Saying Goodbye to Transparencies and Roundies

and goodbye to pitiful SEO, too...

After several years of experimenting with css rounded corners and transparency and the various perplexing cross-browser issues, I've redesigned this website and even moved it over to a new platform. Gone are the strange hoops I needed to jump through to add new stories to this site.

Here's one last glimpse of the original Geek on the Loose:

I've also put a lot of effort into trying to follow good SEO principles on the new site. It may not have been obvious, but the old site was created before I had studied up on SEO and probably violated every major principle. It was a real SEO train-wreck. It will be very interesting to find out if I've learned anything or not.

Looking Forward to HTML5

I've seen a lot in the geek news lately about HTML5. I've tried to get a book, but none are available for a few more months, and O'Reilly doesn't even have a "rough cuts" book yet.

Today, via DZone, I discovered this super nifty HTML5 sketch pad demo.

I'm really looking forward to the widespread use of HTML5, especially since Adobe can't be bothered to make their Flex Builder work in Linux.

CSS Opacity Tip

I just found a nice simple list of basic css tips, and right away found one tip to put to use in this blog: opacity. I initially struggled with getting the opacity to look right in this design, and thought I had it solved, but now I see that there are other older browsers I wasn't accommodating. If only all browsers behaved the same...

.class {
    opacity: 0.7;
    filter:alpha(opacity=70);
    -ms-filter:alpha(opacity=70);
    -moz-opacity:0.7;
    -khtml-opacity:0.7;
}

I had the first two, opacity and filter:alpha, but didn't know about the other three.

Learned something new today!