Kitty&Wool's Upgrading... WordPress Time!

After much deliberation, I have decided to change my blog over to the wonderfully powerful WordPress! This is mainly for two reasons -

1. Blogger won't delete your blog (They even deleted their own blog once... http://bit.ly/6zURlr)
   
2. WordPress is a CMS (Content Management System) and I want to experiment with how it can be integrated into my website - http://www.danielryland.co.uk
3. It also displays some really good statistics on your blog, telling you how many views per day your getting.

OK, maybe that was 3 reasons but the first one was a bit of a joke.

So from now on, Kitty&Wool with be WordPress-ing instead of Blogger-ing and can be found here -

http://cityandwool.wordpress.com/

P.S. Notice Kitty&Wool has now become City&Wool... this, I hope, will become my professional brand.

Browser Compatibility - Are Your Sites Cross Compatible With Other Browsers?!

Browser compatibility is a big thing which can sometimes be over-looked ...and makes me ask the question - 'Why can't Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari, Opera and all the other browsers just be friends?!'

I'm probably going to be waiting quite a while for my question to be answered so in the meantime I'm just going to have to check that my site works on the main 5 browsers which are - Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari and Opera.

Thanks to Browsershot.org, which checks browser compatibility and cross platform browser, I've managed to check my site to make sure its cross compatible with more than just the 5 above and older versions of each browsers. I also went into the trouble of downloading Google Chrome, Safari 4 and Opera 10 to test the whole site works.

...Now comes that bad news... All the layout are fine but my Javascript gallery doesn't work in Safari 4! So this is one element to look at. Another point that is different across the 5 browsers is the way it deals with the Javascript attached to the 'Remove Style' button.

Using the same code, here are the outcomes of each browser. As you can see, Firefox and Opera get it right!

Speakers Corner Website - LIVE

It's been two days of solid work but I has finally paid off, and I'm really happy with the final product.

My website was designed for Speakers Corner -

'A bar on the corner of Penrhyn and Abergele roads in Colwyn Bay (just west of The Central pub), Speakers Corner offers a wide selection of smoothies, coffees, juices and alcoholic drinks, as well as cakes & hot ciabattas, art exhibitions and an eclectic mix of great bands of an evening.'

Below are images that link to the XHTML pages. All pages are valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS Level 2.1 as checked by The W3C Validation Service.

My Javascript elements include the following -

• Change font size (Small, Medium or Large)
• Change style (Removes the linked style sheet and replaces with background colour blue and font colour yellow to make it easier to read, see last image)
• Photo gallery (Simply photo gallery using Javascript display a larger version of the thumbnail when clicked on)
• Lightbox (Added to enlarge images on the 'Music' page)

The Lightbox element was added as an extra.

Creative criticism welcomed!

YouTube Now in 3D!

Maybe it's the fact that I haven't spotted the little drop down menu on some of YouTube's 3D videos, but YouTube have recently been experimenting with all sorts of different methods of getting 3D, from the Red/Cyan Glasses: Full Colour to Cross-eyed! In spotting this only a few weeks ago, I designed a simple test of my own 3D Cross-eyed feature!