CSS: Specificity

First rule of Specificity: The last one in, wins!

While working on the new web template for Case Western Reserve University, I ran into an issue that the space allocated for the title of our department was too small. The title of our department is Information Technology and Academic Computing.

This Title placement was flush right on the far right side of the page. It would butt up against our schools logo which was on the far left.

Using a line break would not work because it would drop the second line of the title down into a white portion of the page. Since the text is white you could not see it.

So I wanted to drop the font size of this text. The name of this CSS code for h1 id header is called "subsite". I decided to use to over come this issue. Our web template uses a web based CSS code plus a local CSS called "mysite".

First I found the "subsite" code and duplicated it. I then renamed it "newsubsite". I added a font size property to it of 18 pixels. I then dragged this code to the bottom of "mysite". This is where Specificity takes over.

I then renamed the code for the Title "newsubsite". Now my font size is a tad smaller and the title now fits in the allotted space.

DJ

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

September 17, 2009

Error while working with a template using Dreamweaver.

Received this error message while using the university's new template that I was using to create a web page for viewing Lowerthird samples online.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

This would not show while previewing on a local browser from Dreamweaver but showed up once posted on the server and then viewed.

After looking around online it sounded like a server side include. I found this article:
http://www.ozoneasylum.com/11164

This article had an example:
This line of code caused this error message.
<--#exec cgi=/cgi-bin/stats/stat.cgi" --->

So I search my code and it turned out the culprit was line 156 :
<---#include virtual="myfooter.html" -->

I removed this line of code and the error went away.


DJ

Audience Digital Signage at CWRU

The Audience system creates individual digital displays called Playbacks. A playback will have a single background element. Within each playback we can have multiple screens so we can program the system to change to a different look with different graphics.

For each screen we can create zones (areas for content). Once inside a zone, pages are create for multiple content. These pages are created from either default templates or custom made templates (which I do).

The content can be JPGs, MOVs and text. It also supports RSS feeds for both text and images. It also has support for Flash movies but that function has never worked properly and is still not reliable.

Content is added through a program called Audience Billboard. The client is given permission to login and add the information. The School of Medicine has permission to log onto the system via VNC.

Capital Network will sell RSS feeds as bundles for either weather, sports, news and more. Each of these categories can contain local, regional or global data. The last time I checked with Capital Network (6 months ago) the cost of a bundle is $75 a month. Our first year using Audience, we had a one year contract. The weather feed could pull up a daily, three day or 7 day forecast. This would automatically bring up corresponding weather icons with the temperatures.

For the School of Law and School of Medicine, I was able to obtain free RSS feeds. In order to utilize them I had to work with tech support at Capital Network on reconfiguring Audience so it would accept this data. It has worked ever very well ever since. The School of Law did not wish to subscribe to Capital Network for feeds because of the cost. They are happy with our current feeds. The School of Medicine has signed on for a medical feed on their own.

At the beginning of a project I work with the client to determine how many zones are required and what the size of the zones will be. The zones are not able to overlap. We will decide on the graphic element that will be used for the background. I then layout the zones and send the dimensions to the client. The then create the graphics to match the size of the zones. If they don't the images will be distorted. I then set them up with a Billboard account to allow them to download their images or text. They then set a start date and a stop date.