The MSDNAA Software Center is back

[R. Andrew Lamonica]

I have not had time to write an updated instruction manual, but if you are currently enrolled in a CS class, then you can now visit the MSDNAA Software Center at its new location to get Visual Studio for your class.

http://software.cs.siue.edu/msdnaa/

P.S. Let me know what you think about new interface.  I know it’s not as slick as CSD was, but I spent half the day on it so I am curious as to what you think.

[Justin Camerer]

Downloading software from this site using FireFox may not work. You should probably use Internet Explorer instead.

EWWWWWW!!! Cooommeee on, Andy. I'm pretty sure I speak for everyone (even you) when I say that we should be telling people the opposite of this. haha


Looks good, but maybe you should make the login page redirect to the login page and put up an error there if a bad username/password is given? I dunno If you did this for security reasons or you just wanted it this way, but I spent 5 minutes trying different passwords cause I cant remember mine, and it was kind of annoying to have to go back. (not that big of a deal, but you asked :-P)

Also, now that I look at the source... I would suggest the following.

Get rid of div.mainblock, and just set auto margins on div.contentblock to center it. Or, even better, make the html tag render the grey background, and center the body tag using auto margins. Then, you should try make the header an hX tag, and just use CSS to hide the text, and make teh backgroud of the hX tag the image. After that, instead of using a list to display all the paragraphs of text, use the html tag that was made for displaying paragraphs of text, the p tag. Lastly, instead of using a div tag to hold the login button, I would just use a p tag as well.

I hope this makes sense, because I wrote it in two parts, and didnt bother to proofread it.

Keep up the good work, d00d.

[R. Andrew Lamonica]

1. Yeah the firefox thing stinks, but I did not write the e-academy website and so I have no control over it.  I suspect that since e-academy is owned by Microsoft (or at least has MS as its main customer), they decided that they would write their site for Internet Explorer only.  The problem with the site seems to be that their downloader software does not get the correct filename (it loses the â€Ã...“.exeâ€Ã, part) in non-IE browsers.  You will be happy to note that the software.cs.siue.edu parts of the site validate to XHTML strict and so they work in FireFox better than IE. ;-)

2. The login page redirection was also a necessary evil.  If you look at the link we actually send you back to e-academy to get a new authentication token every time you get your password wrong.  This is because those tokens only last a few minutes and so using the same one over and over is not a good idea.

3. As for â€Ã...“Get rid of div.mainblock, and just set auto margins on div.contentblock to center itâ€Ã, I tried this origionally and the block did not get centered in IE.  So I did a quick fix and added another level with a text-align:center.  This should not work but it did.  I would be happy to see an example that works in IE and FireFox using only margins.

4. The â€Ã...“paragraphsâ€Ã, have been put into a list for search engine optimization reasons.

5. Everything else that you mentioned I have no excuse for aside from my own relative inexperience.  Thanks for the advice.  :-)

[Geoff Schreiber]

make the html tag render the grey background, and center the body tag using auto margins

The current working draft for CSS 2.1 does not recommend this method: "we recommend that authors specify the background for the BODY element rather than the HTML element", so the best bet is to set the body background to grey, set the left, right, and top margins on the body, and allow the div.contentblock to take up the whole body box.

Otherwise, I agree in regards to the hx tags - without them, when you try and view the page in outline mode, there isn't one...  I also agree regarding the paragraphs - unordered lists are helpful for SEO purposes, but only in grouping related items together.  I see nothing in the content of the list in question that needs them to be grouped.  If you've seen an SEO article that suggests otherwise, I wouldn't mind reading it.  Again, the W3 recommends unordered lists for related items such as thumbnails, links, etc., but not for paragraphical content.  This also affects the way screen readers parse the document.

http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/unordered-lists
http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/#gl-structure-presentation

[Geoff Schreiber]

Actually - thinking about it more, if you make the list items hx items instead, they will also show in outline form, and can still be styled the way you are wanting.  This also helps with screen readers when users want to simply scan the outline of a page versus hearing all the content.  In this case though, the outline should BE the content.

[Justin Camerer]

Yeah, I always was kinda curious, but never thought it was a good idea to use the html tag to style the background, but it was there and it worked, and I used it on CustomCountryHome.com, which also is centered using auto margins and works in IE.

Also, if anyone is looking to purchase a home... Check that site out... ha.

[R. Andrew Lamonica]

and I used it on CustomCountryHome.com, which also is centered using auto margins

http://www.customecountryhome.com/ <--Dead Link

[Justin Camerer]

htp://www.customcountryhome.com

I cant type... which is good... because im programmer... and i spend most of my day on a computer.... ehhh....