New
You may notice a subtle change on the grapefruit pages. Well, all of them except these weblog ones.
These bits aren’t done yet, I don’t have time at the moment. I’ve chucked up what I’ve done though, because I’m sick of only me seeing the cool stuff.
Hope you like it. I’ll be fiddling with it over the next few weeks (months?) and getting things just right, but this is a start. Now, bedtime!
72
Tom
August 21st, 2005 at 6:25 pm
Well, looks like there’s a few issues on IE that I didn’t notice. Well, quite a few. I’m sure they weren’t on my brother’s computer.
I think Trebuchet MS is a bit taller on PCs or something, as well. Excuses, excuses… A few tweaks and she’ll be right as rain.
Andrew
August 21st, 2005 at 7:51 pm
Very nice – well worth the wait. Most professional looking grapefruit yet. As you say, doesn’t look so great in IE, but if you are going to using such a crap browser you don’t deserve aesthetically appealing websites.
Andy
August 21st, 2005 at 7:57 pm
Bedtime at 3:39pm?
Tom
August 21st, 2005 at 10:40 pm
The time thing may be screwy. It was actually 1.29am. I’ll see about that.
I’ve fixed up some/all of the IE problems. If you put a declaration that you’re using xml at the start of a webpage, IE gets weird. I took it out again. I’m pretty sure that’s why it wasn’t there in the first place.
Thanks for the kind words Andrew :) Now someone just needs to write a weblog so that things look a bit more varied on the bottom left of the website!
Tom
August 22nd, 2005 at 7:42 am
Allow me to just steal myself a time datapoint and work out how the weblog time works.
Where I’m sitting, it’s 10.42pm.
Tom
August 22nd, 2005 at 8:53 am
OK, I’ve done some time work, and here’s the size of it so far:
Time shown on weblog pages: GMT.Time shown on normal grapefruit pages: GMT + the offset you specify on this page.
I think.
hayko
August 23rd, 2005 at 7:36 am
Well this layout makes me want to puke. Sorry, Tom. This is majorly confusing, yet very intriguing CSS and design work.You must have wasted hours on this. ;)
Tom
August 23rd, 2005 at 9:14 am
I think the top layer, with it’s feature review, and big picture, is awesomely awesome.
I can perhaps almost a bit see where you’re coming from if you’re mainly annoyed by the bottom three columns. They’re a bit messy. I’m not really satisfied with the middle column at all, yet, if it makes you feel better. That’s a work in progress.
Tom
August 23rd, 2005 at 10:01 am
People should know that Hayko had the minimum size on his browser set to 13px, and thus a whole bunch of clipping, wrapping, dropping ugliness was going on.
Because I just know you were all thinking he was crazy.
Andy
August 24th, 2005 at 1:03 am
I didn’t think he was crazy. I assumed that he was part of the vast mass of IE 5.0 users.
Tom
August 24th, 2005 at 1:47 am
Oh, you provocateur. I’m immune, thanks to reading this from RSS head honcho Dave Winer. I’d much rather kill him than you.
Andy
August 24th, 2005 at 6:17 pm
I like the guy. I don’t care for Apple either.
Andy
August 24th, 2005 at 6:41 pm
That’s a very high pirates to global temperature correlation they’ve found. This flying spaghetti monster might be worth investigating more.
Trouble with intelligent design is that many of the believers are stupid and irony is wasted on the stupid.
Tom
August 24th, 2005 at 8:50 pm
Frankly, with a name like Winer, I’d be wary of whining too much. He isn’t. I also don’t like how he doesn’t explain what he doesn’t like about Safari (aside from lack of blogs in the default bookmarks — and who keeps their default bookmarks?). And how there’s no commenting ability on his blog. If you don’t have comments enabled then you’re not allowed to slag things off randomly. It’s the rules.
Andy
August 25th, 2005 at 6:45 pm
You know what I don’t like about Safari. I don’t like its name. Sounds like a musical scale. Do Ray Sa Fa Ri Do. And the word safari doesn’t conjure up images of casual internet browsing. That’s why I like IE. Starts with the word Internet. Tells me what I’m doing in case I forget.
Something else I like about IE are the default favourites. It shows that microsoft has great taste and is a real trend setter. The windows media page homepage, hotmail, msn homepage, microsoft hompage. Top quality sites.
I guess he’ll just have to find his own blogs to read. When I am insulting people I don’t like to give them a chance to respond. They might come up with something witty.
hayko
August 26th, 2005 at 9:29 pm
What!? I am no IE user. Not even on my bad days! But I like my font to be readable.
Is there really the need for fine print on your site, Tom?
Jack
August 27th, 2005 at 2:03 am
It’s okay Hayko, Microsoft has been kind enough to include [features for blind people] (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;308978&sd=tech)in Windows XP. Although my Dad’s eyesight is also failing and he has simply lowered his resolution to a respectable 1024 x 768. So you have options.
Jack
August 27th, 2005 at 2:08 am
As you can all see I have a firm grasp on whatever markup language this is. There needs to be some disclaimer like “Use spaces in your syntax and Markdown will screw you”. Or I could just become literate.
The link for blind people hopefully works now. Although this follow up post really ruins it as a joke. If this doesn’t work I’m going home.
Tom
August 28th, 2005 at 2:36 am
The fine print is used in the recent review list on the side in order to make sure that line never gets longer than one line. This allows for 2-line titles, like Andrew’s music review. I could make it bigger and ditch the date, or something.
The small type is used for the notables list in the hope to fit many different links in. This could easily be bigger, of course.
Finally, small type is used for the day and month in the comments list because they’re of minor importance and I want to leave room for everything else. Non-negotiable!
11px doesn’t look markedly small to me, however. I mean, it’s on the lower end of the spectrum and I wouldn’t want to read a paragraph of it, but if it’s just names and dates and things, it’s not too much of a challenge, surely?
I vote the literate thing, Jackson! I could write “No spaces between the brackets” in my little summary. Finally, no one accused you of being an IE user, Hayko, we were talking about Dave Winer.
Jack
August 28th, 2005 at 3:43 am
Andy might have suggested it however.
Tom
August 28th, 2005 at 6:28 pm
Oh yes. Sorry, didn’t scroll up that far.
Andy
August 28th, 2005 at 8:32 pm
Oh sure blame me. If you’d payed attention to the subtext, you’d have realised that the comment was not actually accusing Hayko of using IE but a continuation of a private conversation between Tom and I about how he should recode his site so on my computer at work, which has IE 5.0 on it, doesn’t have any glitches.
How did you post at 7:36am on Sunday Tom?
Tom
August 28th, 2005 at 9:03 pm
I did if I was in Greenwich.
To get that subtext, people would have had to be spying on our emails. Which I hope they’re not. Are they?
Could everyone please tell Andy to install Firefox on his work computer?
Jack
August 28th, 2005 at 11:05 pm
Andy please do what he says. There will be consequences.
Tom
August 29th, 2005 at 11:34 am
Incidentally, I should point out that a respectable site would have a preview of some sort, thus avoiding link-syntax issues. Me being lazy, I haven’t bothered to re-implement the live preview function on the blog yet.
Apologies.
Tom
August 30th, 2005 at 9:49 pm
Trebuchet MS is gone, baby. We’re in a new era of Century Gothic goodness. Admire it’s clean, thin lines. It’s round curves.
Mmmmmm.
I hope everyone has Century Gothic. I’ve found studies that say it’s on 83% of Windows machines. It’s on all the Macs I’ve seen recently. I just don’t know about Linux folks.
Not that we get many of them around here.
Andy
August 30th, 2005 at 10:58 pm
Consequences? Like my work computer will become infected with a virus and crash the Laminex network and bring the company to a halt and force me to stay at home and play computer games? I’m a shakin’ in me boots.
Andrew
August 31st, 2005 at 2:35 am
Can’t say I’m a big fan of this century gothic. Seems a bit insubstantial. Perhaps it will grow on me as Trebuchet MS did.
Tom
August 31st, 2005 at 2:42 am
I’ll be interested to see it properly on a PC tomorrow at work. The trouble with designing on a Mac is that all fonts look delicious.
Century Gothic seems to better suit the ‘crisp’ nature of the current design, but I can imagine the thin type being not so good on different displays.
Luckily, switching fonts is as easy as, well, switching fonts anywhere else. I could even make a button to toggle between the two…
hayko
September 1st, 2005 at 6:29 am
It seems to look alright on my PC, even with the fonts readjusted again. And if you do have more than a thousand pixels width why restrain yourself to such tiny numbers.
And even if my eyes still seem to have 20/20 sight, I don’t much like reading tiny fonts. It’s like eating tiny meals. They don’t indulge me the same way.
Tom
September 1st, 2005 at 7:31 am
Tiny but delicious.
I restrain myself to such tidy numbers because:
Tom
September 1st, 2005 at 7:24 pm
There’s a new forum, by the way.
It’s not that exciting so it doesn’t get its own blog post. Not sure if waxwerk will be joining us again.
Andy
September 5th, 2005 at 7:13 am
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’ll never forget you waxwerk. Or was it waxwork?
If everyone would please observe two minutes silence while I read a poem I wrote in honour of waxwerk.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemnAt the going down of the sun and in the morningWe will remember them.
Why did you have to leave us waxwerk? Why, oh lord would you take him?? In the prime of his life??? I hate you.
Tom
September 5th, 2005 at 8:09 am
How did you know I killed him?
I mean, why do you think I killed him?
He may well find his way to the new forum. If he wasn’t dead. Which he isn’t.