I’m doing some experiments with navigation lists in CSS and have come across a stumbling block which relies on DOM scripting to work around. The examples given here are not intended to work, we would know it as “parent selectors”
Aside from this being a really cool sounding technique you could throw across the dinner table as “have you tried the reverse cascade trick” which is what I would name the technique, after the juggling trick, I actually know this is impossible to do with CSS as it involves cascading “up” not “down”. At source the W3C have decided that would take too much processing power to “cascade up”. Andy Budd has tackled this on his blog long with many others. CSS is one directional, for good reason I can see why cascading backwards is not a great idea, but equally it’s on of those brilliant contradictory evil ideas.
It’s nearly 2010, do you know how close the second decade is? Contradictory evil ideas are all around us, but it amazes me why this parent selector has been left to fill blogs all over the world, such a useful feature and as we push into a “must work without JavaScript” world this has to happen.
However imagine the power the parent selector would give us if we have a simple navigation list with some sub navigation which is hidden. This is great until we would like to “fold out” the sub navigation without reloading the page and adding classes to fold out certain bits of the menu. Although we have hidden the sub menus with CSS we cannot un-hide with CSS alone (this is not drop down in nature, more explorer tree), we can’t really use mouse events and the way keyboards traverse navigation lists is through the anchor tags, which is really inconvenient for this.
ul#nav ul { display : none; }
ul#nav li.selected ul { display : block;}
So I could in theory trigger an a:focus in the main navigation list, but because my sub nav is contained in the LI above the A tag, I can’t use the A tag to fold out the sub nav, and li:focus doesn’t make sense as the keyboard would tab through the A tags. That’s pretty useless as the A usually is closed right away, it doesn’t make structural sense to move the end of the A tag so that it wraps the UL block. We could train wreck it with DIV’s but let’s not go there.
However if we could reverse cascade we might be able to pass triggers back up the tree and re-cascade from that point onwards. How would that look for it to make sense? One of the beauties of of CSS is that the syntax is easy to understand so this must be maintained and it can’t break an existing conceptual model of how forward cascading works, the two have to coexist.
Example one
ul li < a:focus ul
Without confusion with other characters this could work, the single arrow could signify that the a:focus should be passed to the parent node only a double “<<" could pass the focus up two levels up the DOM tree.
Example two
ul li <- a:focus +> ul
Perhaps a little more long winded but we could say that the a:focus is a go between, in that it supplies the trigger to the LI with the “<-" character and then cascades normally from the "+>” character.
So would the world be a better place with reverse cascading or is the world just not ready for it? CSS classes rule the world and are used to forsake good structure in the HTML so what hope is there of moving away from className switches in DOM scripting?
Midlanders, get the chance to break a world record this summer for the world’s largest montage of photos. The arts council have teamed up with the BBC and flickr to ask people to submit any photos which depicts life in this part of the world.
The website also offers the latest photos to be added and tips and tricks on how to improve your photos and is managed and maintained by a member of the Birmingham Flickr group. The result will be a massive whacking huge slab of canvas/paper with all the moderated photos placed on it, think of the million pixel project. The results will be shown around the region! The project is mostly powered by flickr, but people don’t need flickr account to take part, cameraphone pics and scans are being accepted.
Picture this with flickr on Ch4
This comes hot on the heals of Channel 4’s involvement with flickr on picture this and last years BBC 4 series where flickr users were able to add photos to a group which showed a random slideshow of shots on the BBCi interactive TV service.
If you have a camera, pick it up and use it, they need 90,000 images by June.
Adele’s Moving On!
In terms of female vocalists this year I’m really excited about Adele. The B-side to “Chasing Pavements” is a bluesy, jazzy kind of affair which really reminds me of what Eva Cassidy was aspiring to be.
I remember about early 2006 finding Adele somewhere out there with some basic demos online. She states Eva Cassidy as an influence, but as you might tell from her soulful voice, it’s not “Songbird Cassidy” but the Easy Street, Gospel and “Live at Blues Ally” side of Cassidys music and that’s why I find Adele so interesting to listen to. She’s not so much Amy Winehouse either and in any case right from the start she beats Winehouse hands down. So if Feist was it in 2007, Adele I’m hoping will be it in 2008, I might be wrong, Duffy may come up through from the back in a photo finish with Adele. I love Katie Melua, but she can’t always do what Eva Cassidy did with the bluesy jazz stuff, Adele can and will and does.
Choice in Female Vocalists
There’s just so much choice in the style of female vocalists at the moment. Duffy has an interesting sound there similar to Creys Matthews at times I guess, Remi Nicole fits here as does Julia Stone, the one half of brother and sister duo Angus and Julia Stone, who you should really check out, because they are so ace, words can’t describe!
Newton Faulkner proves suprises do happen
From what I can make out acoustic is back in style, but some of it is street with the R’n'B kids and Newton Faulkner swept the album charts like a British Summer flood with rythmns and guitar drums, so maybe just maybe this year will continue the singer songwriter / solo vocalist revival in the mainstream.
David Ford has been doing very well on the net, Jack Johnson is out there and Alex Nackman I believe is gaining a following too, we just need to duo from Norway, Kings of Convenience back in on the action!
And maybe just maybe I might get my ass into gear and update the mp3blog I set up ages ago to podcast some of this stuff out before it gets properly copyrighted!
Like all good things in life, you have to wait and Feist had done enough waiting to become famous. The Lacoste advert helped and Mushaboom is one of those songs you cannot stop singing.
The iPod Nano one with 1,2,3,4 has just sent everyone ga ga over the feisty songstress from Canada. In my humble opinion the following album track is one of the strongest on the second album behind “The Intution”, the track titled “I Feel It All” is emeded from youtube below.
Feist makes claims on a vocal style called Jahi and in the early days about 4 years ago she claimed that Jahi lets you as the listener find your own space within the song. Her track “The Intution” is perhaps the best example of her real vocal style with all the instruments stripped back and Jahi is why I love Fiest so much. However she also has up accessible pop moments too.
Feist is connected with the band Broken Social Scene and another member of the Arts and Crafters, Lisa looked like she had some new material was on the way, but I’m not sure what’s going on with Reverie Sound Revue at the moment.
