Since for some reason I can’t find a good project management program written in PHP, I’m going with a Google Spreadsheet, shared with whoever is on the project with me. Archaic, yes. But I need something so that I can be organized.
Today is apparently Web Developer Tools day.
Ever copy and paste from Work or Outlook, put it online, and have someone call you screaming about “weird characters”?
This is because Microsoft like to “help” you output nice text. Down side is, it comes along with a copy and paste.
Clean that bad markup with HTML Tidy! Paste in a URL, copy and paste text, or upload a file, and outputs neatly structured HTML goodness.
Browsers bug me. Compensating for the differences between them is always a chore, and can consume hours.
Enter Reset CSS and Rebuild CSS.
Eric Meyer basically sets every HTML tag to nothing.
Blueprint basically builds it back up, standardized.
Importing these two files at the top of your CSS, like so:
@import url('styles/reset.css');
@import url('styles/rebuild.css');
basically allows your to start from scratch.
This is not to say it’ll be perfect. However, I’ve noticed far less issues stemming from cross-browser incompatibility when using these tools.
I advocate compiling these 2 sheets with a personal “Master Sheet” that will allow you to start, for example, with consistent Header Tag styles. Personally, I like to set my font-sizes for my header tags the same across all sites I do, so that I know exactly what sizes they will be.
Stuff like this saves me time on every project, either making me more money freelancing, or allowing me to get ahead of projects at work.
I stumbled across a great utility for creating true CSV files. A client had a need for a quote-enclosed CSV file, and Excel for some reason does not do this. Instead, it only encloses those fields that actually have commas in them, so that it doesn’t delimit by that comma. Works fine, but some systems require ALL fields to be quote-enclosed.
Check out the linkage goodness below.. He’s got a few other things on the site that I didn’t check out, but his “Text Write Program” is excellent – just make sure you enable macros. Has a little set up screen and everything!
For some reason, this is a pain in the neck to find and I always have to end up copying and pasting some list with extra crap in it. For once and for all, here it is.
