Friday, June 12, 2009

New look site OMG LOL WTF!?!11

12:48 PM / Web / Comments16 Comments

Web

As you've probably noticed, the site now looks a little different. The response to my preview of the redesign last night seemed to be pretty positive, so I decided to go ahead and make it official. While the new look isn't drastically different from its predecessor in appearance, I did rewrite most of the style sheet under the hood - a testament to how easy it is to redesign a site if the major design elements are handled via CSS rather than HTML.

At the moment, only the News section bears the new look, and I'll be converting the rest of the site on a section-by-section basis. I don't foresee any major difficulties, but I want to do it one piece at a time to ensure I don't run into any bugs.

By the way, can any CSS/XHTML gurus suggest a way of achieving the effect I've gone for with the main menu that will actually validate? Currently, each menu button is a separate div, each of which is wrapped with an "a href" tag. Unfortunately, this doesn't validate. I can get it to validate by placing the link inside the div, but then the .png overlay doesn't work. I don't consider it the end of the world if I can't get it to validate, but the perfectionist in me would prefer it if things were just tickety-boo.

Updated Friday, June 12, 2009 at 04:25 PM: The entire site has now been converted to tweaked layout. That was pretty painless!

 
16 Comments

1. Bleddyn Williams said:

Hi Michael!

Enjoying the upgrade, but I do notice a couple of quirks. I'm viewing this with Internet Explorer 6, and when you have the browser window filling the screen, the very top of the two columns (news & archives) that have the curved edges moves to the right, so the top of these columns isn't in line with the rest of the page.

Also, the "BD & DVD - My gargantuan collection" doesn't fit in the bar and floats awkwardly.

Hope these comments help.

(Posted on Friday, June 12, 2009 at 2:06 PM)

2. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Hi Bleddyn,

Aargh! Damned Internet Explorer 6, the eternal bane of web designers! To be honest with you, I'm almost tempted not to bother trying to sort out these two problems. The browser is now eight years old and is a complete mess as far as standards compliancy is concerned. I appreciate that some people are still stuck using it for business reasons (the computers in my workplace are still restricted to IE 5), but anyone else should be able to upgrade to IE 8.

(Posted on Friday, June 12, 2009 at 2:14 PM)

3. FoxyMulder said:

Viewing on a 1280x1024 monitor and FireFox and works pretty good and i see you have chosen to edit the stylesheet so it fits the entire page.

(Posted on Friday, June 12, 2009 at 2:23 PM)

4. FoxyMulder said:

Hmmm just noticed it's showing full size page here in Firefox and graphics are a little out of focus due to the scaling but in Internet Explorer 8 its fine.

So scrub my last post.

(Posted on Friday, June 12, 2009 at 2:25 PM)

5. FoxyMulder said:

Maybe i had my zoom in set wrong.

Hmm i dunno my memory is wandering today.

(Posted on Friday, June 12, 2009 at 2:27 PM)

6. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Are you using zoom mode, Foxy? For me, the site displays more or less identically in Firefox and IE 8.

(Posted on Friday, June 12, 2009 at 2:27 PM)

7. FoxyMulder said:

Snap.

I was just writing that at same time as you.

(Posted on Friday, June 12, 2009 at 2:28 PM)

8. FoxyMulder said:

Yes all looks fine now.

I was wondering if you have seen the UK edition of the BBC Miniseries Pride and Prejudice and if so can you tell me if it is region coded or whether it'll play on an American Blu Ray Player ?

(Posted on Friday, June 12, 2009 at 2:33 PM)

9. Author Profile Page Michael said:

I've not seen it, no, but bluray.liesinc.net has it listed as playable on American systems, so I assume it's a 24p job.

(Posted on Friday, June 12, 2009 at 2:36 PM)

10. Josh said:

Looks good! On a lowres netbook with a Chrome-based browser.

I wouldn't bother trying to comply with IE6, so long as everyone keeps doing it then there is no incentive for businesses and people to upgrade.

(Posted on Friday, June 12, 2009 at 4:37 PM)

11. Bleddyn Williams said:

Michael, I just upgraded from IE6 to IE8 and sure enough, the problems I reported are gone.

Hopefully the IT guys won't come a-visiting to see why I'm not still on IE6! :)

(Posted on Friday, June 12, 2009 at 6:41 PM)

12. avanze said:

I like the new placement of the comments. Easer access at the top.

(Posted on Saturday, June 13, 2009 at 3:23 PM)

13. MCP said:

Sorry if it's just been pointed out, but older comments sections show a funny line: "Comments on this entry and all entries up to and including June 31st 2009(..)" :)

(Posted on Sunday, June 14, 2009 at 6:55 PM)

14. Author Profile Page Michael said:

MCP:

Yeah, I disabled commenting on older entries because of the hassle that would have been involved with maintaining two separate databases - a necessary evil, I'm afraid.

(Posted on Sunday, June 14, 2009 at 7:44 PM)

15. MCP said:

Ok but the funny bit I was pointing at lies in "June 31st" ;)

(nothing big, indeed)

(Posted on Sunday, June 14, 2009 at 9:25 PM)

16. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Oh yeah - oops! Well, I've deleted the old database and I'm not going to go through each page manually to change it. :D

(Posted on Sunday, June 14, 2009 at 10:15 PM)

 
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