I'm still struggling with CSS. I use it lots, the vast majority of problems that I have with are due to browser implementations of the standards, particularly in doing different things for IE PC and the rest of the world. However, there are some things that CSS makes too tricky. I believe that most of them are tricky because CSS is a document language and many of the sites I'm trying to build are application interfaces. I've been told this by members of the www-style list. I don't think it's enough to just have a document language for making web sites. I think that the reason that CSS layout is being adopted so slowly is that it fails to give designers the toolkit they need to make their jobs easier.

To this end I'm trying to put together a plan of action. I'd like to make friends who feel similarly and are eloquent and informed enough to argue the point on the lists and come up with alternatives (this doesn't include me yet :-). At the moment, I'd like to put together a list of 5 layouts that are essential to the web and hard to do in CSS. So far I have the 3-col layout with content above and flowed properly below (e.g. Hype) and the content block centered to the browser window (e.g. Hype's front page). If you have more please send them in.

I wrote to www-style I mentioned these two layouts and said that I thought that CSS's toolbox was off-kilter. I got two replies. One discussed a method of centering in CSS which is tricksy and has bugs, the other suggested using CSS table properties like display:table;, which seems to be back at square one. The second reply also said "CSS *is* a document language". This is fair enough, but I think that's the problem. OK CSS can't do what I want, fine, but I need something that can.

Teeth

I went to the shiny dentist. They rang me yesterday morning, having got my number from 1471 (the UK's "who rang me?" number) and asked what I had been calling about. I said I'd like to make an appointment and they gave me one at 11:30 yesterday, which was about two hours after the conversation. Impressed, I cancelled my other appointment.

I was a bit nervous, I hadn't been to the dentist for five years and I was worried that I might need loads of work. But no! My teeth are absolutely fine! They're stained yes, but I did smoke for five years, so that's not so surprising. Plus I had already noticed this. Then he gave me a clean and a polish. This was remarkably dentist-like, I can see why people are afraid. He had a protective visor and basically drilled the tartar off my teeth with a very high pitched motorised thingy. Same with the polish, except at lower speed and with wierd blue gunk. It was quite intimidating and went on for a good five minutes. During which I just lay there with my mouth open, trying not to get my tongue in the way.

Afterwards though my teeth are quite a bit whiter. The bottom front ones tingle a bit from being exposed once more at the back and I can't stop feeling them with my tongue.

Muscles

Later on yesterday I decided to get to the swimming pool as well. It's only a ten minute walk away, if that. The pool is really new. It was built in a joint venture by the council and a health club group. There's a baby pool and a main pool for the public and a whole load of gym stuff and another pool for club members. It's a very expensive club, but the pool is only £2.95. Given that everything else in Fulham is eight quid or more, this was a relief.

The changing rooms were unisex, which threw me at first. I walked in, a fully clothed man, to see women in swimsuits and towels. I promptly walked out again and asked where the men's where. In fact all the actual changing areas are cubicles and just the lockers are shared. The pool itself was new and shiny and not too full, which was a relief. When I swim I have to leave my glasses behind. I am pretty short sighted. This has two effects, 1. I can't read signs telling me that on no account should I do what I'm doing and, 2. I feel nervous, as you would if you didn't have complete control of all your senses and were in a new environment.

When I started swimming I found that the pool had order. Three swimming lanes, slow, medium and fast, and a messing about bit for kids and slackers. I tried the fast lane and did crawl, swimming pretty quickly for three lengths. I almost died. I discovered that I have no upper body strength and that my lungs and heart needed gentler treatment. To be fair I had just eaten before leaving the house, which was a bad idea, all my blood was still diverted to my digestive system and my heart had to work extra hard to keep me going. After a rest, I spent the next hour pootling up and down the slow lane doing breast stroke.

Afterwards I stank of Chlorine and had to shower. My body didn't hurt too much (not like after the running). My shoulders are a bit tense today, but that's about it. I will be going again.

Shares

Today I got a call from my Dad. My Dad is the MD of a small company he started about 15 years ago. They make database software for hospitals. Things have been fairly hard in that time, he's never become rich, but he's not lost the company either and it has paid his salary for all that time. Recently he's not enjoying it very much and has been talking about moving on. So it was a pleasant surprise to hear today that a much larger company has made an offer to buy his company.

It's a serious offer. Apparently the valuation is spot on and also they want to complete the transaction fairly quickly. I am a shareholder in my Dad's company. When it was founded, he gave 1,000 shares each to me, my two sisters and other family members. He was actually phoning me because as a shareholder I have to be informed and I have to sign some stuff. My shares will be moderately valuable if all goes well, but I'm more happy for him. He's worked very hard to keep the company working and now it's got to the point of success, where he can claim back his effort. It's strange that the measure of success should be the ability to get out and I think he's sad to see the end on one level. Still, he's fifty now and it sounds like this path suits the way his life is going very well. Although he will be an employee of the purchasing company for a while, in a year's time he will be free to do whatever he wants.

1. Create your HTML as a set of divs, nested like so:

   

2. Whack this in your stylesheet:

   .child { margin-left:15px; display:none; }

3. Stick the following function in the page and call it from onclick on every node that has children:

   function selectNode(id) {
    node = document.getElementById("child" + id);
    if (node) {
        if (node.open) {
            node.style.display = "none";
            document.images["node" + id].src = "closed.gif";
            node.open = false;
        }
        else {
            node.style.display = "block";
            document.images["node" + id].src = "open.gif";
            node.open = true;
        }
    }
}


The best bit is that sub trees remain open while hidden. To explain, imagine Blah and Blah 2 have been clicked and Blah 3 is visible. If you know click Blah you will hide Blahs 1, 2, 3 and 4. But if you click Blah again, Blah 3 will still be visible under Blah 2. You really have to see it in action, so here's one I made earlier.

I don't get out much. I work from home and I generally end up working fairly hard. I have to make myself leave the house. Recently I have been practicing work fairly well, getting up at eight and working until five, taking an hour or so break during the day and going outside.

I've been mapping out the area in a series of long walks starting here and looping broadly around Fulham. I have also been known to run. Though only once and my feet hurt afterwards because I ran in skate shoes. I'd like to carry on, so I'm looking at getting a pair of proper running shoes, AKA wide-boy trainers, when I can afford them.

This morning I decided to go out for a walk first thing. I have been thinking about it because I sit at my machine rather restlessly all day, having to wander about the flat a bit every half an hour. It makes sense to stretch my legs first. Indeed everybody else does it and I have found in the past that the journey to work in the mornings is useful for getting properly woken up. When I discovered that we had no milk I knew the time had come.

I passed a nice looking dentist on Munster Road as well. I've signed up for a registration appointment with one on Fulham High Road, but I walked past that one (unintentionally) last night and it looked a bit grubby whereas this one was really sparkly. I'm in two minds but I may cancel my appointment and get one at the nearer place. The quality of the decor probably doesn't say anything about the quality of the treatment, but it does say a little something about the equipment. Actually, scratch that, the fact that the place is nicely kitted out probably means that the dentists are good at extorting money from private customers. Something I don't intend to be.

Anyway, exercise. I've been doing minor in-house exercises as well, sit-ups, push-ups and so on. Later on today I intend to go and explore the local swimming pool. It will be the first time I've been swimming for about a year. The pool is a public part of a swanky private gym, so the facilities should also be swanky.

Here's to six-pack abs and upper arms of steel! Not really, here's to not dying of heart disease for at least a couple of decades.

I've just added a few more animating features to the front page Flash movie and as I was checking it I noticed that there was a noticeable difference in speed when running it under Safari against running it in the Flash IDE. On checking my old stuff as well, it looks like Apple has seriously improved Flash performance in this release. This is a Very Good Thing. Mac Flash performance has always been crap, particularly considering that a large proportion of quality Flash is built on Macs.

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Last updated at 11:32, Wednesday June 18th, 2008. All times are shown in 24-hour clock format and are BST.

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