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There’s popular and then there’s popular.

If you have a peek at the Technorati top popular blogs super-100 ego-thon (here) you’ll find things like Seth Godin’s blog, the Huffington blog, even A List Apart, but you won’t find some other very famous bloggers who are nevertheless, uh, famous bloggers. For example, Wil Wheaton or John Scalzi (both of whom I read on a regular basis).

These two guys have high rankings in the Tehcnorati ego-thon, and they get lots of visitors and also a certain amount of fame for their blogs. And I suppose that the Technorati ego-thon is a widely-regarded way of identifying just how “popular” a blog really is.

But.

You want to know something which might not show up in Technorati’s rankings but is without question the most foolproof way in this quadrant to really prove a blog’s popularity? I’ll tell you.

I read a number of post-modern enlightened web design CSS/XHTML wizard blogs on a regular basis. I consider these my professional (as opposed to recreational) blogs. Of these professional blogs, far and away my most favorite — and by sheer usefulness the most instructive — is Roger Johansson’s 456 Berea Street blog. Roger is well-known among the CSS design community, and he’s a favorite destination for lots of web designers and programmers, because he’s just so damned good at what he does.

But exactly how famous?

Well. Sometime yesterday (Sweden time) he posted an innocuous little entry asking his readers to answer three simple questions: do they browse the internet with their browser windows maximized, at what screen resolution do they operate, and what operating system do they use. Simple, straightforward, and requiring one-word answers. He asked his readers to answer in the comments for the post, and after two weeks he intends to close comments and compile the results.

So about fifteen minutes ago I posted my own comment. And what number was my comment?

814.

Eight Hundred and Fucking Fourteen.

Now, you, my gentle reader, may have very different attitudes, philosophies, tastes, and opinions, than me. Many people who know me personally might actually say that’s a good thing if you have different attitudes, philosophies, tastes, and opinions, than me. But let’s be clear on one point: if you don’t think that receiving eight hundred and fourteen comments to a post at your blog in less than twenty-four hours isn’t an astonishing statement on the popularity of your blog, then I’d really like to know what you take that is slowly disintegrating your mind.

Technorati and its ego-thon ranking is all well and good. Me? I don’t care if Roger Johansson’s 456 Berea Street is in the top one hundred or not — anybody who pulls 814 comments in less than twenty four hours is one of the top bloggers in the world.

Technorati tags: Roger Johansson

Oh, you know what?

In my recent report on Orccon, an entire section was mysteriously excised from the final product, rather like accidentally leaving your supporting actor’s Oscar moment on the cutting room floor.

So here it is (it goes just after the paragraph in which I recount meeting Liz):

So it’s obvious that Liz beats me hand’s down in a geek contest (I can still feel the burn of her sneer when she told me she had games scheduled for 10pm that night, long after my departure — the shame, the shame), crushing my feebleness between her endless scheduled games days and trips to the comics shop to read indie comics (while I pathetically nerd over superheroes in tights). What I didn’t mention was her obvious powers over all the men who surrounded her. I shall relate:

So I walk up to this table at which are sat four perspiring fellas and one goddess. Now, I’m not one of those people who feels surprise when beholding a female at a gaming convention anymore — I think we’ve all gotten used to the pleasing fact that more and more women are brave enough to endure man-odor and attend. But you just don’t expect to meet such a sublime paragon of the sex over a game of Game of Thrones. You just don’t. I remarked thusly (while completely distracting her from her game): “You’ve thrown the hormone balance completely off at this table.” And she had. The other players will no doubt try to deny it, but the beads of perspiration and nervous hands were not because their little wooden pieces were being trounced by other little wooden pieces. Can I put this delicately? This is the first game I’ve observed where five males were uncomfortably crossing their legs, in unison. And it’s not because they needed to pee…

‘S funny — on the way back to my car I could have sworn that I kept seeing dragonflies at the edge of my vision. Strangest thing.

With only a couple of rather perfunctory exceptions, I’ve not written for this blog in more than six or seven synodic months.

During this time, I’ve observed a curious phenomenon: the longer I’ve been away the harder it’s been to come back.

In other words, I dropped the ball, lunged after it, tripped over my feet, scattered it farther, got winded, stopped for a rest, tried to chase after it again … and watched it tip off the side of a cliff.

So I’m making a new ball from scratch (and, yes, if this analogy just totally makes no sense to you, you’re not alone — I wrote it and I still can’t really figure out what the hell I’m saying).

One of the reasons why I started tapering off writing in the first place — and simultaneously became more and more averse to writing new entries — was that I was kind of disillusioned with this blog, and what I was saying in it, and how it really hadn’t come together to form any kind of cohesive … anything. I started to feel more and more as though my many interests were simply so much at odds with each other that discussing more than one or two of them would turn this blog into a kind of trip into the sanitarium, complete with free handout straitjacket. But I didn’t want this blog to simply be about one or two interests. So, in order to avoid having to answer my own question about what to do, I walked away from it. Maturity.

In the last few weeks I’ve been feeling the desire to begin writing again grow and grow, and this desire has forced me to reappraise why I started this whole blog in the first place. I started it to talk about all these weird and varied dorky interests I have, some of which are professional, some of which are not. So I decided a few things –
Instead of worrying about the fact that I want to write about a number of different topics which have nothing to do with one another and are mutually exclusive and likely individually alienating to each visitor, I’ll just toss up my hands and embrace the craziness of my hopelessly scattered mind and write about all of them all the time. Perhaps instead of trying to cram my blog into some kind of narrow field of interest like all the Top 10 Steps to Making Your Blog The Most Popular In The Universe how-to’s tell you, I’ll find my mark by not having a mark. Or something.

I have all sorts of posts already percolating up, ready to pop forth, and each one is in a totally different field of interest: there’s my post about what “semantic” really means in web design, my post about my big new writing project which I’m just days away from unveiling on a nonplussed world, my post on why podcasts are the best free form of entertainment, the post about the new piece of HD satellite equipment I’m getting which is totally revolutionizing my existence, the post about why the Amber novels rock, my final piece on the New Wave of British Heavy Metal that I kept rewriting and then abandoned, my post on German Heavy Metal that should never be forgotten but is, my post on why Battlelore kicks major ass, my post on War of the Ring, and … and …

Well, you get the point. If there are people out there who enjoy reading about some of these topics, or just one of these topics, or — heaven forfend — all of them, you are very welcome indeed.

And I will promise one thing to help navigate through the troubled waters that is my mind: I’ll do my best to make the post titles not just witty and sharp, but just maybe a bit descriptive as well. So if reading about classic heavy metal ain’t your thing, you can skip down to the post below it about using Javascript to change the DOM and bring CSS3 here before it’s here, or the following post about why Fuller’s Vintage Ale can body slam Arrogant Bastard any day, and so on.

I hope I’ll see you guys around.

The Akismet plugin for Wordpress informs me that it has protected my blog from 100 spam comments as of this morning.

Since this blog is read by very few indeed, I quail to think how many spam comments blogs receive which are actually popular. The mind reels.

Do these spam mailers actually think their efforts will result in sales and/or visits to whatever gobshite destination they’re trying to pull punters? Much like telemarketers, you’ve gotta wonder who’s actually idiotic enough to make a purchase from someone with such ethically questionable marketing habits.

Every once in a while you read something so tremendous that it defines its medium.

Via the reliable Shane Nickerson, I spent a small part of this morning reading the extraordinary multi-part saga of Magazine Man’s quest to find his family dog, Blaze. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so affected, so moved, by a blog post. As if proof was needed, here was proof positive of the peculiar and unique power of blogging.

I won’t spoil the story for you; instead, go read it from the horse’s mouth.

However, MM did ask others if they would share their thoughts regarding their own pets and experiences, in this post. Rather than leave a comment, I thought I’d share my experience here (god knows this damned blog needs some content). MM’s blog doesn’t seem to have a trackback feature, so, MM, if you’re out there, this one’s for you.

Two years ago, in the Springtime, when the Los Angeles Valleys are at their most pure, most golden, most mild, I stepped out into the backyard of my house/remodel project to discover this little person peeking out at me:

She was frightened, exhausted, confused, and had obviously sought my backyard of all places for shelter. Which was a little odd since, to comply with city codes regarding swimming pools, my backyard is completely enclosed behind fences of various description. The only way this little dog could have gotten into the yard was by burrowing through the tiny little gap beneath one of my always-locked gates (a fact I didn’t discover until later — I spent most of the day assuming she had dropped out of the sky). In other words, she had to really work at it to get entry; she could not have just casually waltzed in.

She was a bit dirty, a bit tired, and probably a bit hungry, but she was also obviously well cared for, with a nice little collar (though, unfortunately, lacking any kind of identification); obviously someone’s beloved pet. I assumed she had escaped from some neighbor’s house earlier that morning.

So I started knocking on doors. And knocked. And knocked and knocked. No-one had lost a dog. No-one had heard of someone who had lost a dog. I began to second-guess my original supposition: had she been abandoned? I still didn’t think it was likely; she just seemed too well-loved, too well-fed.

After conferring with some local animal shelters, and not wanting to hand her over to a shelter that might well end up putting her to sleep, I brought her inside (she had warmed to me very quickly) and made up a makeshift bed for her in my laundry room. She slept like a log.

The next day, it was back to knocking on doors. Spreading the word. I made up “Dog Found” posters, and put them on prominent telephone poles, on the bulletin board at the local Petsmart, called shelters and gave them her description, should her owners call. Everything, in fact, that I could think to do to reconnect her with her owners.

A week, more, passed with no response. In the meantime, she took to living with me in the house. I fed her and played with her, and gave her a name: Piglet. She seemed to be part Chihuahua, part Jack Russell Terrier, and likely no older than six months or so, though this was nothing more than guesswork.

By the time a week had stretched to near a fortnight, Piglet had really become a part of the family. I looked forward to being greeted by her when I returned home. I started to fall in love with her personality, and her quirks, and the way she would stand between my shins and the kitchen cabinet when I stood at the sink.

Guiltily, I realized that a part of me was hoping her owners would not come to claim her, that she could be a part of my family now. But another part of me screamed that giving up on finding her real owners was wrong, that there was undoubtedly a family out there, somewhere, who were worried and miserable and needed her. I couldn’t just give up on them.

Much as I tried to distance myself from Piglet, though, to keep myself from becoming too attached, I realized that every further day she lived with us was another step away from being able to lose her with any kind of equanimity should her owners materialize.

With my conscience lashing me on, I redoubled my efforts to find her owners. I placed even more posters in an even wider area beyond my house, focusing on some big intersections in the area which see a lot of commuter traffic. I took down some numbers from some lost dog signs I’d seen and got in touch with the owners, but nothing panned out.

Then, I got a hesitant, guarded call. The caller’s friend had seen my poster and passed it along. The woman was cautiously hopeful. When she said she lived in Monrovia, two towns distant, I thought she couldn’t possibly be the right owner — Piglet would have had to have walked miles to get to my house, crossing a number of very busy and dangerous city roads in the process. And the day was wrong: the woman had lost her dog a full twenty-four hours before I discovered Piglet in my backyard, and I was still operating under the assumption that Piglet had escaped the same morning I’d found her. It didn’t seem possible that the dog I had discovered next to my pool had just spent twenty four hours wandering residential streets, weaving through traffic, and undoubtedly fleeing the coyotes which wander the area. Could it?

I asked her to describe the dog to me. Amazingly, he description matched Piglet perfectly.

“Was she wearing a collar?” I asked.

“Yes. It was pink.”

I blinked. “The dog I found has a pink collar.”

“Oh my God. That’s my baby.” She was on the verge of tears.

“I think you’d better come over.”

But I was still cautious. I had to be absolutely certain. When the caller arrived I took her into the backyard, then went inside and brought Piglet out to her. At twenty paces Piglet paused and barked tentatively, not rescuing her. “She’s forgotten me,” the woman said fearfully.

Then recognition set in and Piglet dashed over and leapt into the woman’s arms. The way the woman held her upside-down, the obvious familiarity and relish with which Piglet kissed her face — it was dead-obvious to whose family she really belonged.

Damn. I was about to lose a dog.

I helped the woman get into her car, gave her the extra cans of food and the couple of toys I’d bought for Piglet during her stay, all the while deflecting the woman’s tearful and effusive thanks. While I was happy for her, I kind of wanted her to leave, quickly. Because I wasn’t feeling that happy. I was losing a dog. I knew I had done the right thing but, you know, I had gotten close to that crazy little Chihuahua Terrier.

She insisted on hugging me. Then, on her way to the car, the woman said, “You’ll be hearing from me. You’ll definitely hear from me.”

“Great,” I said. “I’d love to hear how Piglet’s doing.” Only that wasn’t the dog’s real name. It was something else, some French name. I think I continued to call her Piglet anyway.
The woman got in the car and drove away, and that was the last I saw of Piglet. The woman never did contact me. I suppose I never expected that she would.

Some stories have happy endings. Magazine Man got his ass kicked and he drove a thousand miles, but Blaze is back where he belongs with two overjoyed kids. Blaze is home. A family lost their beloved Chihuahua-Terrier who was kept safe for her until they could be reunited again. Not all stories of lost pets end happily. I wish they all did.

Magazine Man’s saga is damned amazing, told by someone who truly knows how to tap the unique power of blogging. He uses extraordinary words to describe an extraordinary sequence of events.

I’m simply chuffed to bits that he got his dog back again. I feel gratified to have been able to read his words. And I feel good that I kept at it until that family in Monrovia got their dog back again.

There’s an epilogue to my tale. Six months later, after much deliberation, I welcomed a new member to my family:

I named him Toby.

I’m getting back into the swing of blogging after a kinda-mandatory hiatus which wasn’t really my intent (there’s a handful of half-finished posts in my drafts which probably will never see the light of day). To make it simple, I’ll start with one of those lame, hey-I-just-saw-this-so-check-it-out kind of posts.

Of late I’ve found myself doing a variety of jobs on this remodel project of mine which are very quiet and lonely, like painting for hours on end. Usually I stick some music on and listen with headphones, but lately I’ve been really enjoying exploring a variety of podcasts out there in the interocean.

Podcasts are somewhat new for me, at least as a regular experience. It can be tricky to find uninterrupted blocks of time long enough to focus my attention fully on what’s being said. And unlike music, it doesn’t work terribly well as background sound when I’ve got to have my mental focus — such as it is — directed at a task, like web design.

But lots of my remodeling work is the perfect opportunity to listen, because jobs like painting and so forth don’t require much mental concentration. It’s kind of like my personal version of the morning commute.

Anyway. Most of the podcasts I’ve been listening to lately have been of the gaming and geeking variety. I’ve always been a fan of games, and it’s been really enjoyable to hear what others have been playing, or seeing, or discovering. And I’m always game for geek. These include:

Kick Ass Mystic Ninjas — this show seems quite popular, and I’ve heard quite a few of them by this point. Each show, Summer, Joe, and David pick a relatively vintage book or movie of the sci-fi/fantasy ilk and basically just blab about it. The show takes on the format of a review and essay, like old Siskel and Ebert. The shows I’ve heard recently cover Logan’s Run, Dune, Flash Gordon, and Ladyhawke. And while generally I’m not a huge fan of having to endure a half-hour of someone else’s critical opinion (I don’t really read reviews or even necessarily condone the whole critics industry), the fact that KAMN takes on more of the tone of a discussion makes it interesting, and generally pretty enjoyable. It doesn’t hurt that I tend to agree with at least one of them most of the time.

Boardgame Speak (aka Geek Speak) — seemingly on hiatus, this show by Derk and Aldie of boardgamegeek.com interviews the really big names in the board game world. And they’re monstrous, both in terms of size and detail. The episode in which they interviewed über-designer Reiner Knizia weighed in at over two hours, and the interview with Fantasy Flight Games founder Christian T. Peterson was so immense that they divided it into three episodes. Derk and Aldie make for odd interviewers, with their very loose, off-the-cuff style; Derk’s laconic, occasionally nasty delivery, and Aldie’s sort of wandering, half-there interjections. For such a strange duo, it comes as something of a surprise that the interviews are so meaty and rewarding, and that — even more bizarrely — the show comes across as a kind of professional leading podcast in its field. If you have any interest in board games, this podcast is almost required listening.

The Vintage Gamer — I like the concept behind this one, in which modern computer game designer Jim Van Verth picks a classic board, computer, or video game from the rosy past to discuss in detail. Obviously pre-scripted, Jim sort of drones on in this monotone that comes across as listless, but it’s fun to be reminded of these oft-forgotten classics from the past.

Slice of Sci-Fi — Michael and Evo seem to be everywhere, with about four hundred thirty three trillion different podcast series to their credit. I would suppose this is their flagship, an attempt at a more full-rounded radio show, with news, interviews, and so on. Summer from KAMN usually joins them as well, and … I don’t know. Something about the format doesn’t really grab me. The interview, for example, with Wil Wheaton back in February felt rushed and thin, like a distracted Jay Leno. There’s some great names who participate, though, including Shawn Piller in the most recent installment.

Radio Free Burrito — maddeningly sporadic, Wil Wheaton has been really just doing RFB as an experiment, feeling his way into a format. He spent an inordinate amount of time worrying about show length, but really, the longer episodes were his best. He probably found his best structure when he lay back and did a straight question-and-answer episode, creating a sort of virtual dialogue with his listeners. Very entertaining. And those episodes (#4 and #5 I believe) in which he took his iRiver out on the road to his auditions, roving reporter style, were also great fun. Regrettably, technical problems killed his most recent attempt at an episode, the one I probably was looking forward to the most: an all-geek q&a. If Wil can get into a routine of regularly producing episodes, and just toss aside all his worry and concern over a format and length and all that nonsense, RFB could really grow into something fun.

Does My Geek Look Big In This — a very silly title for a show I just discovered a couple days ago. Sarah and Nev, from Blighty, discuss three of the most important things in life: beer, gaming, and movies. This one came as a hugely pleasant surprise, and after just one episode has become something of a favourite. Sarah and Nev have a great rapport, their dialogue rolling smoothly together, and they’re terribly relaxed and cheerful (starting the show by cracking open a pub ale can’t hurt). They really seem to enjoy making their podcasts, and that enjoyment rubs off onto the listener. I feel cheerful after listening.

There have been others as well, such as the Official Lost Podcast, Roll 2D6, Have Games Will Travel …. there’s a huge world of stuff out there. Way too many to ever get to. But I’ve found the exploration very rewarding.

After a hell of a scorching weekend, Los Angeles’ unique phenomenon known as the June Gloom has settled in.

I have mixed feelings about the June Gloom. On the one hand, it offers relief from intense heat. That’s a good thing. I hate intense heat (which makes me question my sanity about moving to an LA valley, but that’s another story for another time). Sorta on the same hand, it makes me a bit nostalgic for the San Fran Bay Area, where I was born and spent many years of my youth. Ocean fog is a unique trait of the Bay Area, and a feature of it I love. Though in recent years there was less of it (global warming, perhaps? I hope not).

On the other hand it fulfills its title — gloom — quite nicely. I wrote a rant a few weeks back about how the gloomy weather had really induced depression, not just in me, but in some other locals. And this gloom we have today is very similar. If today is anything to go by, the weather helps to fuel my constant feelings of depression, worthlessness, and general loseraucity (I do apologize, this post will be all about inventing stupid new words).

A quick trip to the Weather Underground confirms that the week will roll out with more of the same, possibly burning to some hazy sunshine in the afternoon, possibly not, while the highs taper off out of the 80s and into the upper 70s. Again, that’s a good and bad thing, all at the same time.

Anyway, this week I haven’t posted anything new to this lame blog, because I really haven’t known what to say. Truth be told, I’m in something of a blog crisis. I’m very new to this blog trick, and I really don’t feel I’ve found my right path yet, both in writing the entries, and in figuring out what this blog is supposed to be about.

Of the blogs and podcasts I visit/hear on a regular basis, all of them can be separated into one of two categories:

1. personal blogs
2. topic blogs

By which I mean that personal blogs are an open journal or diary of their author, writing about whatever the author wishes to, and reflecting that author’s personality and life. They are often fiercely honest. Among these are some of the local Los Angeles-based blogs I read, including Shane Nickerson, Wil Wheaton, Liz Rizzo, and so on. These blogs are reflections of their authors’ personalities and thoughts, on whatever topic those thoughts might happen to dwell at that particular point. What gives these blogs coherency and direction is that they’re always a reflection of the author’s persona, despite the variation in subject matter.

The topic blogs, as I call them, are not an online diary but rather more like a newsletter or zine done by one or more authors on a particular topic. Although they certainly reflect the attitudes and opinions of their authors, they are usually limited entirely to one subject or topic. Most professional blogs fall into this category, including many of the web design blogs I visit, such as Eric Meyer, Dave Shea, and Jason Santa Maria. Similarly, some of the gaming blogs I read do the same thing, with posts pretty much sticking to the topic at hand. Many of these blogs will occasionally see unrelated posts or personal posts pop in, but only occasionally and often with apologies for straying off-topic.

Of these two categories, it was the former — the personal blog — which I wanted mine to fall into. But as I cast back over the handful of posts I’ve written since launching this site in early April, I see that very, very few of the posts are very personal at all. Some of them are downright inane. When I first launched I was interested in writing on a variety of fun topics that were of interest to me: a bit of science fiction, a bit of gaming, a smattering of heavy metal. And, pretty much, that’s what I did.

It wasn’t the right way to go. It’s not that I don’t like to write on these subjects. It’s that they really don’t mesh together very well to form any sort of coherency. Actually, it’s entirely possible that I’m the only person on the entire Internetsphere who actually likes all those subjects, at the same time. It’s my belief that the scattered nature of my posts make for a scattered, unfocused blog.

On the 16th, Shane Nickerson is going to throw this get-together with a hand-selected group of local bloggers reading their best selections on-stage. I wager that, in addition to those up on the stage, many of the audience will themselves be bloggers (including me). This idea of forming a community out of geographically-close blog people is really exciting to me. I personally can’t wait to go.

Yet. The one sort of sour side of it to me is that makes me see that my own blog hasn’t really been the success I want it to be. It makes me compare their blogs to mine, and I find mine wanting. Looking over my posts, I realized there really wasn’t anything I had ever written that was stage-worthy. For some of those guys who will appear, they have an embarrassment of riches. Of course, some of them have been blogging for years and years, but still.

I realize that I lack the courage and perspective to write the fiercely personal blog I wish to. In order to make it that which I want it to be, I must somehow find that courage, and that perspective on myself.

This post itself is somewhat unfocused. There’s no solution or goal I seek in writing this. It is observation, and disposition. Nothing more. I’ll still keep plugging away, writing my silly things. Evolution, improvement may come. Or it may not. We’ll see. Hope I’ll have some people join me for the ride. I’ve only been blogging for two months. I’m a first level rogue still struggling to pick those super-easy locks, to build the experience to make it to level two.

And for those of you who are interested in web design, but hate heavy metal, or those of you interested in heavy metal but hate Star Wars: sorry. I’m a weird guy; I have weird combinations of interests.

Negativity ain’t a great disposition. I blame it on the weather. I blame it on the June Bloggoom.

So I ended up giving the site a facelift after all. I call it version 1.5, since it still essentially uses the same color scheme, typefaces, and image source material.

There’s still lots to be done under the surface: the contact page is ghastly, there’s some PHP auto thumbnail stuff I haven’t finished, the sidebar is atrocious; the list goes on.

Since I see that none of you are interested in those changes which I have done, I thought I’d spend a moment discussing them.

First and foremost, the site is fluid-width. I’m amazed by how many of the blog sites I visit are fixed-width, and since my metrics are telling me that I get visits from people with monitor widths as great as 1920 pixels, it seems rather unfair on them to have to view a web page that’s just 720 pixels wide or something (can you imagine the side margins they must have?!). I have however slapped both a min- and max-width on my wrapper div, at 768 and 1500 pixels respectively. Hopefully this will keep the side margins on you 1920-pixel guys at more respectable levels, while at the same preventing the lines of text from stretching clear across the Atlantic (although, actually, I personally think they’re getting a tad long even by 1500-pixels, though you can always increase the text size to compensate — more on that in a sec).

The main portion of the blog is about as simple as things get. div#content, where the actual posts are displayed (aka the main column), is set at 65% width, while the sidebar column div is set at 30%. You math geniuses might notice 5% has gone missing — this is a very easy way to create a gutter between the two columns, since using fixed padding on percentage-width columns will break the layout. Block elements within each column are then given their own pixel-based padding. div#content and div#sidebar are floated left and right, respectively, using the so-called Opposing Floats method. This method is very well-suited to fluid width layouts, and is the most bulletproof to browser hiccups and the most efficient in terms of CSS of any approach that I know. If you know an even simpler method, I’d love to hear it. If it breaks in your browser, I’d really, really like to hear from you.

Other tried-and-true CSS methods are in use elsewhere. h1 is knocked off the page using text-indent, and replaced with a background image (my logo) set at an explicit pixel height. If memory serves, this technique was pioneered by Doug Bowman and is one of the cornerstones of CSS design. Unlike last time, the logo is a part of the background image rather than floating on top as a separate PNG with transparency, as I did last time, which was then served only to contemporary browsers that understood the direct descendant selector in CSS; the rest just got plain browser text (because they weren’t going to be able to understand the transparency in the PNG). Since there’s not really any reason to have an independent floating logo over my banner now that the logo is anchored to the left, I’ve gone equal-opportunity by using simple technology that most modern browsers understand: one jpeg image comprising logo and banner that replaces the h1. Of course, in keeping with blog traditions, it’s also an anchor with a display: block rule that will send you to the homepage if you click on it.

As for the ul list comprising my highly-rudimentary navigation bar, I’ve simply given it a position: absolute, and stuck it a few pixels away from the top right of the browser window. Each li element then is rendered with display: inline, some padding to separate, and finally a 1-pixel thick left border to make a simple divider. It’s probably not the most attractive or elegant nav bar you’ve ever seen, but then, it’s probably not going to get much use, either. Given its relative lack of importance in the functionality of the site, I didn’t feel compelled to build an elaborate nav bar into the whole graphical scheme, complete with rollover buttons and the like; I figured simple was better and probably more appropriate.

The header and footer graphic are both 1600 pixels wide, to accomodate the fluid layout when viewed at different screen widths, and they were designed very much to “work” no matter how much of their width was visible.

Another important factor for me when designing a dynamic-layout site like this is ensuring that 1) the layout doesn’t break if the user increases or decreases the text size in his/her browser, and 2) it looks good at any size. I’m really of the opinion that most sites should be designed to be as flexible and adaptable to the end user’s needs as possible. The portability of HTML was one of its original design concepts, and I think flexibility in web design is a good thing. If I’ve done my work properly, hopefully you should be able to increase or decrease the text quite a lot before the layout begins to collapse, if indeed it ever does. (The navigation bar does start to look a little strange at huge text display sizes as it begins to dwarf the logo, though …)

Oh, and if you ever find yourself designing a fluid-width blog one day, do yourself a huge favor and slap an overflow: hidden rule on whatever container your site has for the actual blog posts. Doing so prevents large images and other fixed-size elements included in your posts from potentially wreaking havoc on your layout when visitors with narrow screen resolutions visit (especially when they’re using IE6.0, which does not understand the min-width rule). Browsers need guidance in being told how to contend with wide images that won’t fit in the column width containing them, and my preferred method is the overflow: hidden rule, which simply cuts off any of the image which would push beyond its container’s width.
For this go-round, the CSS is tremendously lean, almost frighteningly so. To choose sturdy simplicity requires lots of confidence, and I’m not very confident. We tend to feel that whipping up complexity around our projects is like safeguarding them against failure, against ridicule, but the best CSS is the CSS that uses as little as possible.

I’m much happier — at the moment — with this design than the last, which I thought was dreadful, and didn’t degrade very gracefully in IE6.0. Also, aesthetically I think this design is a bit better, a bit clearer, a bit roomier, and all that fantasy hoo-hah has been toned down, abstracted, zoomed in, giving the texture and nuance and feel without being as distracting as before.

And a month, two months, from now? I could despise it.

Photographic credits used in this design (same as before): castle elements culled from photos by Mayang Murni Adnin. Knights on horseback (detail) photo by Jeff Gynane. Both of whom own the copyright on their respective photography. Used with permission in both cases.

I’m going to be tinkering under the hood on this blog today and possibly into tomorrow. I don’t know if I’ll be emerging on the other side with a new look and layout, or if the alterations will be confined to behind-the-scenes type stuff, but please be advised that there may be oddities and strangeness when viewing the site over the next day or so. Water and electricity may be unavailable for certain periods of time.

Okay, so maybe when you launch a weblog and you do the template yourself and then you say you’re a “web designer”, you might want to take a little more care and effort with your blog so that it doesn’t look like a total piece of shit.

Sorry. I was in a hurry. If visiting this site has in any way caused you any sort of adverse physical effects, such as nausea, I apologize from the bottom of my heart.

And, just out of curiosity, what are those knights on horseback supposed to mean exactly? I thought I’d ask — ’cause I don’t know myself.

And if you’re an Internet Explorer user: sorry. I don’t mean that in a snippy, snobbish sort of way (though I do think life will be better on the Net for you if you visit this), but because, if you’ve visited the site using IE as your browser, and if your browser window is quite narrow, like less than 800 pixels wide, chances are very good that the sidebar which is supposed to be, erm, on the side, was actually underneath the left column. That’s right. Underneath. Great place for a sidebar if you ask me.

Since I was in such a hurry when I threw this sucker together, and since I didn’t really do the amount of browser testing that you really, really should do, all the time, I forgot to think that if I started putting pictures in my posts, and if they were wider than a pinhead, visitors with IE6.0 and narrow screen sizes were going to have their browser jettison the right column in order to have enough room to fit the images.

I is a profetchonal.

(Other browsers don’t suffer from this problem because they understand the CSS min-width rule, which won’t allow liquid designs to shrink beyond a specified minimum width.)

There are some things I did intentionally to IE for this design; what is sometimes called “graceful degradation”. This basically means that, because IE lacks support for a lot of CSS commands, it’s fed a different, more basic type of style for some elements on the page than the more compliant browsers. This is all cosmetic stuff. It’s not like IE users can’t leave comments, or navigate the site (unless the idiot designer has created a situation where IE jettisons the fucking sidebar to the bottom of the page!) — rather, Firefox and Safari and Opera (and so on) users get a bit more eye candy.

As witness the following two shots:

(my homepage in Internet Explorer 6.0 for Windows)

(my homepage in Firefox 1.5 for Windows)

If you look closely at the second picture, you can see that the title of the newest post has a little graphical backdrop, and the logo next to the knight guy is completely different in each picture. Both of the images appearing in the Firefox screenshot are PNGs which use transparency. Since IE6.0 does not support PNGs with transparency, rather than sacrifice the look I wished to achieve in all browsers, I fed IE6.0 a different set of rules, so IE6.0 gets just plain old text in the logo, instead of the glowy text.

These are very subtle differences, of course. Unless and until most Internet Explorer users jump to IE7.0 (which will support PNG transparency, by the way) and its somewhat better CSS support, I’m not going to be doing major structural designs using CSS that IE6.0 does not support, potentially feeding a sizable number of visitors a site which does not work in their browser. My clients might become cross.
By the way, for those of you who didn’t realize, this is why CSS designers are resentful of IE6.0 — it’s still the most-used browser in the world, and as such designers are forced to greatly limit their choice of CSS rules simply because IE6.0 does not understand them. Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, Safari — they’re on more or less equal footing in supporting CSS elements correctly. IE6.0 is not only much more limited in its support, but it also has more bugs implementing the rules it does support than the 405 Freeway has lanes.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with the fact that I whipped this site together too fast, not observing very important design rules, and failing to rigorously test test test. As soon as I find the time, I think a bit of a re-design is in order, one that has a bit less knights in shining armor and a bit more useful layout and structure.

However, because I do know that a few of you have dropped on by using IE6, I thought you might be interested in a tiny peek at what more contemporary browsers might do for you, here or elsewhere.

Now, what should be my theme next? Something intergalactic, with spacemen floating against the inky blackness? A desert landscape teeming with strange wild creatures? A fetish scene with lots of hot babes in rubber catstuits … ? I wonder …