I’m using Google Maps on their ‘Directions’ page to provide customized driving directions from the customer’s location to Floor Store. I’m using javascript to asemble the url based on form input. If the user has javascript disabled, the form submits to a map view of Floor Store’s location. Not too bad.

Some of the javascript techniques they are using are really slick (the ability to reorder your list items by dragging and dropping them into place comes to mind). They really are a great example of the current state of web apps. We’ve come a long way, baby!


<div class="row">
<div class="left">
<label for="fname">First Name</label>
</div>
<div class="right">
<input name="fname" id="fname" type="text" />
</div>
</div>

Which is then styled with something like:

.row{
clear:both;
width:300px;
}
.left{
display:block;
float:left;
width:100px;
text-align:right;
}
.right{
display:block;
float:right;
width:180px;
text-align:left;
}


Looks like a table in disguise to me.

So what’s another option? Well, I use something very similar, however I choose to use the elements that are already available. Using the form element in place of the row class used above and seperating form inputs by <p> tags we end up with something like this for the CSS…

And this for XHTML…

<form name="myform" id="myform" action="submitpage.htm" method="post">
<p>
<label for="fname">First Name</label>
<input name="fname" type="text" id="fname" size="20" />
</p>
<p>
<label for="lname">Last Name</label>
<input name="lname" id="lname" type="text" />
</p>
<p id="controls">
<input name="Reset" id="submit" type="reset" value="Reset" />
<input name="submit" id="submit" type="submit" value="submit" />
</p>
</form>


I threw in an extra class for the last paragraph to make the buttons line up on the right side of the form. Works for me. How about you?

Now run and go make unsolicited phone calls to the poor folks who haven’t put their names on the list.

However, Bloglines uses the attribute “HTMLURL” for the url and “TITLE” for the name of the site. So what ends up happening is WordPress imports a long list of links with no url and no name. In order to get around this you must edit the file link-parse-opml.php which is located in the wp-admin folder. At the top of this document change ‘link_url’ => ‘URL’ to ‘link_url’ => ‘HTMLURL’ and ‘link_name’=>’TEXT’ to ‘link_name’=>’TITLE’…or update your WordPress installation to 1.21 as they seemed to have added options for both scenarios.

Regardless importing my blogroll in this way is much better than using Bloglines’ provided javascript. I tried that for about a day and it significantly slowed the loading of my site down (which is slow already due to my hosting companies poor PHP performance).

By the way, does anyone know of a plugin/hack/whatever to add bulk delete to the link management section of Wordpress?

It’s 1:00 am and I just finished painting some of the living room. I’ve also just seen that Mozilla is releasing a v1.0 preview of Firefox tomorrow (today). WOOHOO! Seems like some new features have crept in from 0.9.3.

Check out SpreadFirefox.com for the details and how they hope to log 100,000(edit: 1,000,000) downloads in 10 days! Sounds like a tall order.

For the above image I used a picture of the Mona Lisa. After heavily filtering, resizing and tweaking this is the result. Am I infringing on copyright? (The Mona Lisa probably isn’t copyrighted, but that is beside the point)

There’s a great discussion going on over at mezzloblue on this very subject. Dave’s post Design Theft: Crossing the Line is generating a variety of ideas concerning the nature of copyright.

Personally, I remembered Sherrie Levine and her work which involves direct challenges to copyright. Also, many artists incorporate copyrighted images into their work. Techniques such as painting photos or newspaper clippings into the canvas (Robert Rauschenberg, etc.) as well as some collage artists would probably be considered copyright infringement by some of the commenters here.

I think people might be overlooking some facts about image copyright. I’m not a lawyer, but from what I have read copyrighted images can be used without the author’s permission if the use falls under “fair use.” What “fair use” is is somewhat hazy, but aspects of it allow the image to be used/copied if the use does not affect the author’s ability to market their image.

Another aspect of “fair use” is how much of the orginal work is being copied. It the example at mezzoblue, the 150px image shown could have been a crop from a 3500px panorama. Sampling this small section would most likely come under “fair use.”

Finally, in the example case presented at mezzoblue we are also dealing with extreme data filtering. The original image data is mathmatically altered by the artist to a final form where the original no longer exists. This certainly is not copyright infringement any more than writing this comment is. (I didn’t come up with all this stuff myself. I researched copyright law, representative artists, etc.. I then used my mind to process the data available into this post)

Thus, the style switcher in the top right hand corner ( for the time being) will soon be in effect offering media interactivity beyond your wildest dreams.

For the time being clicking the switcher links will present you with an annoying javascript alert box. However, soon…very soon you will be rewarded with an instant page transformation to the design of your choice. Keep watching

Update

The Style Switcher is now active (the meditation skin is still not linked). The snowy and sparse stylings should be working. Give them a shot! The setting will be stored in a cookie and recalled on subsequent visits to the site.