Monthly Archives: September 2005

Why use CSS-based layouts?

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I was prepping for a Dreamweaver class a couple months ago and was fiddling around with the practice files that came as part of the course material. There is a whole lesson devoted to using html tables as a tool to do page layouts. This poses an issue for me.

My primary job for the last six years or so has been to create web sites. It has been about three years since I did a web site that relied on tables for layout. Simply, there is no really compelling reason to continue to use tables for web page layouts anymore. Further, there are solid reasons to stop.

So, I reworked their basic practice file to use xhtml and css instead of html and tables. Here’s a comparison of the two versions.

$100 laptop from MIT Media Labs

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A $100 windup-powered laptop targeted at children in developing nations?

Children in developing nations? More like, everyone in the U.S. For $100, I’ll bet there would be masses of people around the globe lined up to get them.

Granted, it won’t have all the features of what we normally think of as a laptop, but it does look very interesting.

This reminds me of a story about how Ford envisioned manufacturing a car that the average worker could afford–before he even realized how he was going to do it. I like it. Set a price and some basic features and figure out how to do it, even though it may seem ridiculous.

I’m looking for a good text editing program for Windows, for coding

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As many of you know, I’ve been a Mac user for a good many years. As such, when I feel the need to do some coding (for example: xhtml, css, php, or javascript) by hand, I would just fire up BBEdit and have at it. Let me also say, BBEdit is a ridiculously great program. You probably already knew that.

Anway, next month I get to teach a course on XHTML, but it is going to be in a Windows computer lab.

And, I will not use Notepad, as some have already suggested. Call me spoiled, but I like being able to have more than one document open at once and, gosh-darn it, I like syntax coloring. I’m going to guess the students in the class will appreciate it as well.

So, I need a text-editor program that—

  • works reliably on Windows 2000
  • is free (at least for educational use)
  • allows multiple documents to be open at once
  • does syntax highlighting for xhtml and css
  • has an interface that is easy for a new coder to make sense of

Any recommendations?

I just downloaded jEdit, because Adam Richardson has given it some praise in the past. It seems…well, it seems nice. Not quite BBEdit, but if I were stuck on Windows, at this point it might just be my top pick for a coding program.

(I’m probably really irritating those of you who program on Windows by now. Really, you should start using a Mac. You’ll love life more.)