Friday, February 11, 2005

Blog Updates

So I've added a bunch of stuff recently:
  • Changed site description to random Murfy's Law quotes
  • Move the Flickr Badge to the far right for 1024x768 users (should go away at a lower res) IE users won't see it, because IE is stupid.
  • Made the commenting system way cool (ok so Blogger is the one that did this one)
  • Made the first letter and first line of every post more unquice (looks kinda crappy in IE but readable)
  • I also found out how to add these fun little polls to my site for free. Yay.
so tell me if you like the changes

Do you like the new Changes to the site?
Yes
No
hmmm well, maybe
Didn't notice anything differant
You should do better
They're fantastic!



Free polls from Pollhost.com

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm merely a ship passing in the night... Here are my comments for whatever they are worth...

1) The Flickr Badge shows up on the right side of my screen rather than the left. Probably, the left side of the screen would be better. My eye starts reading at the top right corner of anything I see and makes a circular sweep to the left and then down and then to the right. Some experts say everyone does that, but how could they know? Moving on...

2) Kudos on the commenting system or the incorporation thereof.

3) In printing/typography, there is a style wherein the first letter of a paragraph is larger than the remainder of the type. Normally, it is dropped down into the 'graph so that the top of the big letter is even with the top of the smaller letters (on the first line). In fact, printers call this a "drop cap." A drop cap is very effective. On the other hand, since you are not actually rendering a true drop cap, I find the big letter that sticks up in the air from the base line of type a little distracting. Again, just an opinion. Purists are a dying breed, and many people may like it.

3) Good job on the polls. I wish I had time to play around with that feature on my blog.

Overall, I would rate your improvements about a 96 (out of 100 possible points). Keep up the good work. You have a nice writing style, and a very pleasant blog.

Unknown said...

I had originally planned on doing to drop caps, but was having an awfully hard time getting it all to line up right. But after much work this code seems to work:
.post-body:first-letter {
color:#900;
font-size: 2.7em;
font-weight: bold;
padding: 0px 10px 0px 10px;
float: left;
}
.post-body:first-line {
text-transform: uppercase;
font-size: 1.1em;
line-height: 2.0;
}

Well folk's it looks alright now so steal my code if you'd like to use it on your blog/site but don't play around with it too much, because its fragile.

Anonymous said...

In my last comment, I said I was a ship passing in the night. Well, now I'm passing again -- the other way (grin).

Your dropcap effects are very impressive! I haven't seen this accomplished anywhere else on the net.

Is it somehow possible to "kern" the big cap closer to the smaller letters?

Regardless, I'm really excited about looking at your code to see how you did this. It's really slick.

Unknown said...

well I've dropped the drop caps because it didn't work on every post, didn't look very good in IE(not that I care that much), and most imorpantly I download the latest build of Firefox and it changed how it looked (vertical spacing was off). So all that means that drop caps are on hold until at least firefox comes out with another critical update. Maybe after there will be at least some standard amid versions of Firefox and then I'll just make IE users deal with it. :) On another note I am trying to make my site more IE freindly because I know some of my readers are a little behind, and need good sound advice even though they may use the tools of the evil(just kidding).