I’ve been going through some of the CSS at my new workplace and trying to clean up, sort out, and compress about 80 stylesheets (no joke).

This is the aftermath of Java developers developing CSS. I can’t blame them, I wouldn’t do much better developing Java, but still.. it’s good for a giggle.

My favorites so far are:

1. A stylesheet with one selector in it, so specific that is only included at the top of two pages
2. A stylesheet with the comments /* CSS STYLESHEET */ at the top of it… (really? what tipped you off, the .css extension??

It’s going to be a long month…

Keep the computer in a high traffic area
If your computer is in a spot where you walk past frequently in your home, your kids are less likely to do something they shouldn’t on there. Keep it in the kitchen, or another busy space in your home.. preferably not a room that has a door that closes, and definitely NOT in their bedrooms.

Google
I set up both of my kids with Gmail accounts, via IMAP & a desktop client. Gmail allows you to forward a copy of all incoming messages to another account, so anyone who sends an email to my kids, is sending me one also. If anything fishy comes up.. I will know.. fast. Because I set it up and they access it via a desktop client, the kids don’t actually know their own gmail password, and can’t log into the account and change the settings.

Set Google as their homepage. If your son or daughter is young, use iGoogle to put his or her favorite bookmarks right there on their start page so they can easily click through.

Google Accounts has an option to filter out unsafe content on your account, and you can also check their Google History to see what sites they’ve been going to.

Keep in mind, my kids are young and have just started using the internet… as they get older I’m sure they will be smart enough to get around this stuff.. but for now.. at least I know I’m protecting them when they don’t know enough to protect themselves.

Graceland Cemetary, Chicago IL

**Generally** speaking, the lower down a selector is in a stylesheet, the more weight it gets, and it will override anything that was listed before it…

But what most people don’t know (or forget often…) is…

If you’re redefining something, the way you write your new CSS selector should be at least as specific as the one that was previously defined.

Examples:

You have a div defined as #header with a list of links, and then you define all links nested in list items on a page.


#header li a { color: red; }
li a { color: blue; }


The anchor tags in #header would remain red.. since what you defined was not specific enough, but other links on the page would inherit the blue color.

And if you had a list nested inside of #header with a class of “menu”….


#header li a { color: red; }
.menu a { color: blue; }


They would sill remain colored red, because you didn’t make them as specific as the pre-defined links.

The correct way to recolor the links is displayed below:


#header li a { color: red; }
#header .menu li a { color: blue; }


I hope this wasn’t confusing.. If it was.. post questions below and I’ll try to answer them swiftly.

Took this last fall, but wanted to submit it to a photo meme so I’m uploading it now.