Ames and I have been talking about painting our house for a while but never decided on a color scheme. This weekend we looked through some of the color books from Home Depot and Lowes but wanted to see what they would actually look like on the house. After Photshopping them in on a picture of our home we decided to create our own. We came up with four that we like. One is a little “out there” for us, but I won’t tell you which one because we want your honest opinions.

You can click on the links below to see a 1024x768 version.

Current Color - Blech…

Scheme 1

Scheme 2

Scheme 3

Scheme 4

Help us out! Just let us know in the comments which color scheme you like the best and why. Thanks!

This is one of those seemingly simple things that I wanted to do for one of our client sites that turned into a slight obsession because it seems like an obvious and increasingly necessary feature.

I’d like to see night-mode as an option for online mapping. I know that customized embedded maps are possible by overlaying tiles as described in the APIs of Google/Mapquest/Yahoo and the recent ALA Article. I actually like the fact that this is a little complicated to implement because the average user shouldn’t have the power to tweak standard base map colors - think MySpace profiles <shudder />. However, if you own a vehicle GPS, it probably has a day and a night mode. In night-mode, the color of the map tiles are inverted to decrease the brightness of the screen for nighttime driving. Why is this a necessary feature for online maps?

1. To embed on websites with dark backgrounds. - Embeddable interactive maps are a huge asset to website developers and Google has made these very easy to implement. If you embed these maps on a sites with dark backgrounds though, you’ll create quite a visual magnet due to the sharp contrast of the light colored maps. While an inverted map may not mesh exactly with a website’s color scheme, the reduced contrast would make an embedded map much easier on the eyes.
2. For nighttime users of the mobile web. - While I don’t have an iphone yet, I would love to have one simply for access to Google Maps. Imagine if Google Maps on the iPhone (or even the entire interface) could automatically switch into night-mode at dusk like a vehicle navigation system.

Seems obvious and increasingly necessary to me. To demo what this might look like, I’ve set up a simple HTML mockup - with a dark background of course. What do you think?

I like to complain about browser inconsistency and rendering bugs as much as every other front-end developer, but it’s fairly common that the issues I’m experiencing are PEBKAC rather than IE induced. Now I know these won’t apply to most of you perfect coders out there, but I’m betting that at least a couple will ring true.

1. Typos
   My most common blunder (by far) in writing CSS is misspelling selectors and properties. I went on a rant about my tendency to spell position as positon back in 2005 and that one still gets me occasionally. Most of the time syntax highlighting saves the day, but there’s no help for misspelled selectors like #haeder, .waring, and .altarnate.
2. Missing Units
   When using negative text-indent for text replacement, the set dimensions are the only thing holding open the block. If you leave off a unit (height:335;) that block will completely disappear. As you might have guessed, this has never happened to me.
3. Z-idiot
   Z-index is a practical and powerful tool when designing with CSS. The number one rule to remember when working with z-index is that the position property has to be set to relative (not realtive…), fixed or absolute. I’ve been known to arbitrarily insert z-index all over my CSS…and then I realize the element I’m trying to stack doesn’t have a position declared.
4. Background Position
   Is it bottom 100px or 100px bottom? That question used to always trip me up. Then I’d get confused when it was broken in Firefox. The W3Schools’ documentation of the background-position property is fairly straightforward when it comes to similar units. When using % or position values, you declare the horizontal (x) position and then the vertical (y). When you use keywords however, the examples suggest to declare the vertical keyword (top, center, bottom) first. So, what if you want to mix keywords and values? In that case you follow the %/position convention and give the horizontal value first. To answer my own question, it should always be 100px bottom. For more info and examples, see my Background Position Compendium post.
5. Bang Important
   Cascading order and inheritance in CSS is a beautiful thing…until you start working on a large family of sites that inherits rules from multiple external stylesheets. I personally see the !important rule (.error {color:red !important;}) as a hack and therefore try to avoid using it. Occasionally though, it’s a handy tool and a necessary evil. Just remember what properties of which elements you’ve set to important or you’re bound to pull your hair out later when you want to override them. If you need a quick refresher course, David Hellsing has a great article on Cascading Order and Inheritance.

Ames and I are both fairly easygoing and don’t turn our noses up to many things. If there is one thing we are persnickety about though, it’s Orange Juice. You know the stuff they serve at the continental breakfast buffets at most hotels? Horrible. Almost every single OJ available the grocery store? Blech! Even among the “Not from Concentrate, Fresh Squeezed, 100% Juice” varieties, there are very few products that we actually enjoy. Why do we hold such strong opinions over something so trivial as a morning beverage? Location. Location. Location.

We both grew up in a little-known city on the East coast of Florida called Vero Beach. The main reasons Vero exists are tourism, retirees, and citrus. Our beaches are beautiful, but most tourists come because they’re less crowded - which is why you’ve still never heard of it. Retirees give a boost to the local economy, but don’t make it an exciting place to grow up - unless you enjoy golf & shuffleboard. The real reason I’m proud to be from Vero Beach is because we have the best citrus in the world. That’s right California, you’ve got nuthin’ on our juicy fruits. While you’ve probably never heard of Vero Beach Citrus, you may have seen Indian River Fruit before. Vero is in the heart of Indian River County, and Indian River County is to Citrus what Napa Valley is to wine.

So yes, Amy and I have deep rooted & geographically influenced opinions about OJ and we both strongly agree that the best orange juice on the planet comes from one place: Hale Groves. Hale Groves’ orange juice is like heaven in a cup. It’s so good that they drive traffic to their retail store with signs that say “Free Orange Juice”. They have fountains inside that are constantly flowing with ice-cold, fresh-squeezed OJ. Beware though, for if you partake, you will leave with a gallon of the stuff and will never look at OJ the same again. The only problem with Hale Groves OJ is that their 1 store (they had several when we were growing up) is the only place you can buy it.

Living in South Carolina, it’s hard to find a comparable substitute for Hale Groves’ orange juice. We used to buy Indian River Select’s 100% Valencia Orange Juice which is available at several grocery stores. It’s no Hale OJ, but the taste was as close as we could find….until this week. Publix, a Florida-based grocery chain, recently started carrying Natalie’s Orchid Island Orange Juice so we decided to give it a try. Wow! The orange juice snobs were impressed! On a scale of 1-to-10, I’d give it a 9½. After reading through their “our juice” page, it’s easy to see why. They’re all about the pulp:

Oddly enough, a good indication that your juice is Fresh Squeezed is to observe some separation. Technically speaking, Fresh Squeezed juice separates because of the interaction between enzymes in the fruit and the pectin in the juice. When the juice is pasteurized or concentrated, the heat neutralizes enzymes, thus preventing separation. By allowing the enzymes to stay in their natural state, Fresh Squeezed juice tastes great and gives it the “FRESH” taste customers love.

Tropicana and other national brands try hard to make good, fresh juices but they rely on some pretty intense pasteurization processes to extend shelf life. As a spoiled Vero Beach native, the “Pure Premium” OJ simply doesn’t cut it. Until the next time we make it home and get our Hale Groves fix, we’ll probably be buying Natalie’s.