Those who want to see what the blog-design-tweak-in-process looks like can go here. Nothing wildly exciting: the main differences being:
- Back to sans serif (Trebuchet, as the primary; your font may vary).
- Variable font size (adjust via your browser)
- Dropping the mini-icons in the post footers (unsure about this one).
- New font for the header (again, not sure on this one; I like the font itself, but not sure how it goes with the Trebuchet).
- Downplaying the date transitions; dates show up at the top of each post, but there’s no big break between days.
As always, kibbitzing welcome. I haven’t done anything with the archives yet, obviously.
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>Back to sans serif
Either way. I like ’em both.
>Variable font size
Excellent! Keep it.
>Dropping the mini-icons in the post footers
Keep ’em. It’s harder to click on the tiny little number in the parentheses.
>New font for the header
Does this mean the “***Dave Does the Blog” header at the top of the page? If so, I’d like to go on record as saying that it’s even uglier than the current one (which looks like it came from one of those female-oriented comic strips). I mean, really. All those curves and points and extraneous little squres… Blech! (Of course, you like it, or you wouldn’t have used it…)
>Downplaying the date transitions
Mildly inconvenient. I go to bed well after you do, and it’s easy to find the new posts each morning when they’re clearly separated from the previous day’s. The individual boxes for each post are rather nice, though.
Back to sans serif (Trebuchet, as the primary; your font may vary).
Like it.
Variable font size (adjust via your browser)
Very annoying. Nothing I like better then tweaking fonts as I go from site to site.
Dropping the mini-icons in the post footers (unsure about this one).
Either or.
New font for the header (again, not sure on this one; I like the font itself, but not sure how it goes with the Trebuchet).
I think I have this font at home. I like it.
Downplaying the date transitions; dates show up at the top of each post, but there’s no big break between days.
I like the transition dates…Keep them.
I’ve changed the link for the Comments to be the word, not the little number.
As to the blog title font (this one is called Bala Cwywd), it will probably be something decorative, with a good chance of there being stray bits of pixels floating around it; that’s the nature of the decorative beast at this time. Question is, is this one (which, yes, I like) a good fit with the body text. I’ve got some apprehensions about that.
On the variable font size — I go back and forth. I’ve been irked at sites with variable text size before. I’ve also had a number of folks complain about how the fix font size is too small on their monitor, generally folks with either really big monitors or sketchy eyesight. As someone who falls into that latter category, I can appreciate the concern. I’ve tried to make it medium-to-small (I usually keep IE on the “Smaller” font size setting), and it looks comparable to what I see with the fixed size. Your resolution may vary.
As for the rest, still pondering.
On IE for Mac, text seems large, but that’s just me.
Like the entry boxes and the quote shading.
The header font is not my favorite, but hey, it’s not my blog!
Dave,
I like the new fonts. Much easier to read, both size-wise and pure readability-wise.
I like the switch to text from icons. It took me forever to figure out what the icons meant. (well, not forever, but longer than I felt was reasonable).
I have no preferences regarding the header font or the date transitions.
>>Dave
See, I’d hope the mini-icons were relatively clear (and they all have ALT text so if you hover, their explanation pops up), but I’ve heard similar comments before. *sigh*
I like the new design, things seem ‘neater’ with each entry into it’s own box. And I must also admit that I have never been a big fan of the itsy-bitsy icons.
But go with what you like, I think thats the most important thing.
Well, that goes without saying. It’s just that if there are things I’m not seeing, so to speak, or aspects to the blog that improve (or degrade) its readability, I like being clued in.
Unfortunately, the alt text on your icons doesn’t show when *I* hover. I’m using Mozilla on a mac; is the alt-text-during hovering an IE-only feature?
>>Dave
Hmmm.
It appears it was originally introduced as an MSIE “feature” (not being in the W3 spec), and I now see a suggestion that, at least as of 2002, Mozilla did not do so.
Okay, and it appears that a later spec includes the TITLE attribute in the IMG tag to do this (as it does with links), so that the ALT behavior can now (though it’s still in MSIE) be considered a “bug.”
So, an experiment:
Hrm. Looking at the above, it appears the TITLE is overridden by the ALT text in MSIE 6. How about for you?
And if we put in just a TITLE tag …
Nada, at least for me.
So … damn … you mean MSIE ignores the TITLE attribute in IMG statements altogether? Crud.
So, Dave N. (or some other Mozilla user), what do you see hovering over the above images?
Note: I see some references to Netscape 4.x (and above?) having the Tool Tip approach — but also to MSIE 5.x and above recognizing the TITLE attribute, which the above does not. Hrm.
And here‘s an article that indicates that, yup, Mozilla/Firebird doesn’t do ALT text as a tooltip, and, nope, that’s not a bug (though there’s a Mozilla plug-in to make it do it). And I’ve seen later indications that NS 7.x dropped that “bug” as well.
Though, as one person pointed out, if MSIE has 95% of the browser market, maybe that makes it a de facto bug.
Stuff here indicates that everybody these days recognizes the TITLE attribute — except that my MSIE 6 doesn’t seem to be. Is that true for others?
Looks like the TITLE was stripped by the MT Sanitize feature. How nice. Let me add that back in …
As near as I can tell, my version of Mozilla (1.6 for Mac) shows the TITLE text as a tool tip, but not the ALT text.
>>Dave
Okay, good. That’s what I’ve put into all my template IMG statements, and will be putting (as applicable) into future IMGs in posts. Sorry for being clueless.