All creative artists have, on occasions sought inspiration from others' works and it is fair to assume that there is no designer who churns out pure originals day in and day out. However, where does one draw a line between inspiration and imitation? Take the case of LogoMaid for instance. A supposedly genuine company whose expertise lies in Logo designing and, judging by their frontpage testimonials, has dozens of satisfied customers to boast of. Their catch-phrase reads, "When we design a logo for you, we put our heart and soul into the process because every single logo for us is a stepping stone." Those words should be testament enough, to bag a contract. But are all their emblems originals? I think not. I couldn't help but cringe when Godbit complained that their logo had been pinched. It is a popular site, particularly among web-designers, and being a regular visitor myself, I was a little angered by the theft.
Godbit isn't the only one though. There are others. And probably even more, if one has time to look hard enough. I also liked Robert Evans' idea of a non-direct approach (through blogs, forums, etc.) rather than a confrontational approach to dissuade LogoMaid from stealing other company's logos. A caveat from me - "Do business with LogoMaid at your own risk."

A few '//s' did the trick finally. The problem for me was PHP automatically appending session information to all links. It is supposedly a feature in PHP. What a feature?
I haven't been able to wipe off the ear-to-ear grin ever since "This Page Is Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional!" flashed on my screen. The hangover may last for a long time.

Update: The elation was short-lived afterall. Thanks to GT500 - who didn't take my word for it. But I tell you, I tested it about 10 times last night. And everything was fine then.

The slight glitch was caused by an extra tag in the comments section. I've had to delete some comments, including my own. Apologies to all concerned and the problem has been remedied.

So now, "This Page Is Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional!" - till other errors display their ugly mugs.

I have been trying to get SPBlog generate standard XHTML for the last 2 days. I did manage to iron out some rough edges so far, only to be stopped in my tracks with a tiny problem. Yes, this kind of work always seems to boil down to that 'one elusive' piece of information.
I will find it! A Murphy's Law comes to mind: 'If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.'

I realised after putting in a lot of hard work that, Martin's blog wasn't working well on Firefox. It had major issues actually. To be blunt about it! The links on the sidebar were unclickable. The problem percolated to other Mozilla variants like Gecko, which GT500 was kind enough to point out to me.

After frustrating hours of 'here-a-push-there-a-push', it dawned on me, almost serendipitously, that the solution was as simple as 1-2-3. In CSS terms 'float: right;'. The hard part over, I decided to validate the CSS. I am glad that I went through that ordeal. Atleast now the CSS has 'no errors'.

Errata: Geko is not a Mozilla variant. But Mozilla is Geko-based. Hat-tip: GT500

I have just completed the beta version of the custom template I did for Martin. About 80% of it is complete. Only a few adjustments, mainly to the user interface and comments pages, remain.

This is a custom design so no templates will be up for grabs. Sorry!