Answer My Searches

Here’s the story. I had some HTML like this I wanted to style.

<div class="readonly">
   <input name="greg" value="" />
   <textarea name="greg2"></textarea>
</div>

I want to make both input elements and textarea elements have a light
gray background and a dark gray text color.

Thus I figured this CSS would work:

div.readonly input, textarea {
background-color:#eee;
color:gray;
}

But alas that applied the rule to ALL textareas!

It turns out the correct way to do this is:

div.readonly input, div.readonly textarea {
background-color:#eee;
color:gray;
}

Thus the moral is you must fully qualify all descendant selectors for a rule.

My search terms:

1. css multiple descendants
2. css + “more than one descendant”
3. CSS select multiple descendants
4. CSS selector tutorial

I made three new custom search engines to help readers research key issues mentioned on this site. Basically each one is limited to search only within the top 3-10 forums, blogs, and support pages for the topic.

These will save a lot of time since you can now do just one search, instead of having to search every forum every time you have a question.

Here they are. Let me know how they work. I’m also adding them to the Helpful Resources sidebar so you’ll always have an easy link to them.

1. Ubuntu Search (Searching *.ubuntuforums.org, *.ubuntu.com/ )
2. GoldMine Search (Searching *.frontrange.com, *.contactreview.net, *.castellcomputers.com, *.thegmblog.com)
3. QuickBooks Search (Searching *.quickbooksgroups.com, *.intuit.com )

Let me know if you have more resources, or blogs I can add to any of these search engines.

Here’s a piece of code I’ve found useful. It makes any list infinite. There’s a bit more explanation and some examples in the function’s doc string below. (And I’ve given you some doc tests for free!)

def list_get_cycle(index,alist):
    """Returns the value in the index position of the alist or if the index is
    out of range, the value in the index position if the alist were placed
    end to end infinitely in both directions.
    i.e., it makes the list into a circle/cycle
    >>> list_get_cycle(0,[0,1,2,3,4])
    0
    >>> list_get_cycle(2,[0,1,2,3,4])
    2
    >>> list_get_cycle(4,[0,1,2,3,4])
    4
    >>> list_get_cycle(-2,[0,1,2,3,4])
    3
    >>> list_get_cycle(5,[0,1,2,3,4])
    0
    >>> list_get_cycle(8,[0,1,2,3,4])
    3
    >>> list_get_cycle(-8,[0,1,2,3,4])
    2
    """
    return alist[index%len(alist)]

if __name__=='__main__':
    import doctest
    doctest.testmod()

I find this useful when I want to cycle through values. Yeah, it is pretty trivial though.

One example of where I use this code is in this bracket matching Python utility. (Click edit on that page to see the code.) I have a list of colors, and for each bracket level found, I want to make it a different color. Since there could be infinite levels, but I only have a finite number of colors, this code comes in handy.

Bonus task: Can you modify this code so it works with any iterables, not just lists? You win a free Answer My Searches t-shirt*.

* If I ever decided to sell t-shirts which doesn’t seem likely right now. I mean who would want it?

These are links associated with recent searches I’ve done. They’re not difficult enough to warrant to their own posts but still super useful.

Tags: Ajax, Automation, Businessidea, Color, Crud, Css, Dad, Database, Design, Dll, Executable, Extensions, Firefox, Ftp, Gmail, Google, Grandpa, Graphics, Help, Hex, Html, Idea, Ie, Javascript, Python, Screenshot, Scroll, Sqlzig, Utilitymill, Win32, Work