{"id":672,"date":"2003-06-25T23:30:58","date_gmt":"2003-06-25T23:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sunpig.com\/mt-entry-672.html"},"modified":"2006-09-23T19:30:11","modified_gmt":"2006-09-23T19:30:11","slug":"site-redesign-in-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/2003\/06\/25\/site-redesign-in-progress\/","title":{"rendered":"Site redesign in progress"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Your blog is like your house on the web.  Every now and then you feel like giving it a lick of fresh paint, and rearranging the furniture.  If you&#8217;re reading this in your browser, rather than in a newsreader, you&#8217;ll probably notice that things have changed a bit.  (You can still see the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sunpig.com\/martin\/v1_index.html\">previous version<\/a> for comparison.)  I haven&#8217;t changed the archive templates yet, but I&#8217;ll drag them into the new format as soon as I have time.<\/p>\n<p>Any comments on the new design are very welcome.<\/p>\n<p>While I was designing the new look, the following sites, articles, and pages were invaluable references:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.alistapart.com\/stories\/practicalcss\/\">Practical CSS Layout: Tips, Tricks and Techniques<\/a> by Mark Newhouse, over at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alistapart.com\/\">A List Apart<\/a>.  Every time I put together a page of any complexity, I remember that I ought to be using CSS rather than tables to do my layout, and I end up re-reading this article.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/glish.com\/css\/\">CSS Layout Techniques: for Fun and Profit<\/a>by Eric Costello (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.glish.com\/\">glish.com<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/developer.apple.com\/internet\/css\/introcsslayout.html\">Introduction to CSS Layout<\/a> at <a href=\"http:\/\/developer.apple.com\/\">Apple&#8217;s Developer Connection<\/a>, also by Eric Costello.  Yet more information on CSS positioning and layouts.  <\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bigbaer.com\/css_tutorials\/css.float.html.tutorial.htm\">CSS Float Html Tutorial<\/a> at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bigbaer.com\/\">BigBaer.com<\/a>.  Useful information and examples on the css &#8220;float&#8221; property.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/css.nu\/\">The CSS Pointers Group<\/a>.  Yet more CSS.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.blooberry.com\/indexdot\/html\/index.html\">Index DOT Html<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blooberry.com\/indexdot\/css\/index.html\">Index DOT Css<\/a> by Brian Wilson.  In att the time I&#8217;ve been coding HTML, I haven&#8217;t come across a better basic HTML reference.  It&#8217;s both simple and in-depth.  Fantastic stuff.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.projectseven.com\/tutorials\/css_menus\/list_01\/\">CSS Menus and rollovers<\/a> at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.projectseven.com\/index.htm\">ProjectSeven.com<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/devedge.netscape.com\/viewsource\/2002\/list-indent\/\">Consistent List Indentation<\/a> at <a href=\"http:\/\/devedge.netscape.com\/\">Netscape Devedge<\/a>.  Information on the ins and outs of HTML&#8217;s &#8220;list&#8221; elements (&lt;ul&gt; and &lt;ol&gt;)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.alistapart.com\/stories\/taminglists\/\">CSS Design: Taming Lists<\/a> by Mark Newhouse, at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alistapart.com\/\">A List Apart<\/a>.  More on the HTML list elements.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/diveintoaccessibility.org\/\">Dive into Accessibility<\/a> by <a href=\"http:\/\/diveintomark.org\/\">Mark Pilgrim<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In the whole design, the single thing that caused (and is still causing, dammit) the most problems is the &lt;select&gt; list showing my archives in the sidebar.  Honest, getting this to size correctly in IE, Mozilla, and Opera is a <em>pain in the neck<\/em>.  You&#8217;d think that one of the fundamental HTML Form elements would be pretty well nailed down after a decade of specifications, but no&#8230;  As soon as you throw CSS positioning with floated elements into the mix, you can just forget everything they teach you in web school.  I may well abandon it at some point in the (near) future.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h4>Update (26 June):<\/h4>\n<p>Consider it abandoned.  The &lt;select&gt; list of archives, that is.  It&#8217;s just not worth the pain.  Also, the Quick Reviews section of the sidebar is now formatted with &lt;div&gt; blocks instead of tables (big &#8220;yay!&#8221; for css vertical-align:text-top), and all quick reviews in the sidebar should now have an image associated with them (big &#8220;yay!&#8221; for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bradchoate.com\/past\/mtmacros.php\">MT Macros<\/a>).  Upon Frank&#8217;s suggestion, I&#8217;ve shrunk the date headers in the main body.  And finally, I&#8217;ve also made the text in the main body more black.  It was HTML #222, but I looked at it on my LCD panel at work today, and it looked washed-out and faded.  See <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wowwebdesigns.com\/power_guides\/gray_text_revisited\/\">this article at WOW Web Designs<\/a> for a bit more information on this issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Your blog is like your house on the web.  Every now and then you feel like giving it a lick of fresh paint, and rearranging the furniture.  If you&#8217;re reading this in your browser, rather than in a newsreader, you&#8217;ll probably notice that things have changed a bit.  (You can still see the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sunpig.com\/martin\/v1_index.html\">previous version<\/a> for comparison.)  I haven&#8217;t changed the archive templates yet, but I&#8217;ll drag them into the new format as soon as I have time.<\/p>\n<p>Any comments on the new design are very welcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}