Styling Blogger's label filtering message

When you go to a page that displays all posts with a certain label, Blogger puts a note at the top of the page to let you know about the filter. This thing which I have hilighted here in yellow:



But I wanted to change it so that it just had the filter name, as a title, and nothing else.

Here's the code I used:

.status-msg-body {
text-align: left;
color: white; /* Set this to your background colour to make the message body invisible */
background-color: white;
}

.status-msg-body b {
font-size: 2em;
font-weight: normal;
color: black; /* desired font colour for the title */
position: absolute; /* this positions the title in the top left of the box so that it's not being positioned by a bunch of invisible text around it */
left: 0;
top: 0;
}

.status-msg-body a:link {
display: none; /* removes the show-all-posts link */
}

And here's what it looks like now (not perfect, but it's a start):
Next, I'll make some more fixes: adding a text-transform to .status-msg-body b so it's capitalized, and fix the font. I'll do that by adding ".status-msg-body b" to a current selector that's providing the styling for my other titles. Good as gold!

Okay, so I'll lazily fix the margins so it lines up with other stuff: margin: 0 .45em;

So here's what it finally looks like. Pretty smooth:

Apps that update too much

Here's my list of apps that want to update themselves too much:

1. Acrobat
2. Java
3. .Net Framework?
4. Adobe Bridge?

They also seem to be the ones that change the least! Funny, I thought this list would be longer. There must be more.

What are your nominations for this list?

Apple Campus 2 will use power grid only as backup!

When a company has onsite power for its headquarters, it's usually for backup purposes. But Apple's new Cupertino "Campus 2" will use its own natural-gas powered generators as its main power source, and use the local grid as a backup.

Apple says this inversion of typical power sources will provide them with cheaper, cleaner power than the grid does.

To me, that's pretty amazing, and brings up a couple of questions: Is Cupertino's grid especially dirty, and is gas really the cleanest kind of power that Apple can afford? Do they plan to install solar panels or windmills somewhere in the green space that's set to consume 80% of the new campus?

One way or another, I want to make a field trip there. Maybe even try to get a job there and move. I'm unlikely to find a place to work that's as pleasant. The pleasantness basically comes from its exclusion of cars and inclusion of trees. Hopefully the precedent they set will spread long before my retirement!

Apple changes their browser prefs defaults after hacker attacks?

Apple's Cupertino campus actually got hacked, which is amazing, and it's sad that Java browser plugins were the weak point in their security - it's my weak point, too!

But their decision to change the default settings on their Macs is even more amazing! Shipping browsers with Java plugins turned off? Don't mix this up - we're talking Java, not Javascript, but still, that's pretty amazing.

This means, all of a sudden, there's a wall between Java and Mac users that wasn't there before, and this is something we'll probably see across operating systems in the next little while. And this is a great thing because in-browser Java has always seemed super sketchy to me.

Filtering Blogger posts using multiple labels

I've been wondering for some time now about how to filter a post feed using combinations of labels, like if I want articles about Usability that are also about Windows. I've been thinking of categorizing each of my posts according to which audience they're written for, so that people can filter my other categories by the audience as well.

I've seen this in user interfaces before, but I need to learn the terminology so I can continue my research.

In the meantime, I discovered an easy point of access: The URL itself. Google built some logic into these URLs:

So this link will bring up a feed of articles that have a combination of three different labels

All I need to do is find some Javascript to make the label buttons correspond to what's in the URL, and also affect it when they get toggled on or off.

For the interface, I want to essentially have the functionality of groups of radio buttons and checkboxes that we see in desktop operating systems and advanced searches.

I don't feel like this is a big enough task to require advanced javascript libraries. I just need to be able to add and remove a series of labels from the URL.

Make your experience part of the social feedback loop

Today, social media is the glue that binds together the internet's content, especially as it emerges. As a content creator, it's your job to reach out to users in social media. If you can accomplish that, you might be asking, what's next?

Complete the cycle: Get users working for you by making it easy for them to share your content using social media. That way, they can do what they like doing best: investigating something interesting that one of their friends shares with them, adding to whatever conversation is going on about it, and re-distributing it in their own way.

If you can make your content part of the cycle, you'll not only notice that it gets spread around, drawing traffic. It also gets re-contextualized and delivered in ways that delight marketers and their audience.

The little details... like search engine listings text

This is why it's a good idea to Google your own business... you might end up noticing some embarrassing details like this one:


Unless you're deliberate about which text gets added to your URL in a Google search result, it could end up grabbing the worst possible thing off the page: the text that's not about your business.

Here's another example of the same problem in a different spot:

This happens to so many newsletters. The first piece of text the browser sees is the thing about images. Everybody knows about this, and the email should communicate effectively and look great without images loading. Watch out for this.