Just to backtrack a little, we spent the Easter long weekend in Vienna. Oh my, how glorious was that?? I am absolutely in love with the place, in spite of the Strauss and the Léhar and the Mozart fixations. The architecture is amazing, concerts all over the place and a gorgeous compact little city centre just teeming with shops, everywhere you look. My German, it appears however, is rubbish. I managed one meaningful exchange in the entire weekend which was asking a girl in the supermarket whether the tea I was holding ("Hot Love" *snort* - actually a raspberry and vanilla infusion. mmm) actually had any black tea in it or if it was just fruit. I was quite pleased with that, but seemed to be otherwise unable to ask the simplest thing without dissolving into a muddle of French and English (why?? why??).

# posted by minim @ 9:12 PM 0 Comments

A few weeks ago I posted a code snippet for "The amazing whole-cell link" stating that it did have a few quirks still, didn't work in Opera, etc.

I've now fixed the problems! And this version should work in all major browsers now, although I still haven't been able to test it on a Mac...

First up, make your link in the div that you want to be entirely linked:

<div class="anchors">
<a href="x" class="stretchylink">Test link here</a>
</div>

then do your styles:

<style type="text/css">
.anchors {
width: 275px; /* width of outside box (max width for link in all browsers) */
height: 38px; /* height of outside box (max height for link in all browsers) */
border: 1px solid #000000; /* set if desired */
}
a.stretchylink {
width: 273px; /* the width of the box less twice the width of any border */
height: 36px; /* the height of the box less twice the width of any border */
padding: 8px; /* as required */
display: block; /* yes, you need this - use float on .anchors if you need to line boxes up side by side */
}
:root a.stretchylink { /*FF/Moz setting*/
width: 259px; /*the width of the box less the sum of all horizontal padding on the link*/
height: 22px; /* the height of the box less the sum of all vertical padding on the link*/
}
.anchors a.stretchylink:link, .anchors a.stretchylink:active, .anchors a.stretchylink:visited {
color: #000000; /* set link text colour & any other required attributes */
background-color: #ffffff; /* set original background colour */
}
.anchors a.stretchylink:hover {
background-color: #ebebeb; /* set hover colour */
}
</style>

And that's all there is to it! Of course, feel free to remove the comments from the code - they're just there to explain what each line does and how to work out the pixel values. Hope it's useful!

# posted by minim @ 11:43 PM 0 Comments

Yay! For the first time in ages, I've actually got a new piece to report: I've just completed my first two-part invention for piano/harpsichord. It's quite Bach-like in places, I think, but without being pastiche. I'm going to let it stew a little while before I release it into the wild, but just felt a need to announce :-) Now I need to start a second one to go with it so it doesn't get lonely...

# posted by minim @ 12:09 AM 0 Comments

Yes I do. I really love the internet. It was my birthday yesterday (33! my God, is it possible that I could be so old and still so immature! (when) will I ever grow up??) and it seems that none of my friends in Australia actually remembered BUT MY INVISIBLE ONLINE FRIENDS DID! Hurrah for invisible friends, hurrah for flickr. So lovely.

So it was quite a low-key birthday - really just a marker of getting older rather than a big celebration, but the boy and I went out for dinner, which made it a small sort of event anyway.

So this morning I had my own mini-celebration by baking some scones. It's been ages since I've made anything like this - and it was also a good excuse to try out my new rolling pin. I've never had a rolling pin without handles before, and I have to say I liked the control it gave me - seemed a bit easier to control than the other, and of course a bit less friction on the hands cos they're not always rubbing against the same bit - the pin rolls along under the length of your hand and you can move them around too. I think £2 well spent :-)

The other thing which really brought home to me how much I love the internet was a story one of my invisible friends told me about how she broke her camera - and her invisible friends clubbed together to buy her a new camera - and gathered so much money that they were able to get her a Nikon D50 AND a tripod and assorted accessories too!

So, like I say, I love the internet and give it a great big hug for being a wonderful place to be :-)

# posted by minim @ 2:52 PM 0 Comments