Company Profile

Don't do it the intuitive way...

...because it doesn't work in IE6 or Safari, even if you set the <td> background element to 'transparent' or 'none'.

But you can still make it happen with just the one image:

You're just altering the background-position of the image, so that what should be on the left goes on the left (at 0), the middle part goes to the middle (50% horizontally), and the last part goes at the end (100%). Remember that values in the background-position element are ordered horizontal, then vertical, unlike the margin and padding elements.

And, of course, you'll want to separate presentation from content by putting the CSS elsewhere and classing the td's.

I've been learning a lot recently about optimizing sites for search engine rankings, which is clearly one of the most important business components of any website. If a customer can't find your store, how can they buy what you're selling? Think about your own experiences with Google or other search engines (there are others?!?)---would you look through more than 2-3 pages of search results if you found anything decent on the first page of results? I wouldn't, and you can bet the average customer wouldn't.

You can see for yourself what a difference search engine optimization can make by googling my name. You'll find it eventually, at #26, on my Plexus staff page. Before I worked here, I can remember going through the list pretty far past 10 pages (10 links each), and not seeing the real CoJo at all. At first, I thought that this increase in my internet fame was just due to the number of incoming links to the Plexus domain, but after a little digging in the source code, I had an epiphany: the word "colin" is littered throughout in URLs because we use Ruby on Rails, and "colin" is part of a route we�ve mapped to all the pages that have to do with me. So you end up with URLs like this:

• http://www.plexusweb.com/staff/colin/blog

This colin-ized route appears in tons of link tags in the markup, and search engines are finding each instance (and ranking accordingly). Yet another reason to let us build your site with Ruby on Rails.

Alright, enough is enough with the posts about this movie. I haven't seen it, and I won't write about how awesome it must be, but I will direct your attention to the fact that the new Guster album has a snake in pain from wrapping itself around the sun.

Brasil was incredible, but after 3 weeks trying to speak Portuguese (and usually failing, as I started studying 3 days before the trip), it's good to be back. Check out my Flickr feed for a few pictures of the trip. Rio de Janeiro is one of the most beautiful places I've seen, and the pictures really can't do it justice (even with my new digital camera).

Looking forward to getting back into the scenic Plexus office and playing a little soccer with Plexus FC.