I tried a few things to stop spam on my website and nothing worked completely. So, I decided to add a CAPTCHA to my site. ReCAPTCHA was my captcha of choice.

The thing is, unlike most websites that use XHTML, my website uses XHTML and is actually output as an XML document instead of an HTML file (except in Internet Explorer, where up is down, right is left, etc.)—this is the correct way to use XHTML.

So why is this a problem? Apparently, many programs, reCAPTCHA included, use JavaScript that is incompatible with XML. So when reCAPTCHA tries to display its funny text and a nice text field, not a damned thing shows up (again, except on Internet Explorer).

The end result: only Internet Explorer users can submit comments on my website…how backwards. I suppose I’ll fix this in a few days.

I finally took some time to update all my old websites. Before I updated the sites, they were loaded with old, flawed PHP that ran on PHP 4 but failed on PHP 5. They also had many broken links and incorrect URLs because I merely copied their folders in their original states to their current locations on the server.

Now, the sites look much less embarrassing (you can see the list of archived websites at the bottom of the artwork column). The only sites that aren’t in their original conditions are icorey 4 and icorey 6. Icorey 4 was written when I was still learning CSS/web design, so it looked great in IE but not so much in Firefox. Icorey 6 only lacks most of its content (an easy fix).

I suggest you check out the legacy sites layouts. They include almost every website I’ve made (with the exceptions of the two horse–themed websites and my pre–div sites).

The new icorey is online. Yay.

If you’re reading this at my website, look to the left of this box to see links to different stylesheets that turn icorey all sorts of different colors. Also, if the text is too small, enlarge the text via your browser (Ctrl = in Firefox).

Icorey wasn’t designed for monitors smaller than WXGA, so things might not look very spectacular if you’re in that relatively small monitor by today’s standards category. Thus, I’m looking to make stylesheets for icorey more suited to smaller browsers.

That’s about it. Enjoy.

I finally found enough time to get through the majority of CSS Mastery. In my opinion, it is very useful to anyone who wants to be moderately serious about web design. Also, it inspired me to write a more well–formed version of icorey.

In addition to being well–formed, the new version will also follow the guidelines of XHTML 1.1 (current version follows XHTML 1.0 Transitional). You can learn more about XHTML 1.1 at this very confusing web site.

You can view the working version of icorey 8 here. Currently, despite being well–formed and very valid, it sucks. This is leading me to consider just rewriting the current version of icorey, but that whole process doesn’t seem worth the effort.

Finally, expect another limerick soon.

Last night I took some time out of my very busy schedule to update my web site. I updated the Bio page, which was very outdated, and I removed the site history page and replaced it with a new downloads page. I decided it was very unnecessary to have 50% of the web pages discussing only this web site.

I’m not really sure what I’m going to put on the downloads page. I have two files there right now, but they aren’t very exciting. I’ll stick my blog files there once they’re ready to be released.

I also played with the bullets, but no one will really notice that.

If I find some extra time this weekend, I plan on trying out a new version of this site that has no images and no special layout, but has all the content on one page. I think I can fit everything worth reading on one page, so I’m giving it a shot.