Work Location: Destin, FL, and Naples, FL (see my wife's travel log).
Continue struggling with using CSS in place of HTML tables for formatting.
I have found many CSS tutorials online. Many of them claim to show how to use CSS to position elements without using tables. After I could not get CSS to work as advertised, I looked at the source for the tutorials' pages and their CSS files. Most of them use tables for page layout!!! There was one exception.
StopDesign has a CSS article titled "Making the Absolute, Relative". It is a nicely formatted page that actually does use CSS for page layout. So: I am using their HTML source and CSS files as guides in learning about CSS and in reformatting my pages. I am learning a lot by trying to figure out what the heck they are doing and why it works.
So far I have succeeded in replacing the major page layout tables with CSS in the dynamic pages (have not done anything to these static pages). The existing table-formatted content does not always work quite right within the CSS format, but it is a good start. Since we are getting ready to hit the road for a four-stop trip from Destin to Naples, FL, I'll upload what I've got done to this point.
Anyone using Internet Exploder 5 on Mac will probably not see correct formatting. Everything works much better with Safari, FireFox, and Netscape.
Converted some menus from tables to CSS formatting.
Added window title. If a single item is being operated upon, display its name in window title and page title.
Corrected locations details: label for latitude is now "latitude" rather than "longitude".
Location sort buttons are all part of a single form, versus one form per button. Allows more compact grouping.
Location sort buttons are layed out using CSS instead of HTML tables. Added buttons to sort by city. Rearranged buttons so that all ascending sorts are in the first column, with corresponding descending sorts in the second column. This permits more sort options than the previous arrangement with ascending/descending rows of buttons.
Nothing. Settling in to the campground we will be staying in for the next 30 days in Naples, FL: Kountry Kampinn RV Resort. Visit with friends.
Convert menus to CSS for layout. Got rid of tables.
Converted location browsing and location detail pages to use CSS for content, versus tables. I am amazed how how much simpler the html source is! Much cleaner.
Reworked the Locations "find" menu using CSS to get a cleaner layout.
Conversion from tables to CSS formatting is about half completed, but the improvements are big enough that I will go ahead and upload the changes.
All table based formatting is gone. All page layout is now done with CSS instead of tables.
Two problems to be addressed before I get back to adding features:
Ran strict XHTML validation against at least one of each type of generated page and fixed problems. XHTML validates once again.
CSS now validates as CSS 2.1 using the W3C online validator. Have removed all CSS that was used in HTML table page layout, which also got rid of all of the CSS errors. I still get warnings if I set the validator to show all warnings, but the validator is happy when I run the "normal report".
Saw announcement of the release of Rails 1.2. For grins and giggles I installed it and started playing with it. Getting LOTS of deprecation warnings in my log file. Removed deprecated calls to start_form_tag() and end_form_tag(). Now use form() with a block instead. This reduces the number of deprecation warnings a bit.
Switched back to Rails 1.1.6, and reinserted the old form tags (new ones not supported by v1.1.6). The hosting service is using v1.1.6. I'll wait until the hosting service sends out notification of availability of v1.2 on the service to make the switch to v1.2.
Discovered that assert_tag() is broken in v1.1.6, but works correctly in v1.2. Guess I'll have to use v1.2 for testing.
Fixed broken link on Location Edit page. Clicking alternate form of latitude or longitude once again permits editing of GPS coordinates in the alternate format.
Add ability for user to edit her/his profile.
Add public profile that includes only selected items of user information. Link to profiles from locations detail page. Clicking on the name of the person who created or last edited the location information shows the person's public profile.
Minor changes to terms and conditions:
Add links from various users pages to public profile, and from public profile to private profile if public profile is for the logged in user. From edit page can go to either public or private profile.
The private profile and private profile editing page both clearly mark which items will show up on the public profile.
Add minor cleanup for URLs entered by user. Make sure that at least a default protocol of 'http' is present.
Switch to Rails v1.2.1. Checked for v1.2.1 availability on the hosting service: it's there. Once again using form_tag() instead of start_form_tag(). Other minor changes to get rid of depreciated feature warnings.
User can now select a home base on their profile edit page. Full address and link to the location record is on the private (full) profile.
The city and state/province are shown on the public profile for the user, with a link to the location record IF the location is a PUBLIC location type.
"Choose One" location page uses "Browse" functionality to find and list locations.
Locations detail page now correctly shows person who last saved the detail info. Had been incorrectly showing creator as last editor. Thanks to Kay Jones for noticing the problem.
Clicking one of the change-home-base buttons did not save other changes on the page. Fixed.
Hitting enter in a field on one of the edit pages behaves inconsistently. It depends on what buttons are on the field BEFORE the save button that I always put at the end of the form. In HTML forms, the first button on the form is always activated when enter is hit.
Since I cannot find any way to set the default button in an HTML form, I added a save button at the top of each editing page in addition to the one at the bottom. The save button at the top gets activated if the user hits enter.
Begin adding trip functionality. Created model and basic display and editing pages.