by Sara Leidner

Managing z-index across large sites can be a pain in the butt. CSS is hard to test, so it's notoriously easy to make a change that ends up, for instance, hiding some important UI under who-knows-where.

If you use a CSS preprocessor, maybe we can handle it in a special way.

An Idea From Game Programming

Vertical stacking order is not only a problem for web design, it's a major issue for game developers too. They work in even more dynamic environments where it is vitally important which things appear on top of others.

In a brief conversation with Ryan Campbell, who is digging into the world of games, he says the way it's normally handled is a enum (kind of like a named array of constants) variable which then you reference as needed.

Here's an example of some code he might use:

typedef enum : uint16_t {
      WorldLayerGround             = 100,
      WorldLayerBelowCharacter     = 200,
      WorldLayerAboveCharacter     = 400,
      WorldLayerTop                = 800,
      WorldLayerCount              = 1600
    } WorldLayer;

That is defined in a file dedicated to declaring constants for the game to use. Notice how:

1. They are all declared together
2. There is space left between the numbers

It's fairly common to see people number in the hundreds with z-index in web design too. The idea being that you could slip something in between later if need be, which you couldn't if you did 1, 2, 3, etc, because z-index doesn't support decimals. But rarely do you see z-index declared in a group like that. Seems like a smart idea to me!

Grouping

The idea is that all the code that controls vertical stacking is in one place. You could just put all that stuff together.

.modal {
      z-index: 9000;
    }
    .overlay {
      z-index: 8000;
    }
    .header {
      z-index: 7000;
    }

But I'm not a huge fan of that. I don't like duplicating selectors throughout stylesheets just for organization. Just a personal preference. When I find where a class is defined, everything that that class does is there.

Perhaps we can do the same thing but just with the values...

A z-index Partial

Perhaps the single most useful feature of preprocessors is the ability to do includes. Smush multiple files together into one output file. That means you can organize your CSS however makes sense to you, which almost surely means breaking down into small, modular bits.

Maybe you already have a variables.styl or constants.less or something. You could get even more modular and have a file just for managing z-index. In SCSS, the typical naming convention for files only meant to be included start with an underscore, so we'd make a _zindex.scss.

In that file, you'd declare variables that contain all the z-index values you use throughout the site.

$zindexModal   : 9000;
    $zindexOverlay : 8000;
    $zindexHeader  : 7000;

Then in your global set of includes for other SCSS files, you always have this available:

@import "zindex";

And use them as needed:

.header {
       z-index: $zindexHeader;
    }

The idea would be go absolutely whole-hog on this. Do not declare z-index anywhere without making a variable for it and placing it within the stack in the _zindex.scss file.

Maps might be cleaner

Same idea, but using a Sass map instead of individual global variables:

$zindex: (
      modal     : 9000, 
      overlay   : 8000,
      dropdown  : 7000,
      header    : 6000,
      footer    : 5000
    );
    
    .header {
      z-index: map-get($zindex, header);
    }

I think I'll be converting sites over to this system. I don't see any downside and plenty of upsides.

Handling z-index is a post from CSS-Tricks

click for video

CSEE’s Jane Gethmann, Assistant to the Chair, received UMBC’s inaugural Karen L. Wensch Endowment Award for Outstanding Non-Exempt Staff earlier this month. She has played a leadership role in our Department since she joined it in 1997 and has been a key staff member for the thousands of faculty, staff and students who have been part of our department in the past 17 years.

The following is the citation for her well deserved award.

Jane Gethmann first came to UMBC in 1971, and over the years has worked in Financial Aid, the Department of Biological Sciences, and the Graduate School. She joined the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering in 1997, and is known as the glue that holds the department together, going above and beyond her responsibilities.

In addition to assisting the chair and handling administrative and financial duties, Gethmann also takes the lead when additional resources are needed or when she sees a way to increase efficiency in the department. She has served as facilities manager and scheduling coordinator, managed the Computer Science Help Center, coordinated part-time faculty hiring, and created a graduate admissions database. She also managed the installation of a new teaching laboratory, working with faculty and Facilities Management in order to get it up and running by the start of the semester.

A leader and trusted advisor, Gethmann’s vast knowledge of UMBC and departmental procedures as well as her excellent judgment make her invaluable to those she serves. She is a dedicated people person with a helpful and positive attitude. Whether working with faculty, staff, students, or visitors, her goal is to help people solve whatever problem they are facing, and ensure that they have what they need.

Jane plans to retire at the end of this academic year. We will miss her and all that that she has done for UMBC and our department.

click for video

CSEE’s Jane Gethmann, Assistant to the Chair, received UMBC’s inaugural Karen L. Wensch Endowment Award for Outstanding Non-Exempt Staff earlier this month. She has played a leadership role in our Department since she joined it in 1997 and has been a key staff member for the thousands of faculty, staff and students who have been part of our department in the past 17 years.

The following is the citation for her well deserved award.

Jane Gethmann first came to UMBC in 1971, and over the years has worked in Financial Aid, the Department of Biological Sciences, and the Graduate School. She joined the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering in 1997, and is known as the glue that holds the department together, going above and beyond her responsibilities.

In addition to assisting the chair and handling administrative and financial duties, Gethmann also takes the lead when additional resources are needed or when she sees a way to increase efficiency in the department. She has served as facilities manager and scheduling coordinator, managed the Computer Science Help Center, coordinated part-time faculty hiring, and created a graduate admissions database. She also managed the installation of a new teaching laboratory, working with faculty and Facilities Management in order to get it up and running by the start of the semester.

A leader and trusted advisor, Gethmann’s vast knowledge of UMBC and departmental procedures as well as her excellent judgment make her invaluable to those she serves. She is a dedicated people person with a helpful and positive attitude. Whether working with faculty, staff, students, or visitors, her goal is to help people solve whatever problem they are facing, and ensure that they have what they need.

Jane plans to retire at the end of this academic year. We will miss her and all that that she has done for UMBC and our department.

It’s that time again! Open up your local WordPress install (the one that you use for testing plugins)—everyone has one of those, right? It’s not just me?—and get ready for another month’s worth of WordPress community goodness.

This month we’ve got a variety of plugins, useful for everything from managing accounts to adding extra content. Let’s jump in…

Secondary Title

As with most of these plugins, the name tells you most of what you need to know. Secondary Title gives you the option of including some extra text around the title area. Why would you want to do that? A great example is the current Digg site where sub-headings are used to add snarky observations.

You can configure the sub-heading text to be shown before or after the title; or call it separately in your site’s theme.

Style Buddy

There are many different approaches to adding extra CSS or JavaScript to your site without touching the theme files themselves. If you find yourself wanting to use a lot of different custom code on specific posts or pages, this plugin is what you want.

An extra input box for CSS, and one for JavaScript, is appended the edit screen for pages and posts, and that’s it. You’re good to go. I’d like to see some syntax highlighting and proper handling of indentation, though. That’d be cool.

Post Feedback

Post Feedback is a dead simple plugin for getting an idea of what your readers think. It places a drop-down list of 2-5 configurable options for users to choose from at the end of each blog post.

The form appears only once for each viewer. The responses are shown in mini-graph form beside each post on the edit page, giving you an instant overview of public opinion on your posts.

Better Email Validation

If you have a large community, and you want to make sure they’re all more or less human, this one’s for you. Better Email Validation is best described in the words of its own author:

[It] Provides better email validations to protect your blog from spam comments and bots creating accounts. It does deep validation to make sure the email account exists on the server. It requires fsockopen to be available and ability to connect to port 25.

Project Manager by TPC

Have you ever wanted a full project manager right in your WordPress install? Well, now you can have it. Project Manager allows you can create projects, task lists, assign tasks to specific users, the works.

I just hope that the plugin’s creator decides to include some sort of timeline/time tracking feature later. I’d love to see that.

Admin Bar Button

Want access to the admin bar while you browse your WordPress blog, but don’t want it in the way? I usually take it out completely, but for those who’d rather have it there just in case, this plugin is a great option.

Your admin bar gets turned into a button. Hover over it (sorry, Finger-tappers), and the rest of the bar will show up. Leave the bar alone for five seconds, and it goes away again.

Article Directory Redux

This plugin isn’t so much a new plugin as it is an updated version of the original, which seems as though it has been abandoned by its creator.

Simply put, you install the plugin, call a function in your theme, and you have a category-based directory of all your posts. But more than that, you can make it a community affair with front-end post submission. So if you want to make a user-generated directory of… well, anything… this plugin does the job.

Audio/Video Bonus Pack

If you work with a lot of audio/video files, and you have ffmpeg on your server, this plugin will save you a bit of hassle. It’s feature-sparse at the moment, but that will change, and in the mean time, what it does is awesome: it converts all audio/video uploads to HTML5-friendly formats. Besides that, it can also generate HTML5 fallback code for your embeds.

If one of our more daring readers would like to give this plugin a more thorough testing than I was able to manage, please let us know in the comments, I want to see just how much can be done with it.

Disable User

If you’re running a community site, you may want to place a temporary ban on someone until a given situation is resolved. Disable User is a very simple way of implementing this unpleasant but sometimes necessary task.

Just pick a user, select “Disable”, and save. The affected user won’t be able to log in, and will be presented with a popup telling them as much.

Muut

Muut is a fantastic service that provides free (with paid upgrade options) forum and commenting solutions. Check out a few Muut-based forums, they are awesome!

The Muut plugin allows you to embed your forum on your WordPress site. If you want a discussion board on your site, but don’t want to turn the whole site into a discussion board, this is a winner.

TDP – Frontend User Manager

This plugin can facilitate user registration and logins by allowing you to place login, sign-up, and password recovery forms on any post or page with a couple of shortcodes. That’s it!

Easily Create Powerful Online Forms with FormGet – from $27!

Degree of Inspiration

Theatre alumni thrive in Baltimore.

With its many indie performances and off-beat exhibits, Baltimore is quickly becoming a city known for its art scene. Katie Kopajtic �11, acting, is catching that process in real time in b.f.a. � an original web series featuring other recent UMBC graduates (many of whom were involved in the UMBC Theatre Department�s award-winning 2011 production of Las Meninas).

�We were inspired by local artists doing big things,� Kopajtic explains. �We wanted to show what�s going on in Baltimore�s art scene in a way that parallels real life.�

Indeed, shortly after the last episode of b.f.a.�s first season was released in January, cast members Katie, Dan Hileman �12, acting, David Brasington �12, acting, Jessie Poole �13, acting, and Kiirstn Pagan �11, theatre, did their own big thing: creating a new Baltimore troupe called The Interrobang Theatre Company, which debuted its first production in March.

The video series produced by Kopajtic follows a group of friends as they try to navigate the acting world after graduation. (The friends even have their own theatre company, called �Stick People Theatre Company.�) The cast and crew filmed a pilot episode, but Kopajtic � who serves as writer, director, and also acts in the series � knew the homegrown project would need significant funding to continue to its conclusion.

�We had to think about what it would take to film an entire season,� she says. �Things like rentals and even post-production costs like editing�those add up fast.�

So the b.f.a. team launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, eventually raising $7,000 toward a full series production budget of $10,000. Pagan, who served as the series� marketing director, observes that the cast and crew were brought into the creative side of the project as the fundraising was ongoing.

�All of the cast members ended up being very involved in the writing process,� Pagan says. �We had multiple meetings over the summer to go over Katie�s scripts, where everyone was able to help mold the story, making it more interesting, funny, and compelling.�

After a June premiere of the pilot episode at Creative Alliance in Highlandtown, Kopajtic and her cast and crew were able to schedule the final round of filming on a reduced budget beginning in August.

�It was disappointing, but we came to terms with it,� says Kopajtic. �We learned to cut costs without cutting corners.�

The b.f.a. team found low-and-no-cost shooting locations (including Joe Squared and Ottobar) to stretch that budget, and they collaborated with Station North Arts and Entertainment and the Annex Theatre to use the set and lights at a new city arts space called The Chicken Box.

Sean McComas �11, acting, says the opportunity to stretch his skill set from theatre into film was an unexpected perk of his involvement in b.f.a.

�In theater, you are always following a character�s journey from start to finish,� McComas explains. �You may rehearse out of sequence, but in performance you actually go on a journey. In film, that is not the case.�

Filming wrapped in November, and the new episodes debuted online every two weeks through late fall. Kopajtic and the rest of her collaborators are planning a new season of the series, but she believes that b.f.a. is already achieving its goal: showcase Baltimore and the people who live and work there.

�b.f.a is a glimpse into the real lives of artists,� she says. �It shows people working hard, struggling to put themselves out there. That�s Baltimore. That�s what we do.�

Hileman says that the Baltimore connection was a big part of forming Interrobang. �I wanted to see more professional opportunities for young actors like myself in the Baltimore area,� she says. �[The series] is funny to me because when people think of moving somewhere to start their acting career, they don’t think of a city like Baltimore. But personally, I never had a desire to move anywhere else; I decided to make my own opportunities in a city that I love with talented people who deserve to be paid for their hard work.�

Pagan sees a synergy between the two projects. �I think the idea to start Interrobang came totally unrelated to b.f.a.,� she says, �but now that the two have become so intertwined, it is really interesting to see how one effects the other�. I’m on the writing team for Season Two of b.f.a. and I am constantly referring to things that happened to us at Interrobang as things that could possibly happen to Stick People on their journey to create not only a successful theatre company but dynamic, interesting art.�

� Laura Lefavor �13 and Richard Byrne �86

To watch b.f.a., go to bfatheseries.com.

Investigate The Interrobang Theatre Company at http://www.interrobangbaltimore.org/

(04/24/2014)