Slight Adjustments
posted on february 13, 2003, tag: site
Over the past few days I have made a ton of small adjustments, improvements and additions to this site. In case you didn't notice, I'll give you a short list. Please feel free to post comments/questions or suggestions.
General:
- Select menus on the right hand side, replacing former textual monthly archive links. This is a much tighter way to give you access to not only all of the monthly archives, but the category archives as well.
- Addition of a "Font Type" menu at the bottom right. This allows you to choose either Serif (Georgia) or Sans-Serif (Lucida) font face display. This will set a cookie and be remembered. I added this primarily because this site looks amazing in Lucida Grande in OS X.
- Slight change to link styles. Links are now underlined with a dotted line rather than a solid one. Also, gray links (as well as gray text in general) has been made darker.
- Reorganization of page bottom—looks better and from now on that block of stuff down there will actually stay flush to the bottom like it should have been before
- Changed vertical dividing line between content and navigation columns to a dotted line rather than a solid one.
- Widened navigation column, narrowed content column (slightly).
- Changed "Permalink" to "Link" in entry footers, also added entry's category (which is a link to that category archive) between link and comments.
- Cleaned up comments pop-up for all browsers and made the "Remember Me" box show as checked if your information is already remembered.
Archives:
- Better construction of the inter-monthly-archive navigation. Now, at the top of all montly archives, there's a clearer way to navigate back and forth.
- Added descriptions for each category on main archives page.
- Added ability to show/hide a list of all entries by title on main archives page.
That's all I can think of right now, but I'm sure there are more changes. I think the tweaking has paid off, and I feel the site is a bit tighter than it was a week ago.
Note: If you're using the web browser Safari (OS X), please download the new beta that came out yesterday. It fixes a lot of problems and CSS issues, and will make your experience here much better.
Also: If you're using Mozilla on a PC, you should upgrade to a build at least as new as 1.3a {2002121215} or the newest build, 1.3b {2003021008} (both be found here). These builds will fix some CSS layout issues that affect this site.
Comments
There are 11 comments, comments are closed
John on 02/13/2003:
I like the changes!
Steve on 02/13/2003:
I wanted to say this since I've been working on my site, very convenient that you wrote about this.
Your site is great. All the little things you do (that I can't) make this site so much more usable and attractive.
It's strange that I never noticed all of it before, but then again I wasn't analyzing your code and seeing how you did things.
Linus on 02/14/2003:
Mmm, Lucida.
Garrett on 02/14/2003:
First of all, thanks.
Second, Steve: Ah, so you finally understand what I'm doing here, huh? After all of those comments throughout the years about how this was the easy part. Not so easy, is it, pal? Thanks though. I'm glad you like it. Hurry up and get done with yours so I can add it to the elsewhere links.
Oh, and Linus: Lucida, mmm... but Lucida Grande via Chimera via OS X, gorgeous. See what I mean.
Courtney on 02/17/2003:
Are you aware that the first date image block is partially cut off in Mozilla? It's been bugging me for the last week. I was hoping you'd fix it.
Garrett on 02/18/2003:
I don't see this problem, Courtney. Which build of Moz are you using? I'm currently running Mozilla proper, version 1.3a {2002121215} on my PC and Chimera version 0.6 {2002122004} on my Mac and I don't see this error in either.
Courtney on 02/18/2003:
Mozilla 1.2.1 {20021130}. Note that this is only a problem on the top-most image.
Garrett on 02/18/2003:
Yep, this is a build related issue. I'll post another note about this in the actual entry. Anyone using Mozilla for the PC should upgrade to a newer version (1.3a or 1.3b). They're both stable and will fix this (and other) CSS problems.
Linus on 02/18/2003:
Garrett: Lucida Sans Unicode (which I think comes with WinXP) is almost identical to Lucida Grande for the Mac. A simple addition to my registry substitutes Sans Unicode for Grande, so your site looks as good in my browser window as it does on yours. :)
Garrett on 02/19/2003:
Ah, I forgot—you use ClearType. I can't stand that, so I never turn it on. Therefore, I didn't think about what Lucida Sans Unicode would look like with CT on. Do me a favor? Post a screenshot of that.
