Blog Post

by Kevin Yank

This post has 18 responses so far

1. Monomomono Says:
   December 5th, 2007 at 5:02 am

   None of the reference pages I’ve checked properly print in Firefox 2.0.0.11. All the text is cut off on the right hand side as if there is no right margin. It prints well in IE6.

    
2. Kevin Yank Says:
   December 5th, 2007 at 6:58 am

   Thanks for the feedback, Monomomono!

   I can’t seem to reproduce the problem you’re seeing. The pages seem to print perfectly here in Firefox 2.0.0.11. Is there a specific page or pages you are having trouble with that I could try?

    
3. Monomomono Says:
   December 6th, 2007 at 2:39 am

   All of them. :> Say, for example I go to:

   http://reference.sitepoint.com/css/selectorgrouping

   I print preview in landscape, and half the “y” in apply in the first sentence is cut off. Strange behavior. Perhaps it is because I’m using “Portable” Firefox. So I may not have a true replica of a traditional Firefox installation. Sorry to stir up trouble. :>

    
4. CreedFeed Says:
   December 6th, 2007 at 2:55 am

   Prints fine for me in both landscape and portrait for me in IE7 and Firefox 2.0.0.11 on Windows XP SP2

    
5. mariov96 Says:
   December 7th, 2007 at 7:25 am

   Looks good but two suggestions:

   Provide a launch-able sample of the snippet being expressed so the user can confirm the behavior in their own browser/blend.

   Provide a verbose view of the support browser matrix. As new browsers come on to the scene users might like to use the sample (see above) and record their findings and thus help keep the matrix relevant.

   Otherwise thanks for improving my toolset.

   -Mario

    
6. joybells Says:
   December 7th, 2007 at 7:37 am

   Looking good. However, under Vendor-Specific Properties I find:
   -moz- Opera Software
   -o- Opera Software

   Really?

    
7. Caterwomtious Says:
   December 7th, 2007 at 8:04 am

   First impressions: Brilliant. This will be an essential every-day reference.

   What might make it better?

   1. As Mario suggests, examples of the various property values on a page that uses them so that the effect can be seen visually as well as described. Link to this page from the existing example box, perhaps?

   2. If my brief look around, in the compatibility section, I found a reference to the IE 3-pixel jog. The effect was described, but there was no mention of the well-known workaround, and the bug was not given its common name making it harder to Google for more info. Information on problems is useful, but not half as useful as it would be it there were also information on solutions.

   3. One problem I came across recently is the issue of legend elements not wrapping. I used this scenario as a test-case, and the CSS reference failed. The white-space property doesn’t mention this issue. I might expect to be able to look up element-specific problems indexed by the element name. Perhaps that is planned for the HTML reference your graphic hints at but it’s specifically CSS information I’m looking for, so a by-HTML-element index would be useful to support the by-CSS-property index.

    
8. AussieJohn Says:
   December 7th, 2007 at 8:47 am

   Just had a brief look through it, I won’t make any suggestions, I believe some of the most important onces have been addressed already. Looking forward to its progression to live, I can see myself using this on a regular basis!

    
9. 0racle Says:
   December 7th, 2007 at 11:40 am

   Hello, I have been signed up for the newsletters for a while and also bought the Build Your Own Web Site The Right Way Using HTML & CSS book. But I missed out on the forums so I cannot gain access. So.. I am begging to get into reference.sitepoint.com .

   Any chance? Thanks

    
10. JRM Says:
    December 8th, 2007 at 12:48 am

    Like Oracle, I have bought through the SitePoint site and have been signed up for the newsletters for months. But I too have not signed up to the forum.

    Ahem… any chance of being admitted to reference.sitepoint.com ?

    Thanks

     
11. kat7 Says:
    December 9th, 2007 at 6:26 am

    Love this … great job and thanks for all your effort!

    It is bookmarked to probably use daily or at least when I can’t find a specific in my books from sitepoint.

    Why does the internet search seem so much easier :)

     
12. Kevin Yank Says:
    December 11th, 2007 at 10:34 am

    Monomomono,

    I print preview in landscape, and half the “y” in apply in the first sentence is cut off. Strange behavior.

    Any chance you haven’t set the ‘Scale’ drop-down menu in the Print Preview window to ‘Shrink to fit’?

     
13. Kevin Yank Says:
    December 11th, 2007 at 10:37 am

    mariov96,

    Provide a launch-able sample of the snippet being expressed so the user can confirm the behavior in their own browser/blend.

    This is definitely on our to-do list.

    Provide a verbose view of the support browser matrix. As new browsers come on to the scene users might like to use the sample (see above) and record their findings and thus help keep the matrix relevant.

    There is already a complete browser support matrix in the ‘Compatibility’ section of the page (scroll down to see it on most pages). Did you have something different in mind?

    Thanks for your feedback!

     
14. Kevin Yank Says:
    December 11th, 2007 at 10:43 am

    Caterwomtious,

    Thanks for your detailed feedback!

    2. If my brief look around, in the compatibility section, I found a reference to the IE 3-pixel jog. The effect was described, but there was no mention of the well-known workaround, and the bug was not given its common name making it harder to Google for more info. Information on problems is useful, but not half as useful as it would be it there were also information on solutions.

    I definitely agree! Hopefully user-contributed notes on pages like this will allow us to add references to common solutions/workarounds where they are missing.

    3. One problem I came across recently is the issue of legend elements not wrapping. I used this scenario as a test-case, and the CSS reference failed. The white-space property doesn’t mention this issue. I might expect to be able to look up element-specific problems indexed by the element name. Perhaps that is planned for the HTML reference your graphic hints at but it’s specifically CSS information I’m looking for, so a by-HTML-element index would be useful to support the by-CSS-property index.

    Figuring out where to document issues that lie at the intersection of HTML and CSS is a tricky one. Once we have the HTML Reference in place, it should be easier to see where things like this have slipped through the cracks. We will be relying in part on notes contributed by the user community to help us with this.

     
15. mariov96 Says:
    December 11th, 2007 at 10:47 am

    @Kevin Yank
    The compatibility section is a step in right direction. But how about the more obscure browsers like iphone, netscape, aol(ie blends), etc?

    Also add a link at the brief matrix to jump to the full version.

    If a element is partially implemented its buggy but if its not implemented at all is it unsupported or buggy?

    Keep up the good work!

     
16. mariov96 Says:
    December 11th, 2007 at 10:51 am

    Kevin,
    One more thing. You are missing the sitepoint favicon ;)

     
17. 0racle Says:
    December 11th, 2007 at 11:03 am

    Hi Kevin. Any chance of getting in before the begining of the year? I wanted to do some stuff over the holiday break. I’ll be glad to comment on any bugs or help you guys need.

     
18. Kevin Yank Says:
    December 11th, 2007 at 4:16 pm

    @mariov96,

    The compatibility section is a step in right direction. But how about the more obscure browsers like iphone, netscape, aol(ie blends), etc?

    In time, we’d like to include as much compatibility information as we can in the reference. What you see today is a starting point that we believed we could compile in a reasonable time frame.

    I would suggest that if you know of an obscure or derivative browser that has some interesting compatibility issue (e.g. if the iPhone browser differs from Safari 3 in a significant way), you might consider leaving a comment to this effect on the relevant page of the reference. We can then roll this information into the main reference page.

    Also add a link at the brief matrix to jump to the full version.

    This is an excellent idea! We’ll definitely to this.

    If a element is partially implemented its buggy but if its not implemented at all is it unsupported or buggy?

    We use four support levels in our reference:

    • None - the feature is unsupported
    • Buggy - the feature has some level of support, but is buggy or non-standards-compliant
    • Partial - the feature is partially supported, and the functionality that is supported is standards-compliant
    • Full - the feature is fully supported according to the current W3C recommendation

    One more thing. You are missing the sitepoint favicon ;)

    Good catch!

     

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