is personally meaningful first, without concern for how it will “sell.” I can count myself among these–I don’t want to be reduced to doing “things that will sell” just because of money. For me, doing art purely for entertainment seems to cheapen the act of artistic creation; it’s no longer about the work itself or the artist behind it, but about the dollar signs spewing forth from it. Yet, if artists do works that are less universally relatable and often regarded as strange or un-artistic, then what happens to the works? They are disregarded, and forgotten except by other artists.

Is There a Middle Ground? Or Do We Need Both?

To be honest, I don’t know if there’s a middle ground between art for entertainment and art for meaning. I do know, however, that both types must exist.

Yes, I just said that. Both pure entertainment and pure meaning must exist in the artistic world. The old classics in literature are wonderful creations, chock-full of meaning and beauty, for example, but sometimes you just want a Twilight book or a Danielle Steel novel, something you don’t have to pull teeth to understand, but that you can just EXPERIENCE.

Just like our bodies are designed to take in foods of wide varieties, our minds, too, are designed to take in arts of all kinds. Lady GaGa may not ever be considered a “serious” musician (what does that mean, anyway?), but her music has spoken to people all over the globe, because it’s got a good beat, an easy-to-catch meaning, and you can dance to it. Is her work any less meaningful to people’s lives for being dance-y? Does everyone always have to be in the “super-heavy-serious-music” category if they want to be considered “real” musicians?

Another example: Twilight has gotten a bad rap for its fluffy plot consistency, much like meringue on top of a pie–and I won’t deny that it is more for entertainment than for meaning. But it was also a book series that I experienced and didn’t feel the need to academically dissect like a typical piece of literature for my English major courses. THAT was welcome relief to my overtired mind. I was able to relax and let the story dissolve into my brain, like milk chocolate melting on my tongue.

I like to think about art the same way I think about food. A plate of super-healthy steamed vegetables would be good for us and would nourish us…they’re great. (Well, for people who like vegetables… LOL!) But I don’t want vegetables to eat all the time–sometimes, I wake up and just WANT a bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, or a big slather of Nutella spread and strawberry jelly on bread.

Same thing with art: while it might be healthier for our brains to take in all the old classics and spend our days in heavy-duty collegiate criticism of the works we’re studying, we don’t necessarily WANT to. Some days, we’re tired (“mental mush,” as my boyfriend puts it), and we want something that’s warm, comforting, and easy to mentally digest. When we’re feeling better, we’ll go back to the harder-to-digest but wonderfully-nourishing art, because you can get sick of sweet and non-nutritious after some time. (Trust me, after almost a month of having to eat soft foods like pudding and ice cream, I am getting starved for protein and salty snacks. I’ve never craved Fritos so much in my life. XD)

Basically: Lady GaGa produces the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups of music, while J.S. Bach produces the hot plate of steamed vegetables with tons of fiber and vitamins. The wonderful thing about us artists is that we can produce both types of art–the art that invigorates (“serious” art), and the art that comforts (“entertaining” art). Lady GaGa could just as easily produce an unfathomably deep and “serious-music” kind of song (and probably still make it have a good beat); in several of the short stories I read in college, Jane Austen proved that she could parody the popular storylines of 18th-century novels in a delightfully tongue-in-cheek way, and make her writing more for entertainment as well as meaning.

Perhaps the Debate Need Not Even Exist

So, the time-tarnished debate of “art for entertainment” versus “art for meaning” may be a fruitless fight, after all. People may clamor on both sides, saying “I hate having to dissect and pull apart art to get at the meaning–give me something easy to take in!”, or “I hate art that doesn’t mean anything and is just for money–give me something deeper, something serious!” But both types, in my opinion, must exist, because we have a need for them. And any artist who creates is helping in their own small way. Even my rich and heavy songs, like a huge bowl of fettuccine alfredo pasta, have a place in the art buffet.

Summary

Balance is the key in creating and using art–we use art for relaxing and for awakening our minds. Neither side is somehow “better” than the other, because they are for different purposes. My art process relaxes me and invigorates others; I take in art that invigorates me sometimes, and other times I choose entertainment. For me, it seems all art is to the good, for whatever purposes the listener, reader, or viewer can use it.

Friday around the Web

Oldest Known Melody, Goodbye Shirt, The Amazing Binder Clip, and Listal

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The Oldest Known Melody
Possibly the oldest song ever written, circa 1400 BC. VERY cool video! Groove to what people in present-day Syria were listening to 3,400 years ago.

The Goodbye Shirt
How can you say goodbye and use an animal name in the sentence? This shirt will help! (Why is “Afterwhile, crocodile” not on here?! Seriously, is that just a Southernism or what?)

6 Life-Changing Uses for Binder Clips
6 funny ways you can use an ordinary binder clip to do jobs around the house.

Listal.com
List all the stuff (TV shows, music, movies, books, and games) you love, and share your lists with others.

Thursday in the Zone

Thanksgiving Special: Loops of Zen

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While you’re in your tryptophan-induced haze after mounds of turkey, dressing, and more sweet potatoes than you could ever want to see in a year, why not enjoy a game? Loops of Zen is that odd combination of rest and challenge–a peaceful yet thought-provoking game.

Gameplay

It looks and sounds fairly basic and simple: get all the curves, lines, and wavy pieces to link together into a shape that leaves no loose ends exposed. Not all lines need to be connected to the SAME shape–i.e., you could have random curves forming two separate circles and still win the level. To connect the various pieces together, you’ll have to turn them 90 degrees at a time with just a click of your mouse, until the game is satisfied that there are no loose ends remaining.

This, however, is more challenging than it seems, as you get fields of random lines and curves looking something like this:

Somehow, you have to make order out of this chaos. And it CAN be done–just click around, explore various ways to connect the pieces together.

I find that it’s something like a curvaceous form of Tetris, without the time limit. It takes time to plot your next moves, to turn pieces to their best advantage. You may have to form several different shapes before you hit on just the right one, and Loops of Zen does not penalize you for that. It only counts how many levels you completed, not how long you took to beat each level. (I love that about this game!)

A Sample Game in Progress

Below is a series of three pictures showing how I progressed in solving one of the game’s many svelte puzzles:


This is what I started out with. Hmmm…well, there’s a tackle-able mess at bottom right, let’s get that shored up first. But what can I turn to connect all those wonky pieces at top left?


Well, that got some of the randomness from the other side of the picture out of the way. I still have the wonky lines at top left, though.


Kinda looks like two aliens sitting and having a conversation, now! XD But what am I going to do with that random curve at top middle, and that random straight line at bottom middle? Not to mention the “arm” off the left “alien guy” shape. LOL, this gets funnier by the minute!

Bonus Section: The Music

Loops of Zen is kind of unique among Flash games in that it has an absolutely beautiful and appropriate song as its background. The song, “Surrealism” by XGamer, was an instant favorite of mine as soon as I played the game the first time. Its darkly flowing chords in F-sharp minor provide the perfect ambient-trance backdrop for this game, and it’s one of the reasons I enjoy this game so much.

Summary

If you want a Flash game that is utterly different from everything currently out there, I strongly suggest you check this out. It will make you think, and yet it is relaxing, too…perfect for an afternoon with a full belly and a comfortable chair. 😀

Play the game: Loops of Zen

Wednesday in the Word

Jesus Has Made Us Clean

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Leviticus 11:24-25
24 You will make yourselves unclean by these; whoever touches their carcasses will be unclean till evening. 25 Whoever picks up one of their carcasses must wash their clothes, and they will be unclean till evening.

Mark 15:37-39
37 With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. 38 The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. 39 And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, heard his cry and saw how he died, he said, “Surely this man was the Son of God!”

Being “unclean” is a common state of being in the Old Testament, especially Leviticus. As a book of holiness and cleanliness laws for the Israelites, Leviticus is full of these rules, covering everything from appropriate dress for all of the different social groups to appropriate foods for them to consume, and everything in between. This particular set of verses ends off a section discussing which insects and birds are clean and unclean to eat.

As Christians, we do not necessarily follow all the traditions laid down in Leviticus anymore, mainly because we believe that Jesus was the ultimate and final sacrifice for our sins. We no longer have to follow these restrictive codes to be “pure” or “good” enough for God, because Jesus has made us good enough when we believe in Him. The symbolic tearing of the veil at Jesus’ death, described in Mark, shows us that no longer do we have to be separate from God because of our sin.

Believing in Jesus’ sacrifice does not exempt us from ever sinning again, of course, but it is the first and most important part of declaring our faith. Accepting Jesus’ sacrifice, the final and everlasting sin offering, as a gift meant for you means that you accept Him as Savior, as indeed He was and is. Leviticus served its purpose of maintaining holiness for those who lived before the Messiah came…and Jesus now serves the same purpose, as the way to Heaven.

Tuesday on the Soapbox

Driving like a Ninja

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In my little Ford Focus ZX3, I usually tool around town driving as defensively and carefully as possible. Of course, there is the odd moment where I am not focused on the road (phone ringing or preventing things from taking a tumble into the floorboard), but for the most part, I do my best to stay alert. This is very difficult in an age where we are all supposed to be hyper-accessible to other people no matter what we’re doing, and we’re all supposed to stay updated on absolutely EVERYTHING that happens every day.

Not only that, I use my car’s small size to maneuver in and out of traffic a lot more easily. Even though I have been in a couple of minor accidents (very, VERY minor–no injury and only a bit of damage), through God’s grace I’ve been able to avoid thousands more accidents. Sometimes I wasn’t sure whether I was going to be able to stop in time–and sometimes, I’ve thanked God that I looked up or noticed something when I did.

This is what I call “ninja-driving”–scooting away from danger and getting where I need to be as safely as possible. It involves quite a bit of alertness, a large helping of creative driving skills, and lastly (and most importantly), a lot of divine blessings. 😀

An Old-School Example of Ninja-Driving from My Family

I suppose ninja-driving runs in the family. A funny family anecdote goes something like this:

My grandfather was driving my grandmother, mom, and dad to a backyard barbecue in the community. They arrived, and he was trying to park in the hosts’ car-crowded front yard. The only way to get to the last piece of usable yard space (it was a BIG barbecue!) was to drive straight between two other cars, which at first looked too close together to get through.

Without a pause, Granddaddy slowly advanced toward the cars, and the narrow space between them. Gran and Mom were in the backseat of the car and saw what he was intending to do–they both gasped.

He laughed. “I’m not gonna worry till I hear my son-in-law holler.” And the car slid straight through without a scratch or bump on either side. 🙂

I don’t know if I’ve inherited much of Granddaddy’s abilities, but I do like to call my little car the “ninja car,” because its small size and decent pickup speed has helped it escape much danger (and thus, I stay safer, too).

How Do You Define “Ninja Driving?”

I like to think driving like a ninja includes the following:

  • Aggressive use of brakes (i.e., not being afraid to brake if it will avoid an accident). If the person behind you is too distracted to stop or too busy tailgating you to pay attention to your brakes, that’s not your problem. What would be your problem is if you let yourself be intimidated and ran into the back of someone else.
  • Tapping brakes to alert drivers behind you–flashing red lights usually attract attention, and it’s easier to hit than your hazards. I use this when I’m coming up on a traffic situation I’m unsure of, just in case the guy/gal behind me isn’t paying much attention.
  • Using the side of the road (carefully) as a way to avoid an accident–just don’t hit the brakes when your tire goes off-road, and don’t rush to get back on the road. Let off gas, glide onto side of road, then glide back on when it’s safe. Easy does it. Don’t get too nervous when you hear and feel the noise of your tire being off-road–trust me, your car will survive it much better if you don’t get nervous.
  • Watching your mirrors, all the time. I watch my rearview mirror (out of peripheral vision) almost as much as I watch what’s coming up ahead of me. Keeps tabs on tailgaters, rapidly accelerating people, people who don’t know what “STOP” means, etc.

    (This saved my life at a stoplight late one night–a transfer truck blew through a red light that I had been stopped at, until I looked in my rearview mirror and thought, “That guy doesn’t look like he’s going to stop.” I inched over into the left-turn lane instead, and a few seconds later, the truck barreled straight through the intersection. He would have totaled me and my little car both had I not seen him and moved.)

  • Taking back roads if it would mean avoiding a very difficult intersection or difficult turn.
  • Avoiding driving at night unless I have to–people seem to “forget” how to drive at night.
  • In very heavy rain, using hazard lights. Sometimes, that’s the only way people can see you in their rearview mirror when the world around their cars is veiled with a gray curtain of rain!

Summary

Driving is not just a skill, it’s an art…and like any art, it takes practice. Though I know I’ll never be as awesomely ninja as a stunt driver, a girl can dream–while avoiding accidents!

Monday in the HTMLab

Spraying Your Site for Bugs

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Ah, debugging–the most annoying part of web design, at least for me. Drives me nuts to upload a page I think is perfect, down to the last tag, and find instead that something within that lovely code has gone horribly awry. (Debugging this WordPress layout was especially annoying!)

And yet, if we’re going to be responsible web designers and webmasters, we have to check through everything we upload to make sure it’s exactly what we intended. From unintentional (and often funny) typos, to broken links and other bits of HTML, to an unintelligble wall of text with no formatting, and all the way to colors displaying terribly, we have to make sure our sites are displaying the way we intended!

Content Bugs

  • Typos
    Yes, we are all human and can make mistakes. That’s what causes typos in the first place, after all! Many’s the time I’ve meant to type “from” and typed “form” instead, or typed some horrible misplaced series of letters when my fingers got off the home keys. (But that’s the reason I got good at hitting the Backspace key at lightning speed.)

    When you go through your content, check for typos first, before you do anything else. Lots of misspellings makes your content look very amateurish and ill-written, even if you know exactly what you’re talking about, and it will give off the wrong vibe about your site. Even if your site is a personal site, you want it to be “dressed for success” in its content.

    If you’re not sure about the spelling of the word, you can check Dictionary.com to compare spelling. Also, for a quick fix, you can even type your spelling of the word into a search engine, which generally autocorrects your spelling with the infamous “Did you mean ____?” line at the top of the page.

  • Unattractive/Listless Phrasing
    While offhanded phrasing like “Meh, I don’t really care about this section/article/page, but whatever” may sound okay to you, it will definitely leave your viewing public wondering why THEY should care about your site. If even the creator can’t be bothered to care about this content, why should they? Make sure that you’re using phrasing that plays up the best parts of your site, so that it shows others why they should care about what you’ve written.

    Example: Instead of “This is the content, but it’s still under construction…meh,” you could try saying something like “This section is still under construction, but enjoy what is here so far–and keep checking back for updates!”

  • Half-Hearted Explanations
    Use clear and concise language, especially when you’re explaining something. (Yes, yes, I know, I should be following that myself…pardon my tendency toward verbosity, LOL!) If you’re writing informative articles, regular blog content, or anything on a site, always keep in mind that some people may not have an intimate knowledge of your subject matter.

    Use links to basic reference material if you don’t want to have to rehash all the most essential details, but do try to explain your content well enough so that even someone who is new to your topic can catch on. This will help make your site much more approachable, and might even interest your visitors in becoming more involved in your subject matter themselves!

Link Bugs

  • Broken Links
    As many links as I collect from all over the Internet, just as many of them end up broken over time. It is very, VERY hard to police your links page and keep up with all the broken links–it could end up being a full-time job in and of itself!

    To combat broken links, set aside a time each month to review each of the external links on your links page, content pages, etc. And don’t just rely on an automated link-checker; those will give you false positives on “parked” domains, or spammy domains that are more robot-generated than anything. Physically go through and click on every link to make sure the site you intended to link to is still there.

  • Mistyped Links
    Even if the site still exists, nobody is going to be able to follow your link if you type it like “http:www.thesite.com/” or “htp:/www.site.com/”. It’s easy to mistype stuff like this when you’re trying to assemble a page, especially in a hurry. If you click a link on your site that you KNOW for a fact exists and it doesn’t do anything, investigate how you typed the link–you might find the reason there.

Formatting Bugs

  • Lack of Headings/Subheadings
    When walls of text are not broken up by headings and subheadings, it doesn’t give anybody a reason to keep reading. Use these more boldly-formatted, summarizing lines to help your users find the information they need as quick as possible, and to draw their attention to the content itself.
  • Not a Paragraph Tag in Sight
    If you’ve formatted a big page of text using only one beginning p tag and one ending /p tag, it can lead to the “wall of unreadable text” phenomenon. Your awesome content will end up looking like a formless blob…trust me, I know. It’s best to break up your text into smaller paragraphs so that your users don’t look at it and get intimidated, even if you think your paragraphs look too small.
  • Text Size Too Small
    I will never understand why 8px font became appropriate for personal sites, but for a good long while, it was. Imagine font size from your visitor’s perspective–would you want to read long pages of text that look like “fine print” on some contract? If your content’s very important to your site, you want to make sure it’s readable, and not just with a magnifying glass.

    As a rule of thumb, I never go below 10px on any font size (not even Verdana), and usually not below 12px if I can help it. 14px helps some of those more cramped-looking fonts (like cursive or more elaborately-ornamented fonts) expand a little bit so they are easier to read, too.

Color/Design Bugs

  • Wrong Color Appears
    Colors, like links, are susceptible to being typed wrong or accidentally backspaced. If a color renders absolutely wrong on your page, check to make sure all 6 of the hexadecimal numbers or letters are in place. (Sometimes color will render as slightly different based on monitor color settings and what format you saved your images in…keep that in mind. PNGs and JPGs usually preserve more of the intended color in images across most browsers and computer monitors.)
  • Misbehaving Layout
    Divs, tables, sidebars, and navigation are all infamous for inexplicably messing up on certain pages. Check all of your pages to make sure they ALL display correctly–if you have a random layout error, it could be part of your content stretching the page out too far, for instance.

    Also, check widths and heights of various layout structure. For instance, when two divs which should float side-by-side instead stack one on top of the other, one of their widths is likely thrown off by something (either a measurement or something contained within the div itself).

Summary

Bugs on your site don’t have to be just server-side or script-related. Much of how visitors perceive our sites comes from what we ourselves put up on the site. Taking time to browse our own websites, page by page, can help us catch errors in content, design, layout, and links…plus, it helps us remember how it feels to BE a visitor!