New look again

2009-03-15

I was thoroughly bored with the previous theme, and although I tried to revive it with the new header image, it was still bugging me. So I created a new one.

I had a draft of a new theme lying around for quite a long time, so I made few adjustments to it: made the code much longer and much less clean. But it seems to work.

Features of the new design include, but are not limited to:

  • big letters in headings (big letters rock)
  • even less images (none, except the two links to flickriver, smilies and images in posts)
  • half-fixed-width half-fluid design (the design is fixed width, but the sidebar is fluid – works well for many different widths of browser (800px – the sidebar isn’t displayed, it’s accessible through scrolling; 1024px – sidebar in one column, 1280px – two columns, more px – more columns (it is capped at three columns)))
  • emphasis on typography (lists, blockquotes, etc. are styled properly)
  • lines vertically in synch (left column, middle column and sidebar)
  • the old color scheme, I mostly like it and more importantly – couldn’t find a better one at the moment :)
  • justified text (I’m still very unsure here – justified looks way better, but left-aligned is more readable)

Bugs of the new design include, but are not limited to:

  • IE6 sometimes messes up the sidebar, not quite sure why
  • Opera doesn’t keep lines in synch when there are smileys (and I thought I had the solution, sigh…)
  • IE doesn’t align the comment date in the comment list (will look into that later)

Also, I spent ages dealing with various bugs in IE that caused things to disappear.
One such bug caused the sidebar not to appear (it was an absolutely positioned element next to a floated element – don’t ever do that), another sometimes caused titles to disappear (they were relatively positioned, now that they are static it seems ok, but I have no idea why). When repairing the sidebar, I had to move it in front of the actual content in the markup, which is wrong and I know it. I am sorry to all lynx/links users out there.

Bug reports, remarks and suggestions are welcome! ;-)

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10 thoughts on “New look again”

Michael Goetze 2009-03-15

Admit it, you were just annoyed that noone commented on your last 3 entries, and therefore decided to do something that was sure to draw comments. :P

Anyway, the cite attribute of the blockquote tag still doesn’t display anything… you should just delete that from the “You can use these tags…” text if you’re not planning to support it. Or implement a preview feature for comments…

tasuki 2009-03-16

Hazzah! A comment!

…but no, I did not write it to get comments. ^^ If I wanted to get comments and attention, I’d just write about controversial issues (christianity sucks, by the way).

As for cite attribute… well… I think you should complain to whoever created your web browser :) The cite attribute gets sent just as you wrote it in there.

But to please possibly my last left reader, I removed the cite attribute from the list, as it’s effectively useless. I also added lists and removed abbreviations and acronyms (no one ever used them anyway).

ignus 2009-03-16

You seriously overdid it with the large fonts. Big letters do not rock! They look as if they’re made for either short-sighted people, children, or retards :-P Moreover, they have this “web 2.0” feel, which I really dislike.

I agree with the other nifty design choices. The colors rule. Now just bring back the font sizes of two changes ago…

tasuki 2009-03-16

In fact I think that maybe I should’ve had increased the size of the base text. Not sure whether you are referring to that or only to titles. Anyway, please read 100% easy to read by Oliver Reichenstein. That guy knows what he’s doing (as opposed to eg. Nielsen who has no clue about typography ^_^).

The web 2.0 feel… hmmm… not everything web 2.0 is evil. Here, there are no reflections, no color transitions, no badges… ;) Neither are there the “web 2.5” grunge textures, semi-transparencies, large icons, catchy taglines… So I think all in all you can be happy that I settled for big letters :P

Michael Goetze 2009-03-16

You mean Iceweasel Firefox (for you Ubuntu users) does something with the cite attribute? Hm…

Oh, by the way, the colors suck. :P (Not quite as much as christianity does, though.)

ignus 2009-03-18

Just a quick note, I will perhaps write a decent reply at a later point.

What I was talking about were of course the ridiculously large titles. I don’t need any article explaining how this is the “correct” size (what would that mean, anyway) – the judgement of my own EYES suffices for me.

And my eyes tell me that it looks retarded. Like a children’s book. Much and much too large. You wanted to increase the size of the base text as well? You’re completely insane.

But this is just my opinion, and it’s your blog, so…

Ah, and the size of the font in which I’m forced to type this reply also makes me feel like some underdeveloped Neanderthal, who needs his letters drawn out for him in laaaaarge strokes…

ignus 2009-03-18

Uh, maybe I sounded too rude in the above comment; my apologies if I did.

tasuki 2009-03-18

I got used to it, ignus, don’t worry :P

I decided the font sizes on 17” 1280x1024. It felt just right. I also checked it on 19” 1280x1024, a little too large, but everything is a little too large there, so maybe the trick is to just lean back and relax. Now I am on a 14” 1440x900 and the letters are really small.

What size of display and what resolution do you use?

Also, with the 1440x900, I had to set minimum font size in Firefox to 14px. So the letters on my blog are actually as small as possible.

By the way, have you read that 100 E2R article ? :)

tasuki 2009-03-18

Michael, it is Firefox all over the world except in Debian-land :)

And afaik no browser actually supports the cite attribute, it was just included in wordpress taglist by default…

As for the colors, I really liked them, but now that I’m on a laptop with not so great LCD, I’m not sure.

ignus 2009-03-22

1280x1024, 17”. Yes, I’ve read the article. I guess I agree (even though it are just the opinions of some guy), but I really don’t see why you have to make the title font so huge.

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