I have written a tutorial previously discussing the various answers for the box model hack problem with Internet Explorer (a plague on the browser community in my humble opinion). I just finished a vary temporary under construction site for a client here that needed that to render properly the two column solution that they requested. They provided the jpg image and the text and gave me the layout. I like the look and it is consistent with some other things that they have done in the past. Does it break in your browser? If so, please drop me a comment. Thanks.

I am more and more gravitating to like sites that aren’t all squares and rectangles. I dislike flash in web design for the most part (perhaps with the exception of using it for advanced navigation buttons or something more simple). Coder’s working with images and CSS are starting to break the rectangle mode with more and more frequency. Here is just one example I happened on today: http://offshoretechnolabs.com/. In the current design, they use white and some lightening like bolts to break the mold. Notice also that the tab buttons and the right navigation background appear to not be simple rectangles with 90 degree corners.

Our site is of course … very square. Should we redesign it? It is functional as is … so is it worth the time. Those are today’s questions.

The Grand Rapids Catholic Secondary Schools holds an annual Benefactors’ Raffle in an effort to provide tuition assistance to needing families who attend their system. They always try to get a unique prize for the drawing. This year they decided to sell 500 tickets on-line for their raffle. The grand price winner gets to choose between a 2006 Solstice from Gavin Pontiac, or $20,000 cash. Tickets are $125, and I am seriously considering buying one. Should I?

I did knock together a quick site, borrowing some elements from here and there for them to get the site up and running. Thank you to Reese over at emTwo for helping me to get going on the project.

Today in my wanderings I came upon the site Creative Component dot Com. I have to tell the truth here (and this might serve me well if I get to other sites the same way at some point that are less credible) and admit I have no idea how I came to be here. It was open in a tab … It immediately grabbed my eye. It is vibrant. The leading article at the time I arrived to this blog style site was about a Moose Taking a Bath … so between the vibrant color and the unusual topic featured near the top, I decided that I should have a bit of a hunt around the site.

The teams put their unbeaten strings on the line. Thirty four straight for the Trojans to nineteen for the Longhorns. The game is great thus far in the third quarter. Lead changes are plenty. Exciting play on the field. But lets talk about something serious: who has the better cheerleaders? The Horns like Jessica or the Trojans ladies?

Great game but who cares who wins it? Texas does. Final 41 to 38.

This is a funny photo gallery with vintage Santa photographs. In this one, Santa looks like he might have had a few too many egg nogs before taking the stage. These are funny shots of kids who would rather not tell Santa what they want for Christmas. As a parent, I cannot tell you what possesses us to put the kids on Santa’s lap when they don’t want to be there, but trust me we are possessed to do so.

Google offers several options for searching. One of the primary ones is “safe search” that should filter out adult content. That progresses up to “safe search off” that should give all results. There is also a moderate level of google search filtering that most people might prefer. If you are looking for nude pictures of say Drew Barrymore (no unsafe link provided here … if that is what you desire and you don’t know Drew personally, you can figure out how to find them by using this post of course), then you would want to turn safe search off. This side called S ** T – O – Meter (missing letters are L and U, not H and I! We are a family friendly site). By comparing the ratio of safe to unsafe searches, they propose that you can conclude how promiscuous a subject is. Of course, I always have safe search off and self filter. I hope my children choose the opposite until they are a bit older. So I am not sure that this really tells the whole story, but I guess it does tell something about the clientelle of a given subject matter. Interesting.

Two other points:
If this were my site I would consider having the name at the top of a search clickable to the google search result for that subject. I would also see if I could pull in the “suggested correct spelling” feature that I so like in google. If you spell a name wrong, it might suggest the proper name. Drew Barriemore might be an angel only because one Baptist preacher looked for her with safe search on. All of the Methodist’s with their safe search off knew how to spell her name. (btw: just kidding about the religious groups used here, you can fill in your own) or disregard if that is offensive.