OK, so it’s really Tuesday, but since Monday hasn’t officially ended for me…
The sidebar has now been updated to reflect most of the changes made by the winning entries of the Sidebar Redesign Contest. The new look has checked out in IE 6/Firebird on XP, and IE 5/Safari on OS 9/X, but let me know if you see any oddities.
I’ve also made some changes to the images in the sidebar. All rollovers are now handled by CSS (no more JavaScript rollovers!), and I’m also using Pixy’s Fast CSS Rollovers. The book banners at the bottom of the sidebar use just one image each (images: DWWS banner, Speed banner), while the Style Switcher rollovers all use the same source image (view switcher image). This cuts down on the number of HTTP requests needed to load the page (before: 10 images; now: 3), and there is no more delay for the hover images to load. Very cool.
In addition to these new items (some other positioning has been tweaked in this site’s primary css file, so you may have to reload/clear your cache if things look odd), I thought I’d point out (for those of you who haven’t noticed) the header graphic on every page of this site. It’s a PNG file, with no colors other than white and gray (view image). The color is visible through the transparent areas of the image, so the image has to load only once, even when a user switches styles. To allow users of IE5.5+/Windows to view this trick, a handy bit of code by YoungPup tells IE how to properly display the transparent portions of the image.
I’ve been handling the image this way since the current site design was launched, but I’ve never thought to say anything about it. It’s cool enough that I figured it was about time.
As always, let me know if anything doesn’t work as advertised, and I’ll get right on fixing it.
Comments
5 responses to “Monday Updates”
Fucking brilliant.
(pardon me!)
The ol’ gal’s slim and good lookin’ Having you raise her skirt and point out all her juicy bits helps too!
(who said that?)
Makes it easier for us to make some of our gals’ bits better, thanks Dr Rubin.
How about all images in 1 file? Saves some server hits :).
Adam: Aw shucks, ’twas nothing ;-)
Anne: I did consider this, but then I thought about my sanity, and I realized it was OK to leave it at 3 files :-) It certainly makes it easier to change things if I add/delete a style or a banner.
Dan,
Looks great. But I now I cant seem to find the syndication link? Moved to a new computer and getting my aggregator set up again…
Thanks Arikawa — the links for this site’s RSS feeds somehow dissapeared from the sidebar a while ago (I can’t imagine how that could have happened… ;-)
I’ve added links for RSS 0.91 and 1.0 — since I haven’t spent must time at all looking into the depths of the RSS world, feel free to coach me (e.g. do I need to list both 0.91 and 1.0?)