I’ve been getting some great feedback on the new design, and it’s very appreciated. The kind words on the new look are always flattering, and pointing out areas that are confusing is wonderfully helpful. Things that make sense to me as I’m putting it all together don’t always fly in the real world, and I’m never upset by constructive criticism!
A ‘home’ link has now been added to the navigation bar for all the sub-pages. While I’d had the ‘eclecticism’ title linked back to the home page, it wasn’t terribly obvious, so this should clear up any confusion there. Besides, a little redundancy never hurt.
I’m going to need to do a little tinkering to the display of the comments. I decided to break with convention a bit and put the byline of each comment above the post, rather than below, which seems to be a tad disorienting. Breaking conventions is all well and good — doing so at the cost of usability isn’t. Fixing that is high on the priority list.
Next on the priority list will be adding a bit more space between individual posts on the main page and comments in the comment threads. I’ll need to figure out the best way to do that — because I’m using a display: inline; declaration for the h3 tags to set the border just around the text rather than across the width of the div, simply adding a margin-top: 10px; argument won’t work. I could simply add one or two p or br tags to add some lines of whitespace, but that introduces some unnecessary (purely presentational) code, which I’m trying to avoid, so I’d like to come up with a better solution than that. We’ll see how that goes.
Right now, the lowest priority is fighting with the skyline image at the top. If those of you that are seeing problems with the display of the image could let me know what browser/version/OS/resolution you’re using, as well as telling me that it’s ‘off-center’, it’d help greatly. I’m using Safari 1.0 on Mac OS X, at 1024×768, and the header looks fine to me. I also checked it in Camino (which should match with Mozilla or Netscape, as they use the same rendering engine), and it was good there. It was only in IE/Mac OS X that I saw any issues (and I haven’t looked into that yet). Unfortunately, my PC is dead at the moment, so I can’t test the site on PC browsers from home, but I’ll certainly be looking into it from work.
Anyway, I’m quite gratified that the design seems to be fairly well received, and that any bugs that have been mentioned so far are actually fairly minor. It’s about time I started exploring different ideas, and you all are helping me iron things out a lot. I’ll buy you a drink next time you’re in town. :)
easy fix to your comment link problem – put it on the left, not the right. there’s no reason to look on the right – your brain just thinks that’s a line that’s supposed to end over there somewhere. i know it makes it more cluttered, but that’s the easiest one I can think of. You could cut down on the clutter by moving the date to the end of the line – here’s three examples of what I mean:
Working out the Bugs
c:0 | tb: 0 | September 8, 2003 @ 12:08PM
Working out the Bugs
c:0 | tb: 0 | 9-8-03@12:08P
Working out the Bugs
September 8, 2003 | 12:08PM
c:0 | tb: 0
hm, as usual ie 6 (ugh) on a pc. i’m also running at a resolution of 1600×1200. if you want i can send you a screen shot of what it looks like for me. why is centering a low priority? it’s so eeeasssyy. and it shouldn’t change anything for you or anyone else running at a standard resolution.
The biggest reason that it’s on the low end of my priority scale is that it affects the use of the site least of all — it’s purely a visual issue, and I’d rather take care of the usability issues first, that’s all.
It’s also not quite as simple as merely adding a center declaration to that div, either — in fact, that div is already centered. Because I’m defining the background image in the stylesheet rather than using an img tag in the markup, the image placement isn’t controlled by the center declaration on the div. That’s not to say it can’t be done, of course, I just need to dive into my CSS specs and figure out the right syntax.
Personally, I can’t imagine running a browser full-screen at 1600×1200. Fluid layouts such as mine would expand to be incredibly wide, and fixed layouts would probably have a ton of wasted space on the sides, as they’re generally designed for either 800×600 or 1024×768. I’m running at 1280×1024 here at work, and that’s already so wide that I won’t use full-screen browser windows.
The image itself is already 1024 pixels wide — I figured that that would be wide enough, as even someone running full-screen at 1024×768 would lose a teense of the image on the side due to scroll bars and window borders. Guess I figured wrong, huh? ;)
Anyway, even with that as my “lowest priority” concern, I don’t figure that any of the things I want to look at will take terribly long to figure out. Just need to refresh some of the CSS commands I haven’t played with in a while…but I’ll get there!
add to panorama div:
background-position: center;
:) see, it’s easy-shmeezy. pretty sure on that one anyway.
Normally I don’t use a full screen at 1600×1200 with a browser, but it’s still wide enough that I get a difference. shrug
Oh, fine, show me up. :P
Hrm…now I’m curious. Let’s see what happens.
See? That’s why I don’t mind asking for comments and ideas. Because there are times when I think I know what I’m doing — and then there are times when my friends come along and prove me wrong. ;)
yay! it’s fixed!
i should be fair and say i cheated. dreamweaver can be a handy little tool for finding css bits. ;)
I think I managed to solve two issues with one fix. I’ve adjusted the display of each individual comment’s byline a tad, and added the light shading to the byline text for comments and for posts. I think this should help clear up any confusion as to what post or comment each byline is attached to. Plus, adding that shading helps connect the post title/comment author to the byline as a cohesive whole, and ties into the shading used for the navigation bar at the top. All in all, I think it’s working.
Of course, if someone feels like it’s not, I’m all ears. ;)
hm, could still be interpreted as belonging to the one above it, though that’s less likely. At this point we’re splitting hairs, but perhaps the grey box could have a dotted line border on the left side too (not bottom or right). this joins the box or at least directs it to the lines below. but like i said, splitting hairs.
here is one thing that is starting to bug me, but i have no idea if it’s fixable. on ie 6 for pc (don’tcha just love it) the comment entry box extends past the border of the page. so when i’m typing, i can’t see the end of the lines i’m writing, but just count on my own typing skills and hope for the best. of course, i can still check my work in the comment preview.
I did recommend your page to Liza ( http://liza.typepad.com/burundanga/ ) who keeps track of the better looking TypePad sites.
Looking good! Everything works for me. No bugs to report. And no answers on how to fix anything.