Google and BloggerPro

The new Google Toolbar has a Blog This! button that lets Bloggers create a weblog post pointing to the page you are visiting.

How do I type Google in Color?

<b>
<span style="color:#0039b6">G</span>  
<span style="color:#c41200">o</span>  
<span style="color:#f3c518">o</span>  
<span style="color:#0039b6">g</span>  
<span style="color:#30172f">l</span>  
<span style="color:#c41200">e</span>  
</b>

String the code all on one line without the spaces to get this look.

Lasik: I can see clearly now...

I want to go outside and take pictures of the beauty, but that doesn't make sense because most of you already know what it looks like. There are leaves on trees, and the neighbor's house has shiny clean windows that reflect green bushes.

So what is this new life? A Lasik touchup on Friday. Just last year they said it couldn't be done, the technology to work on thin corneas wouldn't be here in five years, not even in ten years.

"Not in five or ten years, kiddo. Just won't happen."

And yesterday Dr. Reed went for it with the new micron improved laser equipment. We wouldn't know if there was enough room for correction until he got in but as numbers 286, 289, 291, 292, were being called off he did the

"YES!"

Right-fist closed like he already hit the home run and I knew that we were within the range he needed.

Surgeries are on Friday, and on Saturday all the happy people assemble in the doctor's office for a checkup. Everyone is looking around with new eyes. Smiling. Closing one eye, looking around, then closing the other.

Vision is a wonderful thing. So, if I start typing really tiny it's because I forgot that some people can't see and accessibility is boring.

Ditched the wheelchair

The wheelchair is still in the trunk but it hasn't been out for weeks . Last week I was at work without a cane. This level of recovery was never expected. There were accidents along the way, but it was assumed that there was a degenerative disease process contributing to the level of injury. Heck, now Doc says he removed a spare part that was torn up but wasn't supposed to be in the knee anyway. What's left is a normal knee.

So who needs a spinal fusion anyway when there are two good legs to improve the gait? Maybe it can heal. It feels like it is healing. It feels like there is a God. Gee whiz, what if there is a God. Those look like God clouds from here.

Pool Party

Off to the pool...and you know I'll delete this personal post later. Wimp here. Said "God". Want to say I'm the happiest person in the world today! Oh yea. Off to sing with the birds now.

EUROPEANGRAND PRIX
F1 Sunday

The Red Car is orange. The Web is not the only place where colors don't render well. The first thing we noticed at a live race was that the red car is actually orange.

Why? It's a camera cheat. The cameras pick it up as a vibrant red. The The Red Car is Orange is text floating over an image. The code is here.

The Red Car is Orange

"What kind of car do you drive?"

Enough of that, this interview is a good read. All of it.

Rob, read this. Montoya was banned from driving on French roads.

Out and About in the Blogs...

Go for it. We did.

Alexa shows us a screenshot of the page.

And, if we scroll down we see what books people interested in Entropy Gradient Reversals bought.

The first one listed is a good book - Bible by American Bible Society. But, when we visit again it lists different books. Wiki-wacky behavior.

Blogdom

"I'd rather not write about the rest of obstacles to face before obtaining blogdom"
Adam Kazwell

Hacking and Private Places

Yo hackers, don't forget to erase your tracks.

Parents

We don't have a cat. We like to see pictures of cats.
We don't have a dog. We like to see pictures of dogs.
We don't have parents. We like to see pictures of parents.

But, hardly anyone posts pictures of their parents. FridayFishWrap did some time ago and we keep checking back day after day. No parents. Would you mind? Just one more picture of those smiling faces of your parents FridayFishWrap. Please.

Angie makes us laugh one day and cry the next, and Dave had an accident so we posted this badge



that we found at Jen's place.

Cheap Web Tricks

The Shadow Filter

Here's the code if you want to copy and paste (or type ) it in your page.

What does this code say?

Extras that you don't need to know

1. <TABLE> says we are using a table for our layout.
2. COLOR="orange" says use the color orange for the shadow.
3. <TR> and <TD> say that we are starting a new row and a new column.
4. </TD> and </TR> say to end the table column and the row.
5. The </TABLE> says end our table

Google Weblog

Want to see what ads AdSense thinks are relevant to your page? Let Google Weblog tell you. Thanks for the fun link Paul.

Free Buttons On-the-fly

We had fun with the ButtonMaker and made two buttons to show off.

We couldn't fit our Blog Trashed by Mandarin slogan in the button but, we are still busy making buttons when we find the CSS Inline Buttons page. Stuff that makes you go - Wow! Why didn't we think of that?

CSS Inline Buttons

You only need text to make these buttons. Replace those week-old image buttons with text-only buttons.

Boxes and Borders

Copy and paste this code to make Shirl's green box.

<div style="width:200px;text-align:left;
padding:10px;background-color:green;
border:2px dotted black;font-size:11px;">

Shirls box

</div> 

Dotted Box: Use a 2px dotted border

Shirl made sure that we see the dotted border by making it a 2 pixel border.

HighlightedText

You can change the background color behind a word or a phrase in a sentence using the SPAN tag.

You can highlight part of a sentence.

Copy and paste (or type) this in your Blog or Web page.

You can 
<SPAN style="background-color:yellow"> highlight 
</SPAN> part of a sentence.  

It will look like this.

You can highlight part of a sentence.

More CSS SPAN Highlighting

You can use any color with the SPAN tag.

For more color selections check out the Color Chart.

Powered by Blogger?

The Good, the Glitches, and the Gotchas

Good

1. The template update no longer spills off the right side of our screen.
2. We modified our template and it worked.
3. It's easy now to go back to a specific date to modify a post.
4. Offers to fix code.

Glitches

For each post we see this Publish error.

Solution: Click details

You will see this.

Click on Republish Latest. It works everytime.

Improving Blogger

Let's take a constructive approach.

We can document the good, the glitches, and the gotchas in the new Blogger and provide constructive feedback so that it can be improved.

We're off to research the available help and the pertinent email addresses. In the meantime, leave your comments. We know that at least one person likes the upgrade.

Gotchas

Illegal Post: The Coding Police

The new improved Blogger has decided that the code we were attempting to post here for you, the same code we have posted before, is now "illegal".

Just in case you were wondering, there is no such thing as illegal code.

The new Blogger tool attempts to edit and fix code. It's not good at it. Most tools aren't. Good code requires good programmers.

Ouch!

The Lycos Top 50

We like this section of the Lycos Top 50 today. Look right between Jennifer Lopez and Mortgage Rates (which are below 5% today!).

It's somebody's job to make up the comments. Happy Sunday.

Fun with BloggerPro

Help. We're using it and can't stop abusing it. In all fairness, the nice people like Gary Turner have embraced the new Blogger. Ouch, it bites back. Nice Blogger.

Want to say
Fun with BloggerPro
in color?

Copy and paste (or type) this in your Blog.

 
<h4> 
Fun with 
<span style="color:navy;">
Blogger
</span>
<span style="color:#ff6600">Pro</span>
</h4> 

Put the code on one line. It will look like this.

Fun with BloggerPro

Maybe.

Solid Box

A box to take with you....

Copy and paste (or type) this inline CSS style code in your blog or Web page.

<div style="width:200px;text-align:center;
padding:10px;background-color:red;
border:1px solid black;font-size:11px;">

YOUR TEXT GOES HERE 

</div>

Put the code on one line. The box will look like this.

Borders and Boxes

The boxes and borders here are easy to copy and paste.

Mandarin Quigi Board

Inside the New Improved Blogger Pro

Dear Blogger, 

The new BloggerPro is not working 
properly.  


Love, 
Mandarin 

http://www.mandarindesign.com/images/v21.gif

Mandarin Quigi Board

D.A.S.I.E.: Designers Against Stagnate Internet Explorer

DASIE UPDATE

Designers Against Stagnate Internet Explorer (DASIE).

Let the IE badge campaign begin. If you want to express your dissatisfaction with the the lack of development and innovation in Microsoft Internet Explorer join us in posting the new DASie badge. Bryan Bell, creator of the original button, made this fancy new DASie badge today.

Birds and Borders

The Barn Swallows are attacking. It's dusk and the wind is blowing but can we open the doors? No. This is one of five barn swallows in attack mode right now. They were cute the first year.

Now that we've spent the bandwidth to load the barn swallow picture let's reuse it. It doesn't cost anything to recycle the image, it's already loaded into cache.

Quick Image Border

This picture needs a border.

Outset Border

To put a border around a picture we add three items to the standard IMG tag.

<IMG SRC="myimage.jpg" 
STYLE="
border-style:outset;
border-color:black;
border-width:2px">

Orange Border

OUTSET BORDER: Orange 2 pixel

Copy and paste (or type) this in your Blog or Web page.

<img src="/images/barnswallow.jpg" 
width="110" height="115" 
style="border-style:outset;
border-color:orange;border-width:2px;">

Put the code on one line. Your image border will look like this.

Black Border

OUTSET BORDER: Black 2 pixel

Copy and paste (or type) this in your Blog or Web page.

<img src="/images/barnswallow.jpg" 
width="110" height="115" 
style="border-style:outset;
border-color:black;border-width:2px;">

Put the code on one line. Your image border will look like this.

Green Border

OUTSET BORDER: GREEN 12 pixel

Copy and paste (or type) this in your Blog or Web page.

<img src="/images/barnswallow.jpg" 
width="110" height="115" 
style="border-style:outset;
border-color:firebrick;border-width:12px;">

Put the code on one line. Your image border will look like this.

Royalty-Free photos

Top 100: One-at-a-time

We found this guy who created the original inviting orange button. We think he should be famous. His name is Bryan Bell. Pass it on.

But, does it work in all browsers?

Float Image Left

We're in Netscape
Rayne noticed that the SPAN with the FLOAT doesn't always work as intended in Netscape.

Netscape doesn't calculate the extra space and we end up with a spill on some blogs. We tried using another method from the FAQ page.

<img src="images/ozy.gif" width="150" height="158" 
align="left" hspace="15">

Any suggestions for (or from) the Netscape folks? There are four methods in the FAQ page. Does one work well in Netscape?

Float Image Left

The code to float an image to the left of your text is short and simple.

We use the SPAN tag with PADDING:15px;.

Copy and paste (or type) this in your Blog or Web page.

<span style="float:left;padding:15px;">
<img src="images/ozy.gif" width="150" height="158">
</span>
THE TEXT YOU TYPE HERE 
WILL ALIGN TO THE RIGHT
OF THE IMAGE

Replace the image name images/ozy.gif with the name of your image and you are ready to rock n' roll. It will look like this.

Thanks Illana for the link to the caricatures.

FAQ:Float Image Left

The Top 100 List

Why? Why not.

There are a lot of "Top Blog" lists. Some are contrived and easy to trick if one is so inclined while others like Technorati rate blogs not on content but by the number of links that point to the blog.

What do these blogs have in common besides the number of links in? Are some "link farms"? Do you link and visit any of these blogs or do you link to some but rarely visit?

We are off to visit each blog, one at a time.

Tomorrow they will each have 1 more link.

Colors

We used the Adobe eyedropper tool to sample colors from a painting. A mindless thing to do on a Sunday.

Fun with colors

Copy and paste (or type) this in your Blog or Web page.

<div style="background-color:#67724A;"> 
YOUR TEXT GOES HERE 
</div>

It will look like this.

Qoöl Listen to Elvis while you read

Grab a Surprise Image

Insert the Surprise Image

Copy and paste (or type) this in your Blog or Web page.

It will look like this.

You can change the number 19 to any number between 1 and 50. Easy copy-and-paste code is in the FAQ page and the Gallery page.

The images are now loaded in cache. We can reuse the same image without any bandwidth cost.

Copy-and-paste finger dance

And you only need text to make it...

This is made with a table and text. There are no graphics, just filters applied to the table code.

FLIPV()

The filter:flipv() can be applied to text or images.

The FLIPV() code for flipping images is in the FAQ page.

Goodbye good buddy. Wish we had known.

Mandarin Quigi Board