Blog FeedMeet Aelon v8
Some ctrl+refreshing may be required in case you see any old graphics that don’t fit in, but here it is. It took a solid few days work to get it how I wanted but almost everything seems in order. The forums have also been fitted out with the new look, though aside from the header nothing really changed over there. On this site itself, however, quite a few things have changed, so sit back, relax, and I’ll show you round a bit.
The obvious: First up, it’s rather obvious that the header and footer have been completely redone. No more oversized buttons, and a much cooler looking banner. It spans the entire width of the page, and resizes quite cleverly. So for any poor souls in 800×600, it all looks perfectly fine, you’re not missing anything. The sidebar has also had some work done on it so it’s quite a bit neater - the recent forum posts in particular are not squashed in anymore. The random backgrounds on the sidebar, however, were ditched, at least for the time being. Also, the search box now doesn’t have a “Go” button. If you use the thing, just press enter. Looks neater.
Standards: As the buttons in the very bottom right of the page show, the site is XHTML 1.0 and CSS compliant. I was going to try for a tableless design, but I soon found out the things I needed required tables, so there are still some around. Not as many as there were before, of course. So generally, the filesize of each page is smaller as a result. The moz-specific curved borders on text boxes and the like also had to go, as they’re not standard.
Also along these lines, I am thinking of applying someof my own standards to images in the blog posts. What I am thinking of doing is making it mandatory for any image without a white background to be a uniform size and bordered black, but only if it’s displayed on the front page. I think it might make it all look neater if we have many entries making use of pictures, as we’ve had as of late.
Still to do: There are some bugs that still need ironing out. The most serious of these involves the javascript text-box resizer I introduced not long ago, which we all love. The bottom div doesn’t move with it, so I’ll have to do something about that, I hope it doesn’t require too much work. There are also some small spacing discrepancies, one in Firefox that makes the vertical gap in the recent forum posts too large, and one in IE that makes the bottom right of the footer 1 pixel vertically out of place. I haven’t found solutions for either of these yet, but neither is particularly important. Finally, a few graphics in the forums need upating, in my opinion, but they’ll be among the last things I do.
Update: the resizer has been removed until I can get the footer working properly with it. I’m sorry, I know how much some of you will miss it.
So, that’s about it. The Site History page has been updated to reflect the changes. I may consider re-adding some of the firefox propaganda perhaps in the top right if I feel it looks too plain after a while, not sure. Afterall, it won’t show for me anyway. Any bugs, please report (esp. any pages that don’t validate), and of course your opinions are desired below.
6th January | Reply
This kind of neatness (or funky freshness, as they call it… maybe… somewhere) is part of why I keep coming back here.
Really awesome, Chris.
7th January | Reply
I like the new design much better than the other one (the buttons are a major improvement at the top of the page) BUT..can the Comment hyperlink for each blog entry be darkened or otherwise made more visible? Light grey is nice and all but it blends in a bit too much for my eyes.
Aside from that, good job.
7th January | Reply
Definitly an evolution for the design. Its got the same feel of the old aelon but looks even more fantastic. I do miss resizing the text area over, and over, and over and over, but i’ll live.
7th January | Reply
Very nice, although the only thing I have a problem with is the Aelon logo in the top left looks out of place since it’s so dark.
7th January | Reply
Oh, and the links background bar you’ve used from here doesn’t go right in the forum, since the forum has a slightly gray background.
7th January | Reply
OK, yeah, I removed the grey background image from the forums so the menu fits in properly now. Good spotting, I could hardly tell on my monitor.
The comments link has been darkened and blued ever so slightly for Kelmon, so it’s definately easier to see. I’m reluctant to go any darker as it’d ruin the effect itself.
I’ve put in a temporary solution for the resizer, the footer now looks damn boring and it makes further use of tables which I don’t like, but it works. It can stay for now.Update: I put back in the original footer and it all works except the 95 pixels of white space under it which I can’t get to go away. If anyone knows any CSS gurus, I’d appreciate some suggestions.
9th January | Reply
What’s this bottom:95px; ? Is that how you fixed the footer problem? Also, for the padding try 0px; instead of 0; I dunno, just some ideas.
9th January | Reply
OK, after some conversations with phlex and a guy he knows, we stumbled across a fix, so it’s all fine now. Damn, that feels good. 2 bugs squished in under an hour ain’t half bad, and now I found out what was spacing the forum posts wrong, that’s every bug fixed. The extra IE one seemed to get fixed automatically once I got the footer right. Booyah!
10th January | Reply
I’m liking it. Kudos to you for an awesome design, good sir.
11th January | Reply
All Nice and sexy, but the black logo is going to take some getting used to.
11th January | Reply
CookieJesus - do a ctrl+refresh. I changed it so it’s the same colour as the site’s links, a rather nice blue.
PARENA suggested that I fix the background image so it never moves, and I tried it. It looks good, but for some reason it makes Firefox’s scrolling lag. I’ve actually noticed this on many sites with fixed backgrounds, just with Firefox. Is it just me, or does anyone else experience it as well? (for quick reference, try here, it lags a bit for me) If it is just me, I might as well put it in.
12th January | Reply
The blue-ish logo looks way better now.
Perfect.
12th January | Reply
Unfortunately I can’t find the link anywhere, but there is actually a way to make IE display it’s information bar when someone visits your page with whatever text you want to show them and a link, so you could easily use that for your Firefox propaganda.
12th January | Reply
The status bar text? Yeah, that’s just javascript, but I find it somewhat intrusive. I think I’ll just leave the propaganda as is. One badge is enough for the time being. IE users also see extra text on the About page near the bottom.
12th January | Reply
Not status bar, that yellow information bar that pops up in IE in service pack 2 when it does something like block a popup.
screen shot here.
12th January | Reply
Oh, heh. Well, if there was a script so any website could make that pop up with desired text, it’d sure be fun to play around with, though again I think it’s too intrusive.
I would say Microsoft should fix it so people can’t do that. It should be reserved for proper security alerts.
20th January | Reply
Hello Aelon v8. It’s a pleasure to meet your acquaintence