CSS, PSP, long nights and small sneaks

Whew.  Things are really rolling along these days.  Some tidbits:

In the course of putting together the Viscusi-Elson site I discovered a couple of nice pieces of code.  This is my first site that’s laid out completely in CSS, and I must say I’m beginning to feel very confident with it and very grateful for its existence.  My client wanted everything centered in a bordered box, which is fairly straightforward using tables, but not so much in CSS.  I found this example, which is exactly what I needed:

CSS center using float and clear (select view>page source to see the code and comments.  Courtesy of Perishable Press)

Also, I needed to do a series of slide shows, and since I will be maintaining the site long term, I wanted them to be both high quality and easily updatable.  Enter XML + Flash.  I found this tutorial:

Oman 3d: Creating an XML slideshow in Flash

Very, very helpful.  I went in knowing a little Actionscript and no XML, and walked out with five functional, flexible slide shows.

Last but not least…there are the internal portfolio pages, and for these I wanted to emulate (per the request of my client) the portfolio pages of the Jeffers Design Group , which incidentally are largely driven by php (a language I’m not familiar with).  I haven’t tried it yet, but this open source kit from Millstream looks good:

Crossfade Anything

I will try it out and let you know.

—

I recently discovered Sony’s PSP.  I haven’t really picked up a handheld since the colored edition of the original Gameboy came out, so I really didn’t know what they’re capable of.  It turns out that they’re capable of a lot.  Along with my PSP, I bought Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops ,  and FFT:War of the Lions (a nice site, by the way).

Now, FFT is an old favorite of mine, that I never managed to beat on the Playstation.  Its turn based strategy is actually relaxing to me, because there’s no time pressure to make a decision.  The strategy element is fun, as is the story and growing your characters.  It’s good, old school fun.

Portable Ops is also excellent, but for different reasons.  The gameplay is on par with the console MGS games, and the graphics are amazing for a handheld.  Squad based combat adds a unique spin on the whole thing as well.  The cherry on top is that the story is engaging.  Highly recommended.

—

That’s it for today!