collisionbend.com

Just a few quick notes on the redesign, if you’ll allow me to strut my stuff…

I’m in love with this “new” design. Truth be told: it isn’t new; it’s about 8 months old, almost as old as the site itself. I started redesigning this site right after I cobbled together the old design.

I say I “cobbled” the old site together because that’s exactly what I did: I cobbled it together. It was full of enough hacked code, workarounds, patches and other stopgap measures in the CSS file alone to sink the proverbial battleship without a round fired or torpedo released. Last weekend’s fiasco finally sunk that ship. Think Bismarck.

You could see it the other day when I had only one HTML page visible, that being the root index page: the footer, in such a small document, “released” itself from the other backing elements on the page, creating an unsightly gap between the elements; it also shifted dramatically to the left, below the content area, from where it belonged, which was under the nav menu. I actually had to crop the menu in order for the page to look even slightly presentable.

Of course, I knew this right from the start. I started redesigning as soon as I first published, because I didn’t completely like the look and feel — and the resulting CSS errors and hacks.

This redesign, however, is different: no hacks; no workarounds. Just straight, plain, valid XHTML (1.0 strict!) and CSS that works in all browsers and platforms — yes, even Internet Explorer, versions 5 and up. Of course, there are a few things that don’t work in IE, but you’ll have that…

The layout is fully liquid. By that, I mean that all of the main page elements are resizeable depending on the size of the open browser window; they’re built in percentages rather than hard-coded pixels.

One neat feature of the new stylesheet: If you resize your browser, you’ll also notice that the image at the top of the nav panel actually resizes as well. If, when the browser is in a smaller state, you drag the corner of the browser window to another size, you can actually watch the image change with your browser size. As I learn PHP, I’ll actually create an image rotation script that will change that image for each day of the week, then change to another set of 7 images the next month.

The image in the background is a map of Cleveland circa 1835. Coming from one of the oldest families of the city of Cleveland, I wanted this site to look old and new at the same time, kind of moving forward while winking at the past. I’m not sure if I accomplished that; you be the judge. The background image should be fixed in all browsers and not move when you scroll the page.

The masthead image will stay for a little while, but look for it to be replaced at some point: I have too many digital photos of this fair city to go to waste; all I need is to work them into an acceptable format to fit the masthead. Those, too, might rotate, but at a different interval. Perhaps monthly. Or maybe a tiny Flash applet like the PGA Championship site, only smaller. No decision on this at the moment.

As I learn PHP, I intend to create a couple of WordPress enhancements to give the nav column even more functionality. No comments yet as to what I intend: I have to leave something for the element of surprise…

By the way, not all of the links on the nav panel work: the page links to the site don’t yet exist, but will soon, as the template needs a few minor tweaks for each page before they post; the site area list of links will also change somewhat, too, as I don’t need that many sections to this site. Most of the external links are functional, however, with the notable exceptions being a couple of the validating services. All in due time.

The accessible stylesheet isn’t ready for prime time either, but that should be up relatively soon (maybe this weekend), as I only have to copy the current stylesheet and reverse 4 lines of code.

As for the archive of old posts: I have figured out what I want it to do, and how it should work, but haven’t yet figured out how to do it. For you WordPress users/coders out there, here are the requirements of the hack/plugin that I need to create:

• 1) it will post to page ‘archive.php’ instead of ‘index.php’;
• 2) posts on ‘archive.php’ must be hidden from the ‘get_recent_posts’ script;
• 3) show the original post date, not the re-post date;
• 4) show up on the calendar;
• 5) the ‘archive.php’ page will list the post title, original post date, categories, and the first sentence or two (or a summary) with a ‘more’ tag at the end linking to the full permalink.

That’s a little bit of work, but not insurmountable. In fact, in PHP, it should be fairly easy; it’s just a matter of getting WordPress to work along with adding a field to the post and edit page for replaced entries. I’ll post at the WP Support Forum and the WP wiki to see if anyone has tried to tackle this problem.

So why have I waited 8 months to release this? I wanted it to work. I wanted it to do everything I wanted it to do before I released it — which it doesn’t — yet (but it will).

I think, most of all, that I wanted to make sure I liked it.

I do.