Submit Response is a weblog by Jack Mottram, a Approaching ‘Fucking Till Receipt’ Nirvana
Ah, that’s better.
The new design isn’t complete, but it’ll do for now. As long as you’re using Firefox or Safari.
As you can see, everything has been simplified. The index page is pretty much the same as an individual post page, which seems to make sense as most people find the site via a search engine or by clicking through from one of the various feeds. At the top of each page is a nugget of useful information, telling you where you are and, in most cases, suggesting where you might like to go next. And at the bottom of individual post pages like this one, there are links to recent posts and archive pages.
While this enforced redesign has mostly been about taking things away, there are a couple of new features. You can now style your comments using Markdown, a clever system that lets you, say, surround a word with underscores to make it appear in italics, or make lists by typing an asterix before each item in the list. Also, comment spam should be less of a problem now, so it won’t take as long for your comments to appear—if you comment here regularly, you might like to get a TypeKey identity; that way, I can make you a ‘trusted commenter’, which means anything you write will appear immediately on the site.
If there’s anything from the old design you’d like to see back, or something you can’t stand about the new one, do let me know in the comments. Oh, and if anyone is reading on a PC - how does it look? Screenshots appreciated.
Right, enough boring posts, I’ve got hours of iPod nano drooling to catch up on.
Update: Thanks for the screenshots, Donny and Paul! Things should be a little prettier for PC users now that Garamond steps in if you don’t have Hoefler Text, for that nice 16th Century feel. If you don’t have Garamond either, you’ll get Book Antiqua, or, failing that, Georgia, and, finally, unless you’re really font-deprived, Times New Roman. Also, headers are now in Baskerville (which, again, Windows users won’t have installed by default). It’s enough to make one think of using sIFR.
Looking good. Though I do have to say, I liked the orange links you were experimenting with, and you could do with some padding at the bottom of the page beneath the posts and categories lists.
Posted by MacDara at 1pm on 08.09.05
Looking good
Cheers! The orange links may yet make a return, it’s just that the site has been greyscale for so long, they burned my eyes. And I’m working on the lack of padding at the bottom of the page - it’s there in the stylesheet, and Firefox renders it properly, but Safari doesn’t seem to want to. (And possibly other browsers too - what are you using MacDara?)
Posted by Jack Mottram at 3pm on 08.09.05
Hmmn. No matter where I apply padding and/or margins - body, the containing div, the div with all the stuff at the bottom in it - Safari still bumps against the bottom of the browser window. The XHTML validates, too, so I’m a bit stumped. Perhaps a cheeky little “ tag will fix it.
Posted by Jack Mottram at 4pm on 08.09.05
Yep, I’m using Safari 1.3.1.
And by the way, there’s nothing wrong with using a few cheeky extra tags here and there.
Posted by MacDara at 5pm on 08.09.05
And by the way, thereââ¬â¢s nothing wrong with using a few cheeky extra tags here and there.
There are folk who would vehemently disagree with that! I’m not one of them, mind.
In any case, adding a “ at the bottom did no good, and I’ve now tried every imaginable combination of padding and margins to no avail. I’ll try wrapping the stuff at the bottom in an extra div.
Update, a little while later: fixed with the search box below. I could’ve used a
`, or anything withclear:both` set in the CSS, but I quite like making the search more obvious anyway. I suspect there’s either something horribly wrong in my (validated) CSS, or a bug in Safari to do with floating elements. Either way, the page looks better now!Posted by Jack Mottram at 5pm on 08.09.05
Oh yes, much better. Don’t you feel proud?
Posted by MacDara at 9pm on 08.09.05