Fixpert

I became aware of the Lehigh Valley Velodrome in , Trexlertown Pennsylvania when I was a bike messenger. Twice a year (back then it was once a year), they put on a giant bike swap meet inside their velodrome. Bike shops will come and empty out their inventory from the previous year at bargain basement prices. Pro riders will come to Trexlertown to unload all the free swag they get from their sponsors. This event is a staple for any starving messenger that needs some waterproof gear, a new bottom bracket, or some other crucial piece of equipment that would otherwise be completely out of their budget.

The Lehigh Valley Velodrome also offers a free youth racing program coached by olympic champions. And it looks like now the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation has a similar program in their newly renovated Kissena Velodrome in Queens. I have to admit, reading this excerpt brought a joyful tear to my eye:

Cycling in New York City
Bicycle racing has a long tradition in New York City. In fact, Madison Square Garden was built first for track cycling, and it is still remembered in the name of the “ Madison,” an Olympic event. The Kissena Velodrome was built for the 1964 U.S. Olympic trials.

That’s right, “Tables Begone.” It’s kind of like Smells Begone®. Ug, that lingering musty scent of tables. It’s still lingers in places around the Crutchfield site, but with this quick redesign we made some serious progress.

Go to Crutchfield’s homepage and if you’ve got the Web Developer extension for Firefox, outline the table cells and bask in our glory:

Ok, ok, so there’s one table cell in there, and we will phase that out over time. As you get deeper into the site, you’ll notice tables are still around, but far less tables than before. Most importantly, this redesign represents a move in the right direction.

There were so many tables on this site. It was common to see a table used just to put a 1 pixel border around another table. It was perfectly normal to see a table, or multiple tables, that weren’t doing anything and that no one could account for. Another big issue was the ASP that was driving the site. This is a dynamic, database-driven site, which means that any given page can have dozens of different display variations depending on the specifics of that user’s session. And, having not separated structure, behavior, and presentation, our ASP code was woven into a sort of Chinese Finger Trap with html tables. Glancing through our source code, you would see an asp variable in place of the colspan value for a table cell. So, you might see some logic that said “If the user has logged into their account, then this table cell gets a colspan of 3, otherwise it gets a colspan of 2.” Seeing code like this really worried me. I had built sites using CSS before, but I had never tried to take a giant dynamic site like this and recode it for web standards. And with all the reading of blogs that I do online, I had never seen anyone write a clean concise article about “it can be done, here’s how to transform your giant, bloated dynamic site into a CSS work horse.” So, let me say for the doubters and haters out there, yes it can be done. I know we’re still in transition, but we’ve made enough progress where I am now seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Hang in there dudes and dudettes!

Keep checking in for more. Up next: span class=”bogus!”

I have spent a lot of time on the bike. I mean a lot of time. So, I know from experience that you don’t want to select the wrong bike shorts for your long rides. I’ve tried a lot of different biking shorts, and these DeSoto Tri Shorts are the best shorts I’ve ever found. They’re triathlon shorts, so they’re designed for swimming, biking, and running (I’ve only worn them for cycling). Because of their intended usage, the pad is much more thin and flexible than the average cycling short, which makes them a lot more comfortable. The shorts themselves are very thin and malleable and are perfect for summer riding. And, unlike most cycling shorts, you have more color options. That’s actually more important than you may think — if you know you’ll be out in the sun on a hot day, you don’t want to cook in black shorts. These DeSotos got me through 1900 miles of riding in 3 weeks, and they’ve got my full endorsement.

Crutchfield just launched a pretty sweet redesign — taking a huge leap towards web standards. I’m going to write a bit about the redesign, so keep checking back over the next few days and you’ll get the scoop on:

• CSS drop downs: Or you can jump ahead and read Tim the intern’s account
• Tables: The Crack of the web world
• Web standards: Before and after
• Centered fixed-width design: An homage to the blogging community
• Making the case for web standards