CSS: Multiple Lines or Single Lines?

Over at Ordered List, there’s an entry about writing CSS selectors on single lines, instead of on multiple lines. There’s also a lot of comments from others discussing what they like. I like the whole single line idea, but it looks really messy. I like having everything appear organized. I also add comments so I can see what everything does, without having to try to remember later.

Example of multiple lines:

.link-title {
    color: #777;
    line-height: 1.3em;
    margin-bottom: 8px;
    padding-left: 45px;
    }

Example of single lines:

.link-title {color: #777; line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 8px; padding-left: 45px;}

Before anyone says anything, I did try it on single lines. I really don’t like it. Single lines can be great if you have a very large amount of selectors, (and I do) but it doesn’t have that organized appearance.

Another reason why I don’t want to use single lines is that I would have to go through over 2,000 lines in my CSS file just to change it over to single lines. That is more work than I want to do.

Simple Stars Images for WP-PostRatings Plugin

The WordPress plugin WP-PostRatings is an AJAX ratings system for WordPress and comes with three sets of images: bars, squares and stars. There isn’t anything fancy about these images and don’t really look that great on a dark background. The stars didn’t have transparency, so there was white around them, making them very ugly on a dark background.

I tried looking around to see if there was anything better that I liked, but no luck. So, I decided I would try to make my own. I’m not an expert with Photoshop, but I know my way around enough to create something. I created a set that is similar to the ones for Unobtrusive AJAX Star Rating Bar, because I like how they look.

I used a Photoshop brush to make a star and then made duplicate layers of that for the images. These images would become: ratings_off.gif, ratings_on.gif, ratings_over.gif and ratings_half.gif. So, I need four layers of this one star. I also made another layer to make the outline of the star appear darker. This was actually by accident, but once I saw how it looked, I decided to keep it.

I call them Simple Stars. Here are the results, blown up to show detail:

From left to right: over, on, half and off. The first one is displayed when the cursor moves over, the second one is displayed when there are votes, the third is displayed when there are vote(s) and a half, and the fourth is displayed when there are no votes or at the end.

Sizes available are: 16×16, 32×32 and 48×48. Until I make this available for download, please contact me if you would like it.

Instructions for WordPress WP-PostRatings plugin only. To install, just extract the simplestars directory into the WP-PostRatings plugin directory (directory should be named postratings) and then go into the Ratings options in WordPress and select simplestars. The plugin automatically detects new folders with GIFs as long as they are named correctly.

Google: Can’t Find Server

Today I tried visiting Google to search for something, but then it said that it couldn’t find the server. This seemed very strange because I had just been there minutes before. I checked Gmail (since I had it open) and it worked just fine. I checked another website and that one was displayed. So, I tried Google again and it told me it couldn’t find the server, again.

I couldn’t figure out what was wrong, so I told David and learned something new. He told me to do the following:

1. Open up a command prompt. (Start > Run: type cmd and press enter.)
2. Type ipconfig /flushdns
3. Press enter.

I checked Google and the search engine was found!

Thoof It!

Thoof is a new way of submitting stories that could be of interest to other readers. Thoof is a personalized news site, helping you find news you want to read. Don’t want to see a particular story? Hide it using the hide option for that story.

It claims to be different than other social bookmarking sites, giving every submitted story a fair chance. The most recent submitted story becomes the first one seen.

The ThoofRank is a fair measurement of how interesting a story is to readers with interests in common with the story.

Signing up was very quick. It was actually easy to submit a blog entry to Thoof and add the ThoofRank Badge. Just copy/paste the link to the entry, add a title and a summary and submit. Copy the code for the Badge and paste into the entry. This Badge doesn’t take up much space either (see the bottom of this entry) and can be placed anywhere in the entry.

Thoof also allows readers to improve stories by making changes. This can be useful to stories that are time sensitive and need to be updated.

I personally like Thoof over Digg in that it does seem to give stories a chance to at least be seen and get its few minutes of fame. Thoof is one I will definitely visit in the future.

Save Money While Shopping Online

I love saving money by searching for and using coupons. I hope everyone else does too. I found a website that makes it easy to find coupons and promotional codes for many online stores. It’s called Keep Cash. It also lets you view the latest deals for the online stores. This is great, because it’s much easier to go to one place, rather than all, just to see if there are any sales. This is updated daily to make sure you see the most recent deals.

Since I am always looking around for computer deals, especially motherboard/cpu kits, I did a search for computer and found ComputerGeeks.com coupons. They have some nice prices for kits. Dell also has some good coupon deals to choose from.

With the mobile world having access to the Internet, it’s very important to provide them with easy access, too. Keep Cash has a Shopping Tools page and one tool is a mobile online coupon interface for the iPhone. This allows people with iPhones to search for coupons and deals.

Another great feature on Keep Cash is the newsletter. Instead of visiting the website every time you want to find some deals, you can view them in your e-mail as they come in. Also, stay up-to-date with the Black Friday ads from all the major online stores.

Sponsored by Keep Cash