Bread and Roses Blog

Drupal 6 Login Problem?

// October 3rd, 2011 // No Comments » // Drupal Annoyances

If you run a website based on Drupal 6, you may run into a problem where you log into the website correctly, but it won’t give you access to the administration dashboard. The website will continue to show you a username and login area and you can’t get into the dashboard.

We found that in one case, this problem was caused by a crashed “sessions” table in the database. Just repair that table and that fixes the log-in problem.

Learn to Build Library Websites with Drupal – New eCourse

// September 12th, 2011 // No Comments » // Drupal

New resource from the American Library Association:

Using Drupal to Build Library Websites
Facilitated eCourse
Sean Fitzpatrick

Facilitated 6-week session
November 7th through December 15th, 2011

Drupal is an open source content management tool that allows users to build complex websites without extensive programming, making it perfect for library websites. In this eCourse, librarian, consultant and Drupal expert Sean Fitzpatrick will guide you in building an attractive, functional library website using Drupal.

Sean Fitzpatrick developed the American Libraries magazine website in Drupal and is a Drupal consultant for LISHost.

Learn More!

Horizontal Lines Above Tables in Drupal

// August 15th, 2011 // 2 Comments » // Drupal Annoyances

One of the most time-consuming headaches when developing websites on a content management system are elements that display and can’t easily be removed. You think that some element like a horizontal line might be controlled by a theme or an obvious external CSS style sheet, but tracking down where an element is controlled leads to dead ends.

In some basic themes for Drupal such as Garland, a horizontal line is displayed above tables. You can remove this line by changing the CSS stylesheet that is located in the system folder, not in the theme directory. This line is controlled by the system.css file in the modules/system directory.

New B&R Website Coming

// July 29th, 2010 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

Just a short note to let people know that the long-overdue 2010 version of the Bread & Roses website is coming into form.

We should have a new website up and running within a week of this post.

As 2010 is almost over, we’ll have to get started soon on the 2011 version, which we plan to add all the bells and whistles to.

-William

The Necessity of Windows XP + IE (With some Open Software add-ons)

// March 10th, 2010 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

I never thought I’d be happy to finally have XP+IE running in the computer room.
But here I am.

I went down to the basement and dug up a really old computer with a really fat-boy tube screen. It has a whopping 350 mb Hard drive with 700Mhz Pentium III processor.

I previously installed Puppy Linux on this guy, since I was so worried about Memory use. But…Let’s just say my wife isn’t a Techie and when I saw her crying because she couldn’t use it, well, my heart went out to her and I immediately installed XP pro. She’ll have Ubuntu on the laptop, but in the meantime we need something we can both use.

She needed a computer while she waits for a new laptop.
And I needed to be able to troubleshoot IE.

So here we are. I must have installed or formatted about 10 times in the past two weeks.

I do like Mozilla’s Seamonkey, which uses the same database for Mail and Browser.

I also set up Sunbird (it was on the same CD).

Although it’s no longer supported, I downloaded Multiple IE’s which allows me to see IE.4 and 5, which is a great tool for working through Browser compatibility problems.

Solving Once and For All Cross Browser Compatibility

// October 22nd, 2009 // No Comments » // CSS

by William

I’ve done some thinking about how to approach this better…Here’s what I’ve come up with. It starts with the worst and gets better, not the other way around.

This method also accounts for browser usage stats.

1. Get a workable second computer with IE installed. Nothing special. Just something that turns on and loads/reloads Explorer.

2. Create 1st Design on/with IE. Go for 6 (19.6%). Now you can finally >:XX (get rid of designing for) IE5 (0.1%). By my quick calculations, IE6 could be with us for another 3-4 years. Unless usage trends change dramatically with Firefox/Chrome/Other new Browser. Kinda depends on the rate at which people are buying new computers.

3. Check to make sure code validates.

4. After first version is done/concluded, name the CSS “explorer.css” and put it away. That’s your IE version and should only be changed when absolutely necessary.

5. Create filter system for CSS to steer IE to explorer.css (Watch out for Linux going to that file). May need javascript. When loaded with other OSs, the page should be unstyled.

6. After transferring file, turn off old computer. Design now for firefox (44.4%), with all the bells and whistles you want. Css Code can be new or different or whatever you want. One programmer even creates different versions for “modern browsers” and provides a basic/less-pretty version for IE6 (Transcending CSS book).

7. Check again that new code validates.

8. Check for Safari (2.7%) and other OSs like Chrome (3.6%) and Opera (2.4%). Some give and take might be necessary here, but tweaking should be minimal, since they’re all good browsers.

9. Final check for IE7/Vista (Find a machine that runs it). If it needs tweaking, use IE conditional comments. Could just skip to #10 if you can’t get it.

10. Go to browsershots.org and cross your fingers.