CSS Layout Creation: Day 2

I'm beginning to think 'CSS Layout' wasn't a good title - there's quite a bit more to this project than just that. The second day was a good reflection of this blend between design and problem solving.

On the CSS side of things, I tackled the comment form and finished placing the rounded corners on the main content box. Then, not yet having the final graphics, I used a temporary graphic in the header and was able to place the profile information that each journalist will have. Profile information is a perfect match for a definition list, so I used a <dl> and then tagged each <dt> and <dd> with a unique id so I could gain complete control over the placement of each pair. I should also note that my comment form also uses a definition list for its markup - I've favored that approach ever since reading through the discussions on Dan Cederholm's SimpleQuiz Archives. Dan also covers it in his book, Web Standards Solutions, which I highly recommend.

Later in the day I received the final graphics, so I was able to start placing some final elements in the header area. I also opened the page in IE 6 for the first time and was fairly pleased with how well it fared. I did have to apply a negative margin of 45% to the left content column - still not sure why since its width is 52%... Don't have time yet to consider why or if there's a better solution.

The rest of my day was devoted to converting my layout to a ColdFusion module so that every journalist page can simply call the module, passing only the journalist's name and letting the code handle finding all the necessary info and including it in the page. I decided on an xml file for the list of entries, videos, and other info like a Flickr account name. Each entry will be a self-contained html document. The specifics on videos and photos are still fuzzy.

Phew. Next: create individual css files for each journalist, create the homepage, and finalize the information structure. And hopefully have it ready for beta testing... Crazy.