Yeah, I hate those sites that keep changing their appearance... LOL! You could have waited until after I updated my front page to post this, I feel really guilty about the planned changes now. On a more serious note, one of my favourite sites has adopted those stupid rollover popup adverts, which seriously impact on my ability to read the content of (and therefore enjoy) the site.

Thought I should let you know that I'm over the guilt.

At least Microsoft are out and fighting! Getting Pharrel to state his PC allegiance was a good idea, but you just know that in his recording studio he has a phat pile of Apple goodness.

I don't understand why Microsoft are highlighting how their customers are all interesting and different people, as if Apple had somehow suggested the contrary. To my mind, Apple have also pointed out how Microsoft Windows users are all interesting and different and have merely suggested that they deserve an OS (and hardware) that is as cool as there are.

All of this reminds me of the Monday Night Wars... good for the customers, but ultimately ending up in one side owning the other.

I felt sorry for the people declaring they were PCs, like I would if they were telling me they had HIV.

Amen!

That's Mutha f*ckin' insane!

I think "Ouch!" is a bit of an understatement. Muchos respect for posing for the photo - you're hardcore!

Fork!

My brother went out last night, tripped over whilst his hands were in his pockets and landed on his face. We don't think his nose is broken, although it bled like a tap, he has snapped his two front teeth, cut the inside of his mouth, oh... and he pushed the broken teeth clean through his top lip. Nice!

I dare you to ask him. Wear running shoes.

Yes it is buggy... it seems to get confused after you have focused an Exposé window. But as you say, why wouldn't you want it all the time?

The only time I use Exposé is when I am trying to get Dashboard but press the wrong function key! Could be something to do with my 30" screen? I tend to use Spaces when I'm using my laptop standalone.

Doesn't work on my MacBook Pro!

Ok, so all of a sudden this started working. I think it may be because I was pressing alt before all the windows had finished exposing themselves - it kept flipping into spaces.

So can we expect a few stones to appear on your ebay account! ;-)

Because most minis are driven by...?

Buy it as a present for Sarah............

My Nanny had an original automatic mini and she was completely unable to park it on the driveway (which was considerably wider than the car), my Grandad had to do it for her.

As for reversing small cars without hitting things, people in glass houses...

But did you have to mention hitting things less than 24 hours before ST-Day :(

@Chris: Hairdressers...no wait, Estate Agents...erm...people that work for Red Bull?

Ow heck, I don't know. Why don't you enlighten us (he said, providing Chris with more than enough rope to hang himself).

What I meant was:

Because most minis are driven by. That is, driven past, and not used to being parked.

(Phew, I think I might have got away with it)

No point asking why that works, but...

I have 'small' as my body font-size. Would that have the same effect or does it have to be a percentage? And does it have to be 80%?

My latest CSS issue is with printing tables. I don't want page breaks in the middle of a table row, so have used:

td { page-break-inside: avoid }

This works well in Firefox (it even replicates the table headings on each new page), but doesn't seem to be supported in IE or Safari. Do you know any tricks for solving this one? So far, my only solution would be to generate the printed version using PDFWriter or similar, but that's a lot more work.

Even if I didn't use a table, I would still want to prevent page breaks in the middle of certain elements.

The other printing nasty is trying to control print page orientation. Again, this can is specified in CSS like...

@page land { size: landscape }

But no browsers (except Opera?) seem to support this either.

If I change my body.font-size to 80%, I get pixel sizing problems in Safari that I didn't have before! I'll look into this (could be I've got some other font-sizes defined that are interacting).

I don't actually think that this is as farcical as you seem to suggest. Your daughter is, in part, responsible for the birth of the blue tits, this, by proxy, makes you also partly responsible - and so the chain continues. (It is why creatures should help each other, rather than thinking of themselves). Think about the spread of a smile, or the effect of letting someone out of a junction, they may in turn pass this courtesy on. Cause and effect!

The important question, is what, or who, started this whole string of events off in the first place. Please could you ask your kids to explain it to me!

P.S. I am unable to justify the audacious claim of an everest siting.

Do you know that they would have found somewhere else to live? No. They might have done, but then again they could have been eaten by next door's cat. The cause and effect is clear to see!

Aren't we often encouraged to put up bird/bat/owl boxes, etc to replace disappearing habitats? Therefore, not putting them up must have an impact on animal numbers.

But more importantly, can you fix the spelling mistake in the blog title?

1. Agreed.
2. Pixels are far more predictable.
3. Meh! Lock it all in - you can't trust browsers!

1. How do you achieve elastic layouts without percentages...?
2. Ems are good for keeping things looking OK when font sizes are changed, but there are cross browser issues (and I don't mean IE particularly, I had annoying differences between Firefox and Safari).
3. OK, sort of answers (1): You can have elastic layouts, but not completely elastic!

The main thing I would say about sussing CSS is: get to understand positioning and how positioning contexts work (absolute, relative, etc). And then, using this knowledge, avoid using floats (unless a float is really what you need, i.e. you need to understand what floats are meant for too). You'll find your layouts are much more robust and cope with resizing better, etc, etc.

@Jo: Yes, pixels are far more predictable, but how do you cope with font size changes?

Generally, web design is still a bit of a nightmare. I've made some progress in that I can usually get pages to look how I want, but never first time, and never first time in all browsers!

My mum had an Auntie Em.

Ah ha! That's what I meant about getting to understand CSS positioning properly.

Each time you add a position attribute to a container (e.g. div), you create a new positioning context for its children, which can then have their own positioning modes.

So, for example...

div.my_div { position: relative }

...will have no effect on the normal flowed position of my_div, but children of my_div, if positioned absolutely, will have their origin at the origin of my_div, not the page.

Difficult to explain without pictures!

Having said all that, there are problems (as you say) with sizing a parent div to enclose its children if the children are all positioned absolutely (the parent div size will collapse to zero unless explicitly sized).

Beam me up Jesus! (Wapow, a Friends quote AND I was the first to comment on your blog).

Welcome to the wild, wacky, but sometimes lonely world of blogging!

I like the title of your blog, except that I think it is the people on the planet that are tedious, not the planet itself (although walking dogs in pissing rain can be a bit tedious sometimes).