Experiments at MikeCherim.com
What does a man with a half-dozen domains need most of all? If you said another domain, then you are right. I’ve owned the MikeCherim.com domain for quite some time, but finally I have decided to put it to use. But for what!? you may ask. One would think, knowing of all of my domains, that enough is enough. You’d be right, but I did it anyway. The purpose: Experimentation. Fun. Some play and some research!
Obviously I could have done this anywhere, but having an exclusive domain gave me a dedicated focus — and I did own it already as I said. Now it’s time for some fun. I installed a copy of the GreenBeast CMS and I styled its free, ready-to-use three-page site template (see the default styling) and added a scripted page template with a liquid design that I can use as a canvas on which I can safely play with markup sprinkled liberally with CSS, PHP, JS, and other cool ingredients.
I’ve already done some stuff over there, all linked from and archived on the Mike’s Experiments page:
- First I made a CSS Unordered List Calendar. It isn’t that semantic, but it is wicked stable and kinda’ cool. Who knows, it might be better to make a calendar with a table.
- Then I made a “Mix”ed technologies Content Doser, which is a cool little thing and extremely accessible, but to humans only, not search engines unless they are searching JavaScript. It’s got a big neat-o factor to it. Makes me smile, but I’m easy.
- The most recent thing I made is a pure CSS Photo Showcase. I really like it. That said, it is a little weird in Internet Explorer, a tiny presentational quirk (works perfectly in Firefox), but it could be considered acceptable I think. It’s extremely accessible, and it works great in its function. It just needs some tweaks. It’s different in Opera as well, but I really don’t think it’s something that many would/should be that concerned with. But it’s all good. This space is all about playing with stuff.
All the stuff I plan to make in this experimentation library of sorts will be tested in Internet Explorer 7 so this might end up being quite useful to some people down the road a piece. All of the experiments are explained, and I provide commented files (as text files) for all components used in the working examples. In other words anybody can put my experiments to use, all I want is attribution via a link, of course.
Check ‘em out, tell me what you think, and if you know any fixes for anything you see wrong, please share. If you use any of this stuff somewhere, send me a link so I can check it out and see what you did. Show me what improvements you made. And keep checking back for more. I’m really enjoying using this site so far so I expect I’ll keep up with it. To make checking in easy, I did burn an RSS Mike’s Experiments Feed that you can subscribe to so every time I make something you’ll be notified. I do plan to try for one to two experiments every month.
Neal Venditto responds:
Posted: April 3rd, 2006 at 7:18 pm →
Nice mate. It’s always good to have an experimentation place, keep the juices flowing. You’re examples are pretty nice, too. Though for the Calendar out an unordered list, I question it. No semantic flow at all. In fact, tables are perfect for a calendar. Without styling, it makes no sense when read. Pretty, though. =P