Archive for November, 2007

piped navigation with css

November 21st, 2007  |  Posted in Developer Blog   |  Tags:

You’ve seen piped navigation before. Typically found in the footer of websites, appearing as a list of links separated by a | (pipe).

There’s a nice way to fake piping using really clean, standards friendly code along with our friend, CSS. I’ve been using this method for years now and am quite happy with it. Basically, you start by creating a typical unordered list containing the list of links.

<ul id="piped">
  <li><a href="first">One</a></li>
  <li><a href="second">Two</a></li>
  <li class="last"><a href="third">Three</a></li>
</ul>

I’ll explain the class=”last” in a minute.

Now in your stylesheet you tell the list to be displayed without any bullets and displayed inline rather than stacked as is the default. You also give each link a nice pad on both the left and right. To fake the pipe, you simply add a border to one side. This is where the class=”last” comes in. You don’t want there to be a border after the last link, so for that class, you can simply set the border to none.

ul#piped li{
  display: inline;
  border-right: 1px solid #000;
  padding-left: 10px;
  padding-right: 7px;
}
ul#piped li.last{
  border-right: none;
}

(Realistically, you could also do border-left and class=”first.”)

The end result:

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Fourteen? What is wrong with people!?

November 21st, 2007  |  Posted in Personal Blog

I recently went on a business trip for my company to Chicago. Knowing that it was going to be a somewhat costly trip, I requested a cash advance from our accounting department to help pay for the expenses without worry that I would be charged any interest on my credit card before I was able to fill out an expense report and get reimbursed. I tend to get slammed upon returning from these trips and it takes me a while to even start thinking about filling out expenses.

Very recently my company switched to an automated, online expense reporting system where you can fax your receipts and fill everything out paperless. Which is a great thing!…until it’s not.

It turns out that they hadn’t programmed the system properly when it comes to handling cash advances and somehow after I submitted my expense report, and after I had written a check for the amount I was given that I didn’t end up spending, I was reimbursed for the amount that I was given as my cash advance.

Yes, you read that right. I was reimbursed for the same amount that I was already given. In other words, I was paid twice. So not only was the trip free for me, they paid me to go.

Obviously I couldn’t let this go and I went straight to the accounting department to let them know that they had accidentally given me and extra $1425.00 (US). Or at least it seems obvious to me.

Upon researching the glitch in the system, they also found that fourteen other people had this same thing happen to them. I was the first to say anything. Fourteen!? Are you kidding me??? What is wrong with people!?!?

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Hotmail vs. Gmail

November 20th, 2007  |  Posted in Personal Blog

Ever wonder what the main differences between Hotmail and Gmail were? Been curious about one or the other but don’t want to sign up for both? Although filled with irony and satire, I believe that the following blog post pretty much sums it up. Especially if you are talking about the look and feel of each:

What If Gmail Had Been Designed by Microsoft?

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