A Link
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
I am adapting an accessible CSS design copyrighted in 2006 by Sarah Horton for use as a nice background scheme with sidebar that uses a comfortable font size for a visually impaired web author. The HTML tags are chosen to use a simplified subset of styles, with the original CSS document intact. (I had to abandon this and use local style set in the <head> to debug this.)
Migrating this to HTML5 would probably help as some of the sins cited by Ms. Horton would be solved by using the semantics in a style sheet that clearnly isolates style from semantics whose intended use is clear and easily understood by screen readers. I am not attempting with this first pass to migrate anything to HTML5.
In fact, I had great difficulty with the HTML because of the numerous <div>s with bad nesting, This caused the background color not to inherit in the expected way. It actually took importing the CSS selectors one at a time to isolate the problem, and a couple of hours time. I am not yet sure I want the side bar. I liked the multiple background colors from the original, but for me the design was very much overkill. I don't write book sections where I need book level as well as site level navigation. I may yet port this to HTML5 to take advantage of the semantics to avoid the number of <div>s.
Today is historic
The San Francisco Giants won the World Series two days ago and today there was a Victory Parade that retraced the welcome they got when they moved from New York in 1958. The Giants hadn't won a World Series since 1954 and so had never won one in San Francisco until now. Even though there was a Trans Bay World Series in 1989, whose first game was interrupted by the Loma Prieta Earthquake, the Oakland A's won that series. I am no Baseball Affectinato, these facts do fill me with a little pride.
The Election
It was a pretty run-of-the-mill election, really, with the minority party gaining seats in the lower house, actually a majority, but with most of its local candidates in the State races losing. I am particularly happy that Republican Plutocrats, Meg Whitman and Carley Firerio, two Silicon Valley Billionairs, who put up their own money, lost. Several other special interest and Big Money iniatives also lost, the public seems to be more sensative to wealth abusing democratic instiutions. Too bad the U.S. Surpreme Court doesn't care.
New Speaker of the House of Representatives
With the GOP gaining a new majority in the House, Nancy Pelosi loses the post of Speaker to be replaced probably by John Bayner, R, Ohio, who is the mouthy opposition to everything tried over the past two years. I have mixed feelings, I don't like Republicans getting more power to oppose changes that need to be made, but at the same time I think that Pelosi made major strategic mistakes that helped the opposition and the dissention that seems to rule government ineffictiveness. This is also a criticism I have of President Obama. To begin with back in 2006 when Palosi came to the Speaker's post she went too easy on Bush Administration officials who should have been punished for their misdeeds, and whatever role she had in the Bank bailout also casts doubt on her leadership abilities. When Hillery Clinton was competing for the Democratic Momination, I told myself: "Remember, both are U.S. Senators." You don't get that high up without incuring some obligations to powers that may need to be reined in for the greater interest. Now, that I know that Bill Clinton did more than Republicans to undo bank regulation, I think even less of the Clintons, who like the South, will rise again, because of that.
The Brasaro Noise Machine
I was so destracted earlier I could hardly write, and I was shaking becuse I had to endure another noontime of Mexican Gardeners manicuring shrubs with chain saws, two days in a row. I want these guys to leave and I don't trust the property manager to do the right thing, and the owner is in Southern California. It is most unfortunate that the property manager of our apartments also manages the place next door which has a line of Cypress trees that the garderner is trying to make into art with all too much noise. It makes me want to get an anti-leafblower ordiance passed by the city council. The same landscaping company has multiple contracts with the property managers around here and so the same leafblowers, powermowers and chainsaws can be heard at odd limes thoughout the week. It makes me want to move away, or fight them.
