Most nights of the week you can find me in the backyard manning the grill. I cook year round and enjoy working my recipes to perfection. This recipe comes from the Williams Sonoma Grilling Collection which I picked up as an impulse buy at the grocery store.

My wife and I consider this our favorite burger recipe. It’s easy to make and we usually have most of the ingredients on hand. It only takes a few minutes to prepare and the flavor never disappoints. Truly the perfect hamburger!

I substituted the healthiest ingredients where possible but otherwise have left this original recipe unaltered.

The Perfect Hamburger

• Origin: Williams Sonoma
• Alterations By: Shimone Samuel
• Yield: 3 large hamburgers
• Prep Time: 10 minutes
• Cooking Time: 20 minutes
• Ethnicity: American
• Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients

• 1 lb. Lean ground beef
• 2 tbsp Yellow onions, finely chopped
• 1 tsp Garlic, minced
• 1 tsp Salt
• 1/2 tsp Pepper, freshly ground
• 1-2 dashes Worcestershire sauce
• 1 Heirloom tomato, sliced
• 1 Handful Herb salad
• 3 Whole wheat hamburger buns
• 3 Slices cheese
• 1 Kosher dill pickle, sliced

Directions

• Preheat grill to 300-400 degrees
• Combine onions, salt, pepper, and worcestershire sauce in a large glass bowl
• Add meat and mix thoroughly
• Shape mixture into 3 large patties
• Grill for 15-20 minutes or until cooked medium rare
• Remove burgers from grill and cover until served
• Toast buns on grill briefly - 1 minute max
• Serve with sliced tomatoes, salad, cheese, and appropriate condiments

Yummy Soup! Recipe Management

I am using Yummy Soup on OSX to manage all my recipes. This independently developed software is backed by a great community and an attentive developer. Highly Recommended!

Download: The Perfect Hamburger Recipe (for Yummy Soup)

As noted in the intro to Accessible footnotes with HTML and CSS, I’m using WordPress to manage the contents of this web site. Searching for an offline content manager, I found MarsEdit was consistently praised as both powerful and effective.

Among other features, MarsEdit offers support for AppleScript and intelligent macros using what it calls Text Markup. Combining these two features offers users advanced tools for speeding up their workflow.

In the case of footnotes, I’m using a combination of AppleScript and Text Markup to reduce the process to two simple steps.

1. AppleScript creates a unique link and identifier from a selection of text.

   <sup><a href="#63911" id="fn1" title="see footnote 1">1</a></sup>

   AppleScript then creates the unique identifier and return link. This reference is stored in the clipboard.

   <li id="63911">FOOTNOTE <a href="#fn1" title="return to article">↑</a></li>

2. Text Markup creates the footnote code block and includes the stored text from the clipboard.

   <div id="footnote">
   	<ol>
   		<li id="63911">FOOTNOTE <a href="#fn1" title="return to article">↑</a></li>
   	</ol>
   </div>

What the “Create Footnote” AppleScript does

1. Check if MarsEdit has a post window open
   • If no post window is open, return an error message
2. Check if post window contains a text selection
   • If no text is selected, return an error
3. Store the selection as a variable
4. Store the date and time as a unique identifier
5. Replace the selected text with unique link and identifier
6. Update clipboard with unique identifier and return link

Download: Create Footnote Applescript

What the “Footnote Block” Text Markup does

1. Generate a block of html code
2. Add the contents of the clipboard to the code block
3. Paste the complete code into the post window

Text Markup can’t be exported but the process to create a new macro is simple:

1. Open a post in MarsEdit
2. Select Edit in the Text Markup menu
3. Click the “+” symbol in the window that opens
4. Name your new macro “Footnote Block”
5. Enter the following Text Markup into the Opening field and click “Ok”

Footnote Block macro

<div id="footnote">
	<ol>
		#pastetext#
	</ol>
</div>

Generating footnotes with AppleScript and MarsEdit

Part 1: Setup

1. Download the Create Footnote Applescript.
2. Copy the file to your MarsEdit/Scripts folder (to find the folder, click the AppleScript icon in MarsEdit and select “Open Scripts Folder”).
3. Create the Foonote Block macro in MarsEdit using the instructions above.

Part 2: Usage

1. Open a post in MarsEdit and make a text selection.
2. Choose “Create Footnote” from the AppleScript menu.
3. Move the cursor to a new location and select “Footnote Block” from the Text Markup menu.
4. To create additional footnotes, skip the Text Markup step and paste the stored clipboard item in the ordered list.

Demo

This demo video shows how AppleScript and MarsEdit is used with the methods above to create HTML footnotes.

Watch: Create Footnote demo video

As far back as I can remember my greatest aspirations have been a steady job, a wife, a child, and a house to call my own.

15 years after beginning my pursuit in earnest I am blessed with 3 of 4 dreams fulfilled. I have a challenging career with a bright future and a loving family who bring me immeasurable joy. All that remains is a house to call our own.

To my dismay, the dream of ownership remains for out of my reach due to a lack of planning and foresight. I should have started saving for a house a long time ago. Any amount saved would have been better than none at all.

Had I set aside $100 a month in the 8 years since beginning my career in earnest, I would have $9,600 toward a down payment. Had I saved $125 that number would jump to $12,000.

Add to the fact my salary has increased year over year and I could have increased my savings goal by an additional $500 with each annual raise.

With the compound interest of a CD I could have saved an estimated $30,000 after eight years

Unfortunately for those living in the San Francisco Bay Area, $30k doesn’t get you much in terms of a down payment. These days, 10% of a median-priced home in the Bay Area is closer to $65,000.

A recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle delves into this subject further: The Exodus of San Francisco’s Middle Class

Digressions aside, the fact remains: After 8 years my dream of home ownership remains far out of reach and I’ve got some serious catching up to do.

Next up: Pinching pennies, savings dollars.

This is part two in a series of articles about Creating a Blog for Fun and Profit. In this article , we will look at choosing a theme and topics for your blog.

An appropriate theme is essential to attracting and retaining new readership. Choosing the right one for your blog can be difficult.

To begin, ask yourself the following questions: Who is my target audience? What do I want to share with them? Where else can they get this information?

Next, think about the blogs and websites you admire. What makes them successful? How are they unique? What keeps you coming back?

Some of my personal favorite websites include: TechCrunch, LifeHacker, Gizmodo, Smashing Magazine, and A List Apart.

• TechCrunch is a “weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies.”
• LifeHacker is a “blog that features tips, shortcuts, and downloads that help you get things done smarter and more efficiently.”
• Gizmodo is a “blog with the sole purpose of writing about tech and gadgets as fast as possible.”
• Smashing Magazine “delivers useful and innovative information for designers and web-developers.”

A List Apart “explores the design, development, and meaning of web content, with a special focus on web standards and best practices.”

Each of these websites has a technological focus, but they differ in their approach and core subject matter.

Finally, consider the purpose of your blog. What is it you ultimately wish to gain from your writing and publishing?

Finding purpose in your writing

Bloggers fall into 3 distinct categories:

1. Those wishing to strike Internet gold
2. Those with a passion for or knowledge about a given subject
3. Those writing about themselves or their business

Blogging as a gateway to fame and riches

As in any good business, blogging for profit requires a careful and well-planned strategy. High-traffic websites with an active community have proven the most attractive to advertisers.

When choosing a theme for your website, consider which topics are most likely to result in viral distribution, repeat visitors, sponsorship opportunities, and community interaction.

Blogging as an outlet for passionate discourse

Genuine passion is evident in both the quality of a blog’s content and the commentary it inspires.

One of the most effective ways to increase your website’s visibility is to focus on thoughtful, quality content. Interact with your visitors and the community at large, and people will see your website as an essential destination.

Blogging about you or your business

Blogs with an individual or business focus tend to target friends, family, business associates, and potential partners. Because of this, the implied theme of the website is you.

Maintain a loose structure, generate new and interesting content, and your visitors will keep coming back.

That’s all for now. Stay tuned to next time as we tackle Part 3: Finding the right name

Scalable Inman Flash Replacement or sIFR for short, combines Flash and JavaScript to enable the display of custom fonts on a web page. sIFR is attractive to both web designers and developers as it provides an accessible and semantic alternative to other methods of font replacement.

sIFR enhanced sites require a modern web browser with the Adobe Flash plugin installed and JavaScript enabled. For visitors lacking these features, sIFR will degrade to a suitable baseline font and continue to render both on the page and in the generated source code.

In theory, sIFR is a perfect response to one of the more frustrating restrictions imposed on web designers by the medium. Unfortunately, the technology is not without its flaws and ultimately should not be considered a viable choice for web professionals.

The limitations of sIFR include: localization, extended character support, fouc, page zooming, text scaling, text wrapping, page load, cpu load, scalability, utf-8 compliance, QA testing, future-proofing, upgradability, wmode support, dynamic text sizing, DOM support, and z-index collisions.

While there may be solutions or workarounds to some of the issues illustrated here, collectively they remain a barrier to the technology’s adoption as a standard.

Related articles

• Wizardworks: sIFR - Point Of View (Publish date unknown)

  Jim offers a god breakdown on the pros and cons of sIR and I will elaborate briefly on item #5: sIFR and Special Characters

  • In order to truly support localized content, a separate .swf file would need to be created for each language, each of those .swf files would then need to contain the entire character set for that country.
  • The more characters added, the larger the .swf file becomes. This is noteworthy as few if any fonts families contain every character set for all languages.
  • Web designers may encounter much difficulty testing the site with different languages as the text and spacing is rendered differently depending on the user’s country and whether or not the Flash plugin is installed.
  • Support for dynamic widths is also a serious issue as the Flash movie width must be explicitly set. This further reduces sIFR’s practicality as fixed widths cannot be used for text on localized websites.
• Usable Type: How and When to Use sIFR (December 24, 2004)

  Andy discredits much of the misinformation and concludes sIFR is best used to replace no more than one headline per page.

• Virtual Elvis: Why I hate sIFR (April 29, 2005)

  A fabulous tirade about the difficulties of keyboard navigation and screen zooming for an Opera user.

• Leftlane: ESPN.com Looking a Bit Pixelated (February 9, 2006)

  Interesting to note in the comments here that while ESPN is one of the sites often quoted to be using sIFR it is a) not currently using sIFR and b) (quoting Mike Davidson) “It was actually not sIFR at all, and even pre-dated Inman’s IFR by at least two years. It was basically inline Flash files with text… that’s all. And yes, the page is huge and so are all of those images.”

• Drupal: sIFR Module discussion (February 16, 2006)

  In the comments section, a user notes that sIFR text is not searchable and cannot be made both selectable and linkable. The commentary further notes a lack of respect for user-specified font settings. Someone else points out that sIFR is not utf-8 compliant.

• Mezzoblue: The Pros and Cons of sIFR (October 26, 2006)

  A notable article which points out the need to refresh the browser once Command/Ctrl + is used to increase font size. The inability to use sIFR for headers which are also links (the link destination will not show in the status bar) is also mentioned.

• Devshed Forums: SIFR … Innovative or Designer’s junk? (April 13, 2007)

  A flaming forum rant that suggests using a pre-rendered PNG instead. The author also further points out the load and latency issues inherent in sIFR.

• Sitening: New Flash player breaks sIFR (December 14, 2007)

  This is an important occasion to make note of. When Adobe released the latest version of their Flash browser plugin, earlier implementations of sIFR malfunctioned. While awaiting a fix, sites deploying sIFR were forced to remove the code - assuming they were even aware the feature stopped working.

Live sIFR examples

As a test, interact with these (or any other) sIFR enabled web sites using different browsers such as Opera, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer and Konqueror. Try printing, previewing, selecting text, searching for text, increasing and decreasing font size, and other page-level interactions. Keep in mind that while every individual may use the internet in a unique way, all web browsers offer the same set of features to each of their users.

For the following examples I have included sample videos showing scripted interactions with each web site. These videos are made available as a point of reference should one of them cease using sIFR or the technology evolves.

• Aston Martin See demo video
  1. Visit www.astonmartin.com
  2. Notice how the sIFR headers render after the content.
  3. Try increasing the browser font size using the keyboard or option menu. Notice the header text size does not increase with the rest of the page.
  4. Using the keyboard, try selecting all the body copy (Ctrl +A in Windows, Command +A in OSX). Notice the header is not selected.
  5. Using your mouse, try selecting the entire body text including the header. Notice the header is not selected or selected irregularly.
  6. Using Firefox, first select the header text with your mouse and then try to deselect it.
  7. Select print preview and notice the header missing (FWIW: this is supposedly fixed with media=screen in the css link)
  8. Try searching for text transformed with sIFR using Ctrl/Command +F. Notice how the text is not selected.
• Hollywood Reporter
  1. www.hollywoodreporter.com has recently undergone a redesign and chosen not to continue using sIFR.
• Offbeat See demo video
  1. Visit http://www.offbeat.com/
  2. Watch how the content loads first and the headers second.
  3. Notice how the first header is hidden when the navigation menu floats over it.
  4. Using Firebug, inspect each header element. Notice how they all use a fixed width.
  5. Search for text contained in a header. Although the text is found, it is not highlighted by the browser.
  6. When viewing the demo video, note that although the word “Bach” is found 3 times in the header, it is not highlighted during a page search until a fourth attempt to find the word (which also appears in the body) or after selecting Highlight All as an option.
  7. Attempt to open any of the header links in a new tab or window.
  8. Block futura.swf using the AdBlock Plus plugin for Firefox and watch the headers disappear (FYI: This has been fixed in a recent release of sIFR).

Final thoughts

When designing web sites, our foremost concern should be usability and the user experience. At no point should our visitors be forced to relinquish the basic comforts and features afforded by every modern browser.

As it stands, sIFR is not the hot topic it once was, likely for some or all of the reasons noted above. Many big-name sites are touted across the Web as using sIFR including: MSNBC, ESPN, Nike, ABC News, Visit Las Vegas, and The US Navy. At the time of this writing, none of these web sites are using sIFR.

With that said, sIFR continues to be actively developed and version 3 is already in beta. As an entirely volunteer-based effort, the sIFR team should be applauded for their continued contributions to this ambitious project.

Having recently set out on the long journey of mastering a new CMS I’ve found myself searching for and stumbling upon¹ all manner of plugins, customizations and tweaks for WordPress.

The latest clever addition I found is the use of footnotes. When used properly, footnotes are an appropriate way of commenting on or referencing a portion of text².

Footnotes serve as a more graceful way to add an aside compared to the long-winded parenthetical. (For instance, here I could give some personal insight into the guilty pleasure of using lengthy digressions, but as you can see, by the time you reach the end of this amusing passage, the original point is confused with a new idea).

So let’s have a look at the requirements for this project:

1. A format for referencing footnotes
2. A format for displaying footnotes
3. A method of moving between the two
4. Making your footnotes accessible

A format for referencing footnotes

:

This first requirement is easy: footnotes are referenced nearly universally with superscript. Deciding what form of superscript to use: number, letter, figure or symbol is entirely up to you. I personally chose numbers.

Fortunately, support for superscript is part of the W3C recommendation for paragraphs, lines and phrases - thereby making it perfectly valid for appropriate use.

In practice, your code may start off looking something like this:

<sup>1</sup>

A format for displaying footnotes

Footnotes are commonly placed at the bottom or “foot” of a page or section. There is no rule stating a footnote cannot go elsewhere, but sticking to traditional conventions is a recommended best practice.

How you choose to style your footnotes is also a personal choice. Perhaps you can peruse your library or book collection to see how it’s been styled elsewhere.

However you choose to style your footnote, using CSS provides the most flexibility to differentiate it from preceding paragraphs.

The resulting code may start off looking something like this:

<div id="footnote">
	<ol>
		<li>Footnote</li>
	</ol>
</div>

By applying an id to the containing div we can cascade the styling of content within. By using an ordered list we retain the continuity of footnotes throughout the page.

A method of moving between the two

Ideally, references should link to their respective footnotes and footnotes should link back to their references. This provides the user with an effortless method of jumping to the footnote and then returning to the passage.

The resulting code may look something like this:

This is some text<sup><a href="#32066" id="fn1">1</a></sup>

<div id="footnote">
	<li id="32066">This is a footnote <a href="#fn1">↑</a></li>
</div>

… and the resulting output may look something like this:

Making your footnotes accessible

For some, the example above may appear perfectly usable. You see a linked number in superscript, click and you’re taken to a footnote. A link in the footnote returns you to the sentence you last read. It doesn’t take much to deduce this just by looking at it.

For those who aren’t looking however the purpose isn’t as clear. Questions arise for those visiting the page with an assistive device such as JAWS: What is this linked number? Where does the link #32066 take me? Once I get there what will I find and how will I get back? Users of JAWS and other assistive devices are simply not seeing a page with the same clarity.

Once again we check the W3C HTML 4.01 specification for a solution and find a fitting one in section 12.1.4: Link Titles.

The title attribute may be set for both A and LINK to add information about the nature of a link. This information may be spoken by a user agent, rendered as a tool tip, cause a change in cursor image, etc.

The resulting code may look something like this:

This is some text<sup><a href="#32066" id="fn1" title="see footnote">1</a></sup>

<div id="footnote">
	<li id="32066">This is a footnote <a href="#fn1" title="return to article">↑</a></li>
</div>

Add a little CSS and the possibilities are endless!

That’s all there is to it. Your methods may vary but this should serve as a good starting point. See below for how we do it here at Like Wow Online.

In a future article we’ll learn how to automate footnote creation with AppleScript. Stay tuned for Part II.. Using AppleScript to create HTML footnotes

In this series of articles I will discuss the process and research that go into starting your own website for fun and profit. Many of these suggestions can be applied to the creation of other websites, but for now we’ll focus on one of the more popular formats: web logs or blogs as they are more commonly known.

As with any website, launching a blog requires careful planning. To the joy of many, what isn’t required is a reason! Anyone can launch a website at any time and for any purpose.

Still, careful planning can sometimes make the difference between success and failure. So let’s look at some of the necessary steps:

1. Creating a blog for fun and profit
2. Choosing a theme and topics
3. Finding the right name
4. Deciding how to manage content
5. Finding a web host
6. Designing your website
7. Launching your website
8. Gaining exposure
9. Retaining readership
10. Recruiting contributors
11. Having fun
12. Making a profit

Look at all these steps! Who knew that launching a blog requires so much work?

In reality, very few of those steps are required absolutely. As I’ve mentioned before:

Anyone can launch a website at any time and for any purpose.

Keep that in mind and you’ll have fun. Even if your website isn’t wildly popular, the crucial advantage can still be won. By focusing on each step, you may also reap the benefits of gaining exposure, retaining readership, and making a profit. After all, you aren’t just doing it for fun, are you?

With the right combination of careful planning, creativity, hard work, and passion anyone can be a success!

That’s all for now. Stay tuned to next time as we tackle Part 2: Choosing a theme and topics for your blog

Welcome to Like Wow Online!

Starting with a /~ on Earthlink in 1997, I began launching a wide range of modestly successful hobby and commercial websites, including: a radio station and music store, fashion and culture blog, novelty gift shop, photography gallery, and a consulting firm.

My experience has been fun and educational. I learned not only a great deal about technology, but that I love writing about it for the World Wide Web.

Focusing on industry and technology that power the Web, Like Wow Online! is published in a magazine format to appeal to Web designers and developers, and anyone interested in Web technology.

Thank you for visiting and be sure to subscribe to our latest posts through the RSS feed.

Your host,

Shimone