Category: Uncategorized

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.

Something is indeed coming, and coming soon; unfortunately, good news often comes at a price, and the price in my case has been limited time to do anything other than work, eat and sleep (and little of the last two), which includes managing SuperfluousBanter.

Posting has been rather infrequent of late (as noted by readers like Adam Polselli), and it’s due to a few projects which have been taking up quite a bit of my time over the last few weeks (most of them warrant the time spent…).

I will be writing more in the week(s) to come (expect limited posting until some of these projects have been completed) but here’s a quick run-down of what to expect:

• A CSS Project to be included in the second edition of Cascading Style Sheets: Separating Content from Presentation, currently being revised by its original authors, and soon to be published by Apress;
• Webgraph will be launching a new site for the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians (all XHTML and CSS of course, with some extra accessibility thrown in for kicks);
• Hopefully an announcement of some new projects which are in the closing stages of discussions with clients.

Everything is quite exciting at the moment, which is a nice change of pace. I’m also working on ideas for a few articles that I will attempt to have published (ALA, Digital Web, etc.) — I’ll publish them here if I have to (ahh, the joys of independent publishing).

Changes continue to be made to SuperfluousBanter, some noticeable, others hidden behind the scenes — I’ll write up a list of changes and any interesting tidbits once some of these other projects are underway. One you will see soon is a transition from JavaScript to CSS for the style switcher rollovers in the sidebar, as well as further use of the FIR technique (or its recently discovered alternatives throughout the site (for more on FIR, read Dave Shea’s new article for Digital Web Magazine, In Defense of Fahrner Image Replacement).

Finally, in addition to The Old Technology Giveaway, I’ll be posting another little contest early next week (possibly over the weekend) with some more useful prizes, and a little less-esoteric theme.

While sorting through some old piles of paperwork, SyQuest cartridges, and floppies, I came across a curious item: An original AOL 2.5 for Macintosh Installer Disk, still shrink-wrapped!

So I started wondering “what other mint-condition examples of useless technology are hidden in the collections of techies like me?” Since I can’t very well go rummaging through your houses, under your desks, etc., the only way for me to know is for you, my cherished reader, to submit links to photos of your ancient technological curios in the comments of this post.

“What’s in it for me?” you ask? Well, I thought of that too, so as incentive, I’m offering up another piece of computing history to the individual whose submission tickles my fancy the most (this is, of course, purely subjective, but it’s my giveaway, so deal with it) — the top two “winners” (term used loosely) will receive (shipping paid by me, and the first place submission gets first choice of the prizes) either an original Quadra 950 Motherboard w/68040 Processor! (pics: one, two) or a shrink-wrapped 3M 590MB Rewritable Optical Disk! (pics: one, two). Hey, we are talking old technology here…

This “contest” will run for an almost indefinite amount of time, but no later than November 30th (so you can get your prize in time for X-mas — if you celebrate another, earlier holiday, good for you, but the November 30th deadline will stay put).

Also, if you link to this contest (“The Old Technology Giveaway”) from your site, it will certainly make for a much more interesting experiment (and I’ll get lots of traffic too… ;-) — feel free to use my mini-banner in your sidebar.

Happy digging!

UPDATE: To paraphrase the walrus, the time has come — the contest is now closed to new entries, and judging is underway (sounds serious, don’t it?). The winners will be posted within days…

First of all, no, this has nothing to do with the Incredible Hulk — I spent a good deal of time this weekend revisiting the site design for Webgraph, which has been sitting idle in my hard drive for too long. I’ve had the basic design completed since the beginning of the year (!), so I decided to start testing the colors on different systems before I consider the scheme (and the exact shades) finalized, and this is where I start to run into problems: I’ve dealt with gamma issues before (PC’s and Mac’s have different gamma settings, which cause colors to display differently between platforms, and even between different monitors if they’ve been calibrated), but I can’t recall ever seeing as much of a difference as I am with this particular case.

To illustrate the problem, I’ve created an example (view test image) showing what I consider to be the acceptable variations in shades of black (concentrate on the nav bar, behind the words “Home, Our Work” etc.) between the top and bottom borders, the solid background, and the diagonal pattern (all shades of black). If you are viewing this on a PC, you might not see the pattern, or the top and bottom borders. This is the problem.

On the desktop PC’s here (the problem does not occur on our Dell laptop, because LCD displays do not generally share the same gamma problems as CRT’s) the entire area from top border to bottom border (except the white lettering) looks black. No pattern, no difference between the borders and the background. On our Mac’s (some of them calibrated, others straight out of the box, all CRT) the difference in shades is clearly visible.

The problem is this: when I change the shades so they show up as subtle differences on the PC’s, it is so incredibly light on the Mac’s as to make it look stupid.

Aside from any ideas (which are most welcome), I would like to use you, my valued reader, as a test user: please post your review of the above test image in the comments of this post, and include your testing environment (OS, browser, type of monitor, color depth, calibrated or not, gamma setting if known) and let me know which of the variations you prefer (or none, if you cannot see the pattern at all).

I really appreciate your help, and if you can assist with an direct solution, I’ll include a comment in the final site’s HTML listing you as a contributor, and linking to your site.

Hot on the heels of Douglas Bowman’s redesign of Adaptive Path, the imitable Dan Cederholm has completed his latest project, redesigning Inc.com (his studio’s site has also received a facelift). The four sites linked above are not just terrific examples of design, but all make use of valid XHTML and CSS.

With all these great examples taking up your time, you may not have noticed the few minor tweaks made to this site: the primary navigation now resides in its own UI element (the bar underneath the header), and features subtle hover effects (all CSS, of course); the style switcher has been simplified by removing the two experimental styles (this has also decreased page-load times a bit); and finally, I’ve livened up the header just a little, borrowing one of the elements from this site’s logo (the globe). Of course, all the changes have been translated to each of the alternate styles.

I’m still not done (is a designer ever really done?), so you may have to reload the page and/or stylesheets over the next few days/weeks if things look squirrelly. I have to do something to make myself feel better after spending so much time looking at Doug and Dan’s personal sites–it’s good to have the bar raised every once in a while.