Just want to say I turned on The Grand Retort last night. It has a little ways to go, and I need to figure out some tweaky-things, but all-in-all it does pretty much what I want it to do for a start-up.
Thanks to all who’ve advised me on some of the quirky stuff I wanted to do. Of course, design and interface advice is *sincerely* welcome.
Nice, clean look. The lines in the masthead do not align, however (Opera 7, FF 0.8 & even IE 6 on XP). See attached screenshot.
Ingmar, if you are referring to the small gap between the box around the retort and the line beneath the text, that is supposed to be that way. That is the design. If you mean elsewise, tell me.
Your left sidebar isn’t wide enough for the graphic headers so the infringe on the text column (Safari, Firefox).
That’s interesting. Are you displaying the text at smaller or smallest size (or at least as it’s called in IE). I don’t test for appearance in other browsers, and I cannot get mine to display the way your image shows… And no-one else I’ve asked can make it do that either. If they reduce the display size to smaller or smallest, it pushes the left column below the middle column, but at medium or better it displays just fine. Which basically means I’m not planning to change anything for now, since I can’t get the image to dynamically resize, and that font (intimacy) is not common. Oh well.
What OS is safari on, BTW, I keep hearing about it here, but I’ve never seen it or heard of it elsewhere 9which doesn’t mean anything, I am not a professional webdeveloper (anymore, at least—thank God!)
Ya. I always increase/decrese the font size just to see what happens and expose bugs. So, the code is off somehow, the column should not go smaller than any of the content within it (the graphic). —————
As LJ mentioned, Safari is Mac. But, it does it in Firefox also. The trouble with developing and testing with IE is that it is the least standards compliant browser out there. Most I know develop for Firefox/Safari (most standards compliant) and then check and work out any IE specific bugs.
Ya. I always increase/decrese the font size just to see what happens and expose bugs. So, the code is off somehow, the column should not go smaller than any of the content within it (the graphic).
Well not sure what to say or do about that. That column is actually a border (as laid out with CSS, and all the contents are laid over that)... Not sure you care, but here’s the code for that part of the layout from the css page (note: Ruthsarian Layouts was the source for base version of this):
#outerColumnContainer { /* reserves space for left & right columns. Uses padding, margins, or * borders as needed, but border method creates background color * for both left and right columns, solid is needed w/ border, color is done * in outercolumn container, below */ border-left: solid 13em #FFFFFF; /* left col background width and color */ border-right: solid 8.5em #FFFFFF; /* right col background width and color */ } #innerColumnContainer { border: solid #FFFFFF; border-width: 0 1px; margin: 0 -1px; width: 100%; z-index: 1; } #leftColumn, #middleColumn, #rightColumn, * html #SOWrap { overflow: visible; position: relative; } ... and etc....
It works well enough for me, at least for the time being… —————
As LJ mentioned, Safari is Mac. But, it does it in Firefox also. The trouble with developing and testing with IE is that it is the least standards compliant browser out there. Most I know develop for Firefox/Safari (most standards compliant) and then check and work out any IE specific bugs.
Thanks for the info… that explains it. Well, I’m not a mac-o-phobe or a win-o-phile, but I like things that work all the time, and that I can tweak until my heart’s content. I have been using dos since v2.11 (cpm before that) and win since 3.11. I like windows and I just don’t care if mr. Gates stole it from anyone. As for other OSs, well I have done Linux (ran an ISP for two years, actually) and it was ok, if you like that sort of thing; I learned to professionally hate OS Warp and Netware, and I never had a desire at all to use a mac or an apple. In fact, I used to do paid-consulting to K12 schools to teach teachers how to use windows (no kidding)... Once we got past the “Gates stole everything/I hate Windows” hour, most folks found it more versatile and easier to get along with, especially since they already knew a lot of the commands (since Gates stole it an’ all). As for Firefox, I downloaded and installed it and ran it for about 2 weeks a few months ago. Then I deleted it and went back to IE. Just not interested in being someone elses beta-tester anymore. Did that all through the 80’s and I just want stuff that works pretty well out of the box.
Like EE, for example! As for dev, I don’t do dev for other people anymore, and I expect that the next version of IE will either fix things mo-better or screw them all up again. I appreciate standards compliance (you’d be amazed at where I’ve been with that, professionally), but IE is the one most used by most people, and if something else doesn’t work the way the most widely installed software works, then the standard probably ought to be changed. . .
Didn’t mean to start a platform/standards diatribe :-) —————
The whole “the majority use IE” thing is less true now days. Where Microsoft had around a 98% share, they are now down to around 80-85% only (and falling). So, you may not like Firefox or the Mac, it doesn’t matter, others do and your site could look hosed to them. And if you ever happen to get any press attention/interest, they will probably visit with Safari and your site could look hosed…not really making a good impression. —————
I personally don’t care if you make it IE only :-)
Didn’t mean to start a platform/standards diatribe :-) —————
The hole “the majority use IE” thing is less true now days. Where Microsoft had around a 98% share, they are now down to around 80-85% only (and falling). So, you may not like Firefox or the Mac, it doesn’t matter, others do and your site could look hosed to them. And if you ever happen to get any press attention/interest, they will probably visit with Safari and your site could look hosed…not really making a good impression. —————
No, no…. No diatribe. really. Just thinking with my fingers, as is my wont sometimes. My point is that I just use what I like and I like what works most often, which is true of IE, for me. As for the page fix, I already took care of that, I think—I just changed the left border size from em to px in the CSS. That makes the border size static, and also stops it from moving below the middle column no matter the size… Not the end-result I had in mind, but better than it was. And I do thank you for the input. BTW, it was your % comments above that keyed me to the solution, beleive it or not…. Funny, that.
As for attention of the ‘press,” I have less than zero use for most of the institutional “press,” and if my stuff looks hosed to them, all the better. To paraphrase something another person said once, I would think less of myself if the “press” thought well of me, considering how completely wrong most of the press is most of the time.
See, there I go again… I’ll stop here with a sincere thank you for your time and assitance. I mean that.
Ingmar, if you are referring to the small gap between the box around the retort and the line beneath the text, that is supposed to be that way. That is the design. If you mean elsewise, tell me.
Yes, that’s what I meant. Didn’t look intentional, sorry.
EDIT: I thought it was supposed to look something like this:
If they reduce the display size to smaller or smallest, it pushes the left column below the middle column, but at medium or better it displays just fine.
Ah, but that means that in 2 out of 5 settings your design doesn’t display correct, right?
