By nttcPayday Loans

Tables with background images, Outlook 2007 and 2010, and what that means for your weekend

Posted on in HTML and CSS.

God, I hate HTML emails. Not in general, just building them. The state of HTML email in late 2012 is basically a snapshot of what life would be like if vendors had their way. Every standard goes out of the window. You have to account for virtually every different email client not just currently available, but going back a decade. Every client does things in its own way. Some people read their email on the Web. Others swear by their various email clients. Then there are the corporate users – the people using Outlook in its various incarnations.

Generally speaking, when it comes to rendering HTML, modern web-based email is absolutely fine. Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Hotmail certainly have flaws, and nothing’s perfect, but it seems to me that the best way to read your email is using one of these services via the web. But I’m sure you know this, and it’s not what I need to talk about here. I want to talk about background images, tables, patterned backgrounds, and Microsoft Outlook 2007 – 2010. (more…)

Posted on in HTML and CSS.

Are you on Facebook? Why?

Posted on in Life Online.

“Hey, are you on Facebook?”

A common question back in the day. Facebook, while not exactly brand new and exciting, was transitioning from a fancy website that people you know would use, to an essential website that you and everyone you knew simply had to be a part of. Not being on Facebook would mean missing out on events, not seeing what’s new in the lives of people you haven’t seen in years, missing conversations between groups of friends that you really wouldn’t have minded being a part of. Boy, I’d better get on this Facebook, you’d think. I have to see what I’m missing out on.

You’d sign up, find people you knew, add them as friends, and feel a little spark of joy whenever another friend request is accepted (admit it, you still do). After a couple of days you started visiting the site increasingly regularly; the news feed was full of what your friends are up to.

Amanda’s got a new dress, and she’s pretty happy about it. Dave’s kid just took his first steps. Olive isn’t too happy about having to work late tonight. Andrew’s just eaten a huge pile of pancakes, and he’s proud of this. It’s minutiae, of course, but that’s what life is, and how friendships are made. Of course there’s nothing inherently interesting about what Andrew had for breakfast. Maybe the pancake thing ties in with a conversation we had recently, maybe not. I’m interested because it’s something he’s done, and felt like sharing with his friends. The friendship itself is what gives these posts value.

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Posted on in Life Online.

An image with a background-image, which was generated using PHP

Posted on in HTML and CSS.

One of our clients is running a competition. If you win the competition, you get a prize. The prize is going to change from week to week, and we don’t want to be editing templates every time the prize changes. We want our image of the prize to sit in a nice frame, with a picture of a pig overlapping it (don’t ask). So the viewer will see the following (in order from bottom to top):

1. Image
2. Frame
3. Piggy

I wanted the generated code to be as clutter-free as possible, and I didn’t want to add any extra HTML elements. I wanted to do this with just an <img /> element.

Basically, we want this:

(more…)

Posted on in HTML and CSS.

American Juggalo

Posted on in Life Online.

juggalos

Insane Clown Posse only really popped up on my radar after their song “Miracles” gained some Internet fame, mostly because of the wonderful lyric “fucking magnets, how do they work?”.

For a lot of people though ICP fandom represents a whole lifestyle. They call themselves Juggalos. Juggaloism can best be described as what happens when a white rap/metal crossover band accidentally creates a religion and acquires tens of thousands of devout followers around America. They have a reputation for being loud, drunk, obnoxious, and generally a bit trailer-trash. As easy as it is to categorise people in such a way, it seems too broad a generalisation to apply to so many people. After all, if this is a genuine culture then there must be many different facets to it – you can’t judge a whole population of people by the actions of a few.

(more…)

Posted on in Life Online.