In this open letter from an auto theft investigator from Charlotte Meck, Police he explains some of the implications of auto theft.

He states that most of the time, the crime is committed by inexperienced juveniles.    Auto theft is often a “stepping stone”  to other crimes.   Successfully stealing a car emboldens delinquents to other crimes.

Having a car stolen is not something that anyone would look forward to.   As the open letter points out, even if you get your car back,  it may not be the same.   The car was quiet probably abused in your absence and there will always be the lingering sense of being violated.   

The police department also included the following diagram to showcase what we can do to help prevent auto theft.   I had several of these steps covered, but I neglected the most important layer,  common sense.    In addition to feeling violated,  I also feel responsible.   I relay wish that I had read some of this information a week ago.

I will try to do what I can to spread the word on how to prevent auto theft.

Common sense:

1. Don't leave your keys in the car.    Anywhere in the car (or on the car for that matter)
2. Don't leave the car unlocked
3. Don't packages visible in the car
4. Don't leave firearms in the car
5. Don't leave a running car unattended

What other tips would would you guys offer?  

I have always been much more worried about how the software that I write works.    Stability, accuracy, scalability, etc were always much more important to me than the choice of font, color, filters on the images, etc.

Recently I have had several people tell me that it doesn't matter how well a piece of software works.   If it doesn't look sharp, it will loose some credibility.    Let's face it, most people don't get to see the most impressive aspects of the software we write.   

Having thought about it more, if our software doesn't look impressive, it is less likely to be seen as impressive or taken seriously.

With this in mind,  I have started the task of trying to understand the UI and style sheets.   It is a worthwhile endeavor.

Some of the resources that I have found useful, you may find useful as well.

http://www.csszengarden.com/

http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp

http://stopdesign.com/articles/throwing_tables/

http://stopdesign.com/articles/absolute/index.html

What other style sheet resources have you found useful?

Here is a few things that I have learned.   Evidently in NC, insurance companies figure out how to settle claims for stolen cars by taking the average listing price for comparable cars.

Depending on how well your car retains its value, this could work out well or you could potentially owing money.

This is at least the way my insurance is set up.   Depending on your policy, you may get something different.

I am trying to look on the bright side and view this as an opportunity to research the hybrid cars.

Does anyone have any experience with a hybrid car?   Especially the Toyota Prius?

I woke up this morning to discover that my car was missing.

My initial reaction was “Did I make last month's payment”   Unfortunately I did.    Someone stole my car from own driveway.

I spent most of today on the phone with the police, with the insurance company, with the finance company (just in case).

I also spent some time at the bank closing out my accounts and on the phone with the credit bureaus doing a little preventative fraud reporting.

Many of us keep stuff in our cars that you don't even think about.

Did I have any mail in the car?

Where is my gym bag?

What CDs did I have in the car?

Where is my security badge for work?

What should I worry about that I am not?   I am worrying about so much!

When I talked to the police, he said that 90% of stolen cars usually turn up within a couple of weeks.

I will post what this ordeal is like.

Purists will argue about a strict separation of format/ presentation from content, but if you are not a “purist” why should you care?

Several reasons,

Much more dynamic layout.   Witness the skins on any blog server.    With tables to control layout, imagine the changes required to move navigation from the left of the page to the right of the page.    Using style sheets, you simply have to change one attribute of one style class.    As a more extreme case, consider having to change a form with labels over the input controls to one where the labels are beside the input controls.    Using tables, this is a substantial change.   Using style sheets, this is a trivial change of one attribute of a style sheet class.    This alone could dramatically simplify maintenance.

Smaller markup files.   By storing all of the layout information in separate style sheets that are common across all of the pages in a web site, the individual files transferred to the client are much smaller.   The external style sheet files are not re downloaded each time a page is requested.     By putting the page's content in span or div tags instead of td tags with their corresponding tr and table tags, you have less markup.  This is easier to follow and renders faster.

Cleaner markup is easier to follow and maintain.  Have you ever had to edit the content of a page that had multiple layers of nested tables just to get the positioning right.   I have even gone so far as adding a table around a table just to get a desired border look.    All of these extra tags makes for bloated markup and unexpected results if a tag is not properly closed.

Tips on Positioning Without Using Tables

There are some key style sheet features that are used for layout that you may not have used if all you have used style sheets for is formatting.    These attributes are key to positioning:

float: left| right   will indicate that objects of the associated class should “float” to the left or right of the rest of the content.    To move the navigation from the left side of the page to the right side of the page, simply add a float : right to the class for the containing div tag.    This is also how to get the label for a control over to the side.

display: inline| block  will indicate whether the content should be displayed as a line by itself or inline with the rest of the content.    By marking the label for an input control as display:block, the label will appear on the line above the input control.   By marking the label for an input control as display : inline and float : left, the label will appear on the same line and to the left of the control.   Changing the float : left to float : right will move the input label over to the right of the input control.

width : unit   It becomes very important to set the width of classes to control layout.    To make sure that all of the input controls line up, set the width of the label.   The input form then becomes a collection of paragraphs consisting of a span tag with a class of “InputLabel“ followed by a control.

Is anyone else experimenting with moving the layout out of the markup and over to the style sheet?