New Look
David Louis Edelman January 19th, 2007
No, you’re not experiencing a spontaneous acid flashback from that really good stuff you took back in college one night even though you know you shouldn’t have and you had a test the next morning. (Or if you are, it’s not our fault.)
DeepGenre is experimenting with a new look. Be patient as we work out the kinks.
I love the header the picture!
Oooh, Kay Nielsen!
Thank Kevin Andrew Murphy for finding the Nielsen painting. It’s a beaut. I wish there was room for the whole thing…
It’s gorgeous! Proof that change is good.
ok, change is scary but that graphic is beautiful! What is it?!
I found a bug: I have my screen resolution set really high to avoid eye strain, so the right hand navigation doesn’t compensate and hides half the comment box and I can’t see what I’m typing.
I, too, really like the new look — it’s much more readable. However, I really miss the “most recent comments” box — that let me quickly find the most current comments across all the topics.
Any chance of restoring that?
Nicole,
It’s a detail from one of Nielsen’s illustrations for “East of the Sun, West of the Moon.” It was about the only classic illustration I could think of that would have both a fantasy and a science fiction vibe, with some romance and horror thrown in for good measure. All nice for DeepGenre.
I’ll put in another vote for the restoration of Recent Comments.
I’ll also nominate the removal of Smart Quotes. Anyone want to second it? (It’s a pretty simple tweak to get rid of them.)
The recent comments box is back in the sidebar (as is the recent posts box).
I did some fiddling with the margins and proportions. Hopefully that problem with the comments box is fixed now. Let me know if you’re still having problems, Nicole.
As for the smart quotes: I used to thoroughly detest them, but they’ve grown on me. (They were there in the last DG design too.) Anyone else have any thoughts?
what are Smart Quotes? she asked ignorantly.
I really like the fiddling you’ve done, Dave. I like how you separated out the subpages, too – the ones you kept on the banner and the ones you put over to the “About” box in the sidebar.
The smart quotes are the so-called “curly quotes” that WordPress gives you by default (as opposed to the “straight quotes” that are on the keyboard). Although in this font they’re not curly so much as, um, diagonal.
"These are straight quotes, aren't they?" she asked.
“Yes, and these are smart quotes, don’t ya know,” he replied.
It used to be that these smart quotes caused browser problems and incompatibilities. Now, not so much.
Every day I learn something new is a day I am not yet dead!
I don’t have strong feelings either way. I can see that in another year or two, though, I’m going to need larger fonts in general.
All hail David Louis Edelman! Nice work.
Well, don’t hail me too much. The painting is by Kay Nielsen, and the blog theme is just a tweaked version of Fall Season by Sadish Bala. All I did was futz around with the colors and the margins and such.
Hey, I like it. It’s much more readable than the other template. With just a little tweaking, it’ll look good.
I guess I’m the only one having this problem, but the font size of the pages and links is now so small that it is literally unreadble by me. It used to be fine. There are some exceptions, like the 13-line critque itself (though not the responses). This page is one of those that is unreadable for me. (So how did I read it? Copied and pasted the text into a word processor so I could increase the font size and read it.) I’ve tried fiddling with me internet options and monitor display options, but that hasn’t helped.
Debbie: What browser and operating system are you using? It might be a browser-specific bug that I can try to fix. The main text is just about the same size as it was in the last design, except for the comments, which are a point size smaller.
(FYI, you may not be aware of it… but in most modern browsers nowadays, you can hold down the Ctrl button and roll the mouse wheel backwards and forwards to quickly resize the text.)
Argh. Appears that there’s an IE6 Windows display bug that’s causing the comments box to not work properly. Be patient, I’ll see if I can fix that…
(Of course, you could always upgrade to IE7 or use Firefox… but don’t worry, I will fix this for IE6.)
You are the best webmasters ever (I say that as someone who gets to play webmaster too).
David, all my comment box problems seem to be solved. Thanks!
Kevin — I’ll have to check it out. I know I haven’t seen these illustrations before.
Oh woe, David, I hit post too soon and just figured out that the navigation bar is still covering up the comment box. I’ve come across this problem with other sites, and there might not be anything you can do about it and I refuse to give up my low-resolution, really big text addiction. (did I say high before? I meant low). Thanks for trying.
Well, I’m posting this comment from an IE6 browser, and it looks like the comment form problems have been fixed.
Now if I could only get those damn gray boxes next to the subheadings to line up correctly in IE6…
David,
Are all of the rotating painting at the top from the same artist?
Right now, there are three by Kay Nielsen and two by Edmund Dulac. I might be adding in half a dozen more, including some by Warwick Gobles.
We really should put up some kind of page listing what these images are.
That would be great. I always want to know who the painter is. It’s one of the first things I do with a book when I like the cover art: check inside for the name of the artist.
All of the paintings you’re using so far are excellent.
Just added a few more. One more Dulac and three Warwick Gobles, I think.
David, I’m using version 6.0.2800.1106 of Microsoft Internet Explorer. Your little ‘ctrl’ mouse wheel suggestion worked, so I’m not having problems anymore. Thanks!