HTML/CSS

If you know JavaScript but have yet to make the leap to unobtrusive JavaScript, read on. I'll demonstrate how to upgrade a traditional DHTML rollover to an unobtrusive script and then to a script that leverages the Yahoo! User Interface Library's (YUI).

The PHP Developer Tools Project reached a major milestone this week with the version 1.0 release of PDT. I had recently installed the all-in-one Europa/PDT release and received errors when attempting to update via the Update Manager—something about being unable to unzip a package. Today, however, everything seems fine and when I reviewed Help -> Software Updates -> Manage Configuration -> PDT Feature, it showed version 1.0 as installed.

By now you're probably thinking that I'm a Yahoo! evangelist. But who wouldn't want to tell other web developers about all of the great web developer resources that Yahoo!'s released? I know it may sound sad, but I just about wet myself when I found the YUI Grid Builder.

YUI 2.3 was released and sports several new components plus improvements to existing features. Most notable in my opinion is the addition of RTE or rich text editor. The RTE looks nice and is extensible, just like TinyMCE editor.

Also of note is the addition of YUI Base CSS which extends YUI Reset and Font. Base CSS brings back basic size and spacing styles for headings, paragraphs, lists, and other HTML elements that are stripped by YUI Reset. Base CSS provides a great set of styles that look great and are easy to apply.

Yogi Berra once said "it's deja vu all over again", and he was right. For each HTML/CSS template I build I find myself dealing with the same issues. How do I clear everything from that floated sidebar? How do I fix the margin and padding differences between IE and Firefox?

I recently tried the Yahoo User Interface (YUI) Library's Reset, Fonts, and Grids CSS and I'm here to tell you that YUI makes many of those CSS deja vu tasks things of the past.