I’ve been having a think recently about what sort of content I’m going to put on my blog. I dont want it to become too personal, telling people the ins and outs of what I’ve been doing at work etc because I think that could get a bit boring, likewise I dont want to make it something that has one guide or tutorial every month or something.

So in the end I decided that I’ll make it a mixture of the two.

It will contain some info on what I’m doing in my spare time, what sites I’m working on and what I’m learning. And it will also contain guides, tutorials and tips on things I’ve learned.

The great thing about my job is that I never seem to have to do the same thing twice, for example today I’m designing software that is intended to be used on electronic point of sale systems (epos) while last week I was working on some key perfomance graphs for some other software we make which was mainly asp, xml and flash based work. Because I work on so many projects that are so different from each other I’m learning new things all the time. My aim now is to include these things in my blog.

So stay tuned!

You might have noticed a little bit of downtime this morning, this was while I updated to the new version of wordpress (2.5) and I must say, I’m really impressed with it!
So far I’ve noticed the new look admin section which looks great, the new automatic plugin updater thing which I think is a fantastic idea. Basically you go into plugins and if there’s one that needs updating, you can enter your ftp details and it will update to the newest version automatically!
I’ve also done some quick reading on the new user roles which also looks like a good idea.

Finally I’ve been working on a post about wordpress and wordpress plugins which I’ll have up sometime this week.

I’ve been trying to set up email signatures in Outlook 2003 for a customer today and it’s been a real headache.
The whole thing seems to work fine until you actually attach the signature to an email or send it and then your image is gone and you’re left with that horrible red x. I had a search around on the net and there doesn’t seem to be a definitive solution, even the guide on the Microsoft Office site doesn’t seem to work.
Anyway after some head scratching I managed to work out the solution! So I thought I’d add it here, you never know, it might help someone!

The first solution is to go: Tools > Options in Outlook 2003. Then click “Mail Format” and then “Signatures”. Now click Edit/New (depending on whether you have already created your signature or not). The trick here is, dont click advanced edit, just use that little box (right click then click add an image if you want to add your image). Then hit OK and the whole thing should work fine.

The next solution is for people that have to use Word to edit their signature for whatever reason. You have to edit some settings in Word and Outlook for this. Here’s what you need to do:
MS Word:
Tools->Options->Save->Disable Embed Smart tags
Outlook:
Tools->Options->Other->Uncheck the Person Names Smart tags

Hope that helps!

This tutorial will show you how to make a horizontal CSS list menu. No images, no javascript. Just a simple, cross browser compatible CSS list menu! If you want to see the finished product or you just want the code, look here.

First of all we’ll need the HTML for our list menu, this is just a normal unordered list.

It’s just a simple html page with an unordered list menu on. You might notice I’ve added a div called menu around the list, I like to do this as it helps me remember what part of the code does what if I ever have to go back to it.

Next we’re going to add the CSS code for the div called menu that surrounds the list.

Again this is nice and simple. The menu div will be the full width of the div it’s inside and will have a dark grey background.

Next we add the syling for the list and the list items.

Again it’s all pretty simple, you should be able to understand the code with a little bit of CSS knowledge. Have a tinker with the code if you’re unsure about something.

You might also want to sign up for the RSS Feed or view some of my other CSS Tutorials

If anybody has contacted me through the contact form on this site and I heven’t replied, I’m really sorry. For some reason gmail hasn’t been putting them in my inbox, they’re just sort of hidden.

I’m working on fixing the problem now so if it was something important, just send me another email in an hour or so to make sure I get it.

This problem is fixed now!