I updated the calendar so that when you move the mouse over a day, it will display the number of posts that day in a box under the calendar. Clicking on a day displays the posts written that day.

Now I need to add a way to list events in the calendar also.

I uploaded a bunch of files I've been working on for the past week. I fixed most of the notices I was getting in my code. I added more things to edit in the edit section. The message board uses more of the new version 3 style controls.

The product section is cleaned up, I am working on more sub-menus for browsing attributes of my projects.

I started working on a module system for the boxes of content on the edges of the page. This will make it easier to move re-order them or move them into different columns.

Some time ago, I was in a web development chat room on Yahoo, and I was trying to get people to go to my site. Some XML guy went to my page and said it doesn't validate. I ran my site through the W3C Validator and saw a hundred-something errors. At that point I dind't want to even attempt to get rid of all those errors.

Well yesterday I decided to try to get everything to validate in XHTML 1.0 Strict DTD. I wrote a PHP script that was just a bare page with the doctype and other required stuff. This script can include any of my other scripts, so I could test them out one by one.

I tinkered around for a few hours, and have managed to get the right column validated. I learned a lot in the process. The biggest change was moving all my CSS markup into the head section, where I didn't know it was supposed to be. This is a little tricky since the CSS is coming from many different files. My solution was to add a method to classes that use CSS, that contains their markup. Then I included the class files in the top level page, and called the print CSS methods. The problem with this method is that I have to include everything that uses CSS ahead of time, even if it isn't going to be used in that particular page.

Anyway, I am looking forward to making everything validate, so I can put that XHTML icon on my page :)

Today I have upgraded the theme editor to allow users to upload textures to use in the layout of the site. The editable site elements now support these textures in addition to colors. These are my first steps in creating a more skinnable user interface.

The user bookmarks section is now more fully functional. You can now delete bookmarks.

The very basic theme editor is now working. Right now there is only one setting you can change, but lots more will come later.

I started making a preferences page for the site. This page uses a new top level page class that will cut down on redundant code. So far the only option on the page is switching between rendering percentage graphs as either html or images.

I modifyed some of my box drawing code so that I could change the font size in boxes. There were some problems with fitting the text of the label inside the label in one line. Next I will customize the font size of each box.

I also moved the 'Your Account' section to the top left, since you would be more likely to use that than the login and join sections. I am going to put the 'Logged In' Section inside the 'Your Account' section.

I added more stuff in the style of interface of version 3. There is now a personal settings box inside the 'Your Account' box.

I started hacking the message board code to use my new box with label class. So far I have made a choose subject box. Before I add too many other things, I am thinking of a way to use a mixture of different classes to display the box format of the page. I need to look into object inheritance some more to see if I can make it more efficient than the current classes.

I also integrated more of the bare programs into my master layout engine. I need to start making a class for top level pages to use so I don't have to have as much redundant code.

I have updated the site with layout version 3. :-S This layout is a lot simpler than version 2 and should display faster. I still need to update it to support themes support. I am thinking about making the message board support different versions of layouts within it's own module so you could mix different layouts. The combinations of themes and layouts should provide a lot of ways to display this page.

I have enjoyed using PHP/MySQL to develop this new layout strategy. The code base runs on PHP 4. I am going to start writing some PHP 5 classes to plug into the site later.

Today I have begun working on the third version of the main layout code file I use to draw this site. I am modularizing some more elements of the site to help me come up with future layouts more quickly. I wrote new PHP class at draws stuff in labeled boxes, and I have thought about writing a tabbed interface for it.