I managed to muddle through Scott Mitchell's tutorials for master page usage. I have a new test page up and running, which integrates some basic css positioning and a test master page. This page is a work in progress, so it will change dramatically as my skills with CSS improve.

I discovered that IE 7 and Firefox pad the <form> tag differently, so I had to add the following to my css file: 

Happy coding!

I'm concentrating on developing an external style sheet for my "soon to be redesigned"^* web site. I am attemping to move away from Frontpage 2003. I have some expermentation to show for all of my research. Check out the sandbox. I've attempted writing three column style sheets, but I have too much to learn and I want to get on with content development, not web site design. I am, after all, a C++ programmer with some C# skills and CLI skills.

I recently found Matthew Taylor's web site, which offers several layouts and Eric Costello's personal web site that offers some excellent examples. The layout you see in the sandbox is modified from glish. I plan to experiment with Taylor's three column layout, as it offers some nice effects I'd like to implement. I found a technique for using lists to emulate tabbed menus on Taylor's site. It appears that The Telegraph and Fox News use this technique and extend it to a two row, stacked menu with extensions. I like this technique because it is lightweight text with no graphics to download and it has nice mouse over effects. Taylor has a display page that illustrates the use of styles with tabbed menus.

^* I should trademark this phrase, or patent it as a mindless content filler expression.

I've given up doing any useful work on WinROTT until the Olympics are over. I get started, and then the cheering on the TV becomes a major distraction.

I have been able to read quite a bit from "Learning Web Design". When I first opened the book, I felt the first couple of chapters were too basic. I forced myself to read them anyway, and I am glad I did. I picked up a lot of nuanced behavior, particularly concerning XHTML that I did not know. I would have happily continued to use old or deprecated syntax.

I am also beginning to understand some of the negative comments I've read about Frontpage. I've been using Frontpage 2003 for the main portion of my web site. I always liked the product. Now, as I move away from table based layouts to CSS, I am beginning to understand the code bloat some writers have discussed. I won't completely 'dis' Frontpage. Some of the web bots are nice, and they will be difficult to replace. I particularly like the NavBar bot for generating link bars. With the evolution of web design, I guess I'll have to learn how to do it the "correct" way.

My plan is to revamp my web site and then return to content development. I miss working on WinROTT, and I miss developing small programs in WTL to illustrate the capability of the framework. I am also anxious to look at some of the improvements in MFC that have taken place with the recent service packs from MS.