xhtml – Page 2 – Hand Coding

Brainbench HTML 4.0 Master

April 13, 2003August 13, 2005 Ashley Bischoff6 Comments

On the advice of a recruiter, I took the certification exam for HTML at Brainbench (Brainbench is an online tech-testing company). The test was 40 multiple-choice questions (three minutes allowed per question) and it took me about an hour.

The test was $50 but I passed! They don’t reveal the actual score and instead give an aggregate score out of 5.0. They rate 2.75 or higher as passing while 4.0 or higher is passing at the Mastrer Level. I scored 4.53, which I’m very pleased with.

However, I’m not sure about how to integrate this into my resume. I could add it to the Educaion section, I could add it as a bullet to the Profession Profile section, or I could add a separate Certifications section. Any suggestions there? And, if the latter (adding a Certifications section), where would you add that in relation to the other sections?

v-2: Now with XHTML and CSS

November 11, 2002August 13, 2005 Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

As mentioned on Zeldman, the v-2 Organization has redesigned with XHTML and CSS. What impressed me, though, was how the of the widescreen photo at the top of the page reacts as the browser window is resized.

With a little thought, it’s not hard to figure out how they did it. But, it’s not a techniqure I had seen before.

<input> within a <form>

September 11, 2002August 13, 2005 Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

I was validating a page today when I got the error:

Error: element “input” not allowed here; possible cause is an inline element containing a block-level element

At first I was confused, but a Google search for that error message quickly pointed me in the right direction. Apparently, <form> must contain a block-level element. And, as <input> is just an inline element, directly enclosing it with a <form> tag wasn’t allowed.

So, I enclosed the tags within <form> by a <div>, and the page now validates as XHTML 1.1. Standards are good :).

Lycos Europe & XHTML

July 22, 2002August 13, 2005 Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

From Zeldman:

Look, Ma, no tables: Lycos Europe will soon move to a new layout that validates as XHTML 1.0 Transitional and uses CSS for layout. (Netscape 4 users will get a plain text version with no formatting.) Can a standards-compliant Google be far behind?

Very nice.

Crimson Editor – 3.45 beta

July 18, 2002August 13, 2005 Ashley Bischoff7 Comments

Cool, I was pleased to discover that Crimson Editor v3.45 beta has been released today. For those not aware, Crimson Editor is a freeware source-code/text editor for Windows.

It may not quite be at the level of (say) TextPad, but TextPad isn’t free either. While I don’t believe that shareware is immorral, I do consider free software to better imbody the hacker ethos. I regard Crimson Editor as the current champ of source-code/text editors for Windows. Some features:

Multi-level Undo/Redo
Change-detection. That is, if a file changes on disk “out from under the feet” of the editor, the editor prompts the user whether he/she would like to reload the file.
Syntax Highlighting: HTML, CSS, C/C++, JavaScript, and so many other languages (even Python and LaTeX).
Auto-indent
Matching-parens highlighting. This is extremely handy for multi-level if-statements, for instance.

As far as what’s new in the 3.45 beta, I found this list of features to be included in 3.45 Final on the messageboard, and presumably the items that are listed as “done” are included in the beta.