Things are moving along nicely. I had to modify the comments template because the link attributes were causing a problem. No one else had tried linking yet, and when I did I found that they disappeared (black on brown- not really legible). I’ve been beta-testing the mt-search add-in, because search functionality is really what makes blogging much better than just taking notes on things. I can’t believe that MT doesn’t have a user search as standard equipment, and what’s up with the “recent entries” thingy they put on the sidebar? Unless you are using a single day on your front page, it’s a little redundant, isn’t it? Carping aside, I’ve now tested this thing out with Opera 6, Mozilla, I.E. 6, and Netscape 6. I really love the rendering engine in Mozilla and Netscape— it makes this page look really nice. I’ve still got some minor alignment things I can’t resolve, and Opera behaves kind of screwy because it seems to cache style-sheets. If I change them and revisit the page, Opera uses the old sheet unless refreshed. So, if you’re using Opera and the screen looks a little funky, hit refresh.
I love blue. It was hard to give that up for the new layout. It was perfect for image-oriented things, since it was easy on the eyes. However, for text it just wasn’t cutting it. In order to keep the somewhat restrained overall appearance and maintain chromatic coherence with paper-toned text box insets, brown seemed like the best alternative. It works fairly well with images too, sort of an off-white matte board. Mostly, it’s just more readable. Anyone who tries to follow some of my more elaborate rants should appreciate that.
I felt like I needed the boxes. Something that would contain the content. One of the peculiarities of web writing is that it is scroll oriented rather than codex oriented. I really enjoyed exploring that for a while. But, fundamentally, web writing is also page oriented. The archives of the old blog are best viewed in their weekly format because of the unfolding of the scroll, as the week progressed. But that’s not how I chose to maintain the entries. They exist on individual pages, so the real scroll effect gets lost when linking or responding to them. So, I think I want to work with a more atomistic view for a while, where each individual entry can stand on its own better, without the comfort of its companions in the scroll. It makes for a more jarring, frame-like experience when visiting the main page, but it helps stop the sprawl.
However, by instituting an “in progress” status for some of those atoms, I feel like I can have the best of both worlds. Currently, for example, my notes on Britton’s book are forming a cohesive scroll of their own. To try and maintain reader-friendliness, I am using links within these entries. So, if you’ve started to read an entry like this, a hotlink will appear to the continuation on the main page so that you need not scroll to exactly where you left off. It’s actually quite easy to code it this way. Rather than leaving the entry in its original place, I could change the date after successive revisions causing it to move up the page, but I’m resistant to that. I like the idea of limiting the presence of any particular post to one week. It will force me to finish it, or give up on it after a while.
Much more readable now, Jeff. Very nice. One of the things I always wanted to mention was how deeply hidden your hyperlinks always seemed to be, at least in IE6, which, once I’d read a post, had me swooshing the mouse pointer over the text to see if anything lit up….