January 2006

Except for the color and background styling, the second tier of my blog header is coded and styled. It fits the minimum browser size requirements exactly, sizes up nicely, and crams everything I need into a relatively small space. It’s not indicative at all of the functionality I hope to have — that part comes into play on the third tier. Even then it’ll just be empty links until I nail down the color scheme, create the decorative background art and headers, and finish the remaining styles: posts, block quotes, drop caps, footers and links. It’s definitely far from being finished, as Dia so lovingly pointed out when she said she hated the “poo colored heading.”

I’m half tempted to get the basic framework banged out so I can get the MovableType coding over and done with, then work on the backgrounds and colors with the site live. A work in progress at any stage would still look better than how this blog looks now:

I’ve lost some of my energy lately, or rather I should say it has been tasked more towards working out instead. With the headache of the main page behind me and my days starting earlier I lost focus a little, using the two together as an excuse to procrastinate. It’s still safe to say that if the index.html took as long as it did then the blog redesign should be a complete nightmare, but putting it off will only make it harder as ideas become stale and the year’s activities get under way.

One evening last week I was feeling motivated just enough to work on a quick, three hour proof of concept for Tom. He’s been developing ideas for an eventual Newgrounds redesign and this is the second time he’s floated a screenshot my way to see if it was feasible purely with CSS. Rather than have him take my word for it I like to show him exactly how simple it can be. The first time I dragged my feet a little because it was more graphics-heavy but this time it was all code. It was also a lot of fun. And though it was a little buggy since I sent it off without running it through IE first – along with the requisite caveats of course – it served its purpose and I was told it was enough to convince Tom that it could be done.

The stuff he sent me looks like it’s got real potential, meaning that while it’ll always be a flash-based, graphics intensive site it can still be streamlined into standards-compliance, and made more accessible to all users. When the redesign eventually gets up to full speed he’ll have to make the tough choices between design and scalability. I imagine having the art finalized and copy complete will help with that decision, and I look forward to helping him out if he finds himself at an impasse.

Rudderowdotcom v2006 is up and running. It’s not exactly what I pictured, but it’ll have to do. And I’m in love with it all over again.

I’d like to pledge to go back and make the better version for compliant browsers, however I know that’s not something I’ll ever do. I may make the images clickable but I’m not sure that people won’t find it just as easy once they’ve realized to click the text.

I went back to change the code after all to something completely different altogether — and it’s a hell of a lot prettier. It views on all browsers equally, it validates as completely compliant, and best of all the HTML is incredibly simple. There’s a small bug in Safari where where it realizes there’s text hidden somewhere, but unless someone drags the mouse around a lot it’s largely unnoticeable. That’s definitely something I can stand waiting to fix.

I look forward to getting feedback from anyone who cares to send some my way.

I finally finished the main page. It only took me 20 hours and it still only works on compliant browsers — which means every single one except for Internet Explorer. I feel like I haven’t gotten anything done today even though I know it isn’t true; but after five straight hours of tweaking my code to the point where I hate the design I’m angry I don’t have something to show for it. I deleted the style sheet until I can figure out a fix.

Nothing’s ever simple. I can forget about the blog redesign for a while now, and I should have known it would sap all my time and energy this weekend and put that example together for Tom early on.

Guess I have no choice but to worry about everything tomorrow. Right now my eyes are ready to burst from exhaustion.

I was right about the tighter spotlight solving optical illusion of a mismatched puzzle. It ends up looking nicer anyway since the original effect wasn’t exactly circular.

I’m starting to get sick of the cartoonish way it looks; hopefully it’s only because I’ve been staring at it for so long. The only thing left before I’m finished is to get a picture of an eyeball (I’m thinking my sister’s?), then I can crank out the final piece and the HTML to post the new page.

I had hoped to get a lot more done this weekend, at least to have started on the new blog considering what a nightmare the code for that will be. Depending on how long the mock-up for Tom takes, I may have to take a day off next week to move this project along.

I split most of my day between procrastinating and working on the second piece of the puzzle. Decided to make the pieces appear as if they were being removed to reveal what’s underneath — and those pieces will show up in the blog to play a small part in identifying the four major headings.

It’s all starting to fit together nicely. The blog pages will have a torn paper effect like the scrap that reads “bobby loves ducks” on this piece, and the background text (the final lines from Catch-22) also shows up in the photo section.

There’s a funky interaction with the sections in the overall layout, because the eye wants the pieces to interlock as one large puzzle. However, there isn’t enough room between the top and bottom squares for this to happen — especially at the 800x600 default window size. I originally thought the spotlight effect would alleviate this and now I have to work on it yet again. Possibly abandoning the spotlight and cropping the area around the piece to give it an 1/8 inch border that fades instead will fix the problem.

Another small decision I have to make now is whether to redesign the photo page, however slightly, to fit the new theme. I was going to leave it alone and have four distinctly different sites. Now I realize that it might look too disjointed. At least it’s nothing I have to decide any time soon.

I finished the first final product for my site redesign and I’m really pleased; when aligned properly on the main page with its black background, it looks snazzier than I ever pictured in my head. It has a comic book feel that I hope I can replicate for the other pieces and possibly to other pages as well.

Before the final result was produced I was becoming increasingly wary that the photos were unrecognizable once converted to puzzle pieces. This is still the case for most of them, but I think enough maintain their integrity to make sense. And when I’m ready to construct the portfolio portion of the site I have larger versions of everything and interesting screen shots of some of it in progress. That way, I can provide a better look at some of the smaller, cropped pieces that didn’t really make the cut.

I’d been putting off a this bit of grunt work for a while. It represents a big piece of the puzzle, no pun intended, and hints at the overall concept.

Instead of leaping right into the blog design, I figured I could use the index page to bide my time while I work out the kinks in my head for the rest. The individual pieces will also play a part in the blog, but I think only as background images where the blog ties into the rest of the site.

Not much more to go for the main page, just some screenshots, image selection, and a little photoshop work. Half of the links won’t work yet since I still need to develop much of the content, but a new look with missing links is at least a start.