Expression Engine discussion forum - make a sticky topic

I just wanted to make a sticky out of one topic on the tweet.IM service discussion forum, and found that it’s ridiculously difficult to locate this option. After quick googling I have found the solution and I thought it would be better to highlight it in case I forget.

Leopard global ‘Open file with’ setting

Apple Mac OS X 10.5, nicely called Leopard, is one of the best operating systems I had chance to work with. The others are Tiger and Panther, 10.4 and 10.3 respectively. You see a pattern here, and although I am very fond of XP and actually kind of like Vista, I’m not an MS fan. But I acknowledge the pros and cons of each of them. One irritating thing Leopard has is that when you select a document to open with a specific application, then even though you choose to always open it with that app, it doesn’t propagate to all documents of that kind. Unlike in systems from Redmond, you have to change that property in the document’s info. I’ll show you where it is.

Simple yet perfect 2 column layout

Your probably have seen the Matthew James Taylor perfect liquid layouts. They are really good and I recommend them, but sometimes they are just overcomplicated for the task. This blog template uses a simplified version of 2 column layout that I came up with while working on it. It’s lazy compatible and here’s how it looks like.

Expression Engine and Google friendly links

We all know that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is very important. When I am looking for something on the web, I generally don’t ask around or look through link directories — I do a quick search on Google. So the higher something appears in the search list, the better for that page’s author. Cause I’m most likely to click that, not the one that is 20 pages later. Therefore, it is important how you present your content and how you link to it (because Google collects links and ranks the content). Expression Engine (EE) can’t do much about your content, but has by default, a very nasty, search-engine unfriendly way of creating links. Let’s fix it.

Expression Engine images in RSS feed

Expression Engine (EE) is running this blog, and I have to say — EE is so much better than Wordpress. First of all, the control panel is so intuitive. Secondly, making templates is so simple. Thirdly, writing plugins is so obvious, that I really have no idea why Wordpress is still the blogging platform. But then again, the crowd is often wrong... Anyway, one irritating and not much documented bug is that EE doesn’t show images or any formatting when using default RSS feed template. Here’s how to fix it.

Be smart with your CSS

Whether you agree or not, Cascading Style Sheets have become one of the key elements of modern websites. HTML was said to be just a container, possibly semantically organized, for your data. In fact, some people would love to see HTML be like XML, and I am one of them. The distinction between raw data (XML) and presentation layer (XSLT) gives you flexibility and makes data display simple. But for starters, it’s like shooting a fly with a canon. So take good care of your CSS, or you’ll end up in a big mess of data and styling. Here’s one idea I came up with while making this blog.

Lazy compatibility

Preparing a website to be compatible (and backward-compatible) with all the different browsers and their versions is a pain. It literally destroys everything you designed and developed, because it often requires changes in the HTML, clutters CSS with new special cases etc. and generally forces you to compromise. I claim this unnecessary — I claim you could spend less time and resources on it (and money) and it would not hurt your image as much as you think.

Welcome

This post is my first one on this blog about lazy d — design and development. How to make a lot of stuff with small amount of time? Don’t create yourself more problems than you already have. Or in other words — make things simple.