May 15, 2011

And the winner is...

So here's the final version.

If both the logo and image label were on the left side, it would feel unbalanced. But I'm wondering if I ought to swap them, putting the logo in the upper left and the label in the lower right.

UPDATE: Thinking more about it, there are technical reasons why I can't do that. The label has to be on the left side, because it's a variable-sized field and it will grow to the right. Since the logo is fixed-size, I can put it anywhere.

I'm using HandelGothic BT 12 point for the label. The logo is HandelGothic BT 28 point, but I might increase it to 30. (Don't want it too big because it would get in the way of the image.)

Eventually the logo will be a button, and clicking it will take you to the home page. (That's what the current logo does.)

UPDATE: Thinking more about it, I figured out how to put the label on the right.

I think I like this even better.

UPDATE: In case anyone is interested, the label has the tight black glow we worked out before. The logo has the same thing, but also a black dropshadow to the lower right.

I will do a bit more tuning on the real thing. The label needs to move a couple of pixels to the left, and I think I can move the logo a bit closer to the corner. And I think I'll make the logo's dropshadow a bit less blurred.

UPDATE: (Bullwinkle voice) This time for sure!

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at 11:05 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
Post contains 265 words, total size 2 kb.

1 Really stupid question:  It is my custom to right-click and save the rotation image when I surf to Chizumatic and a new one pops up.  I do not see how I can do that with the new method.  Is there a method to do this, or will I be changing my custom?

Posted by: PatBuckman at May 15, 2011 05:30 PM (QoYaz)

2 Hmmm, one thing this pointed out to me is that I had Firefox scaling your site window and I didn't know it.  At first I thought the Flash images looked awful.  Then I realized I had scaling on.  At 100% everything looks fine.  But zooming the page in or out shows that Flash scales poorly, introducing jaggies.  But that's a client-side problem, nothing to do with you.

In any case, it looks like you have a winner here with the layout, especially with the new label format.

Posted by: Mauser at May 15, 2011 05:34 PM (cZPoz)

3 Aaaaahh. You changes maaka me a happy maan.

(Admittedly, not as happy as a couple of busty catgirls would, but we can't have everythiung.)

Posted by: ubu at May 15, 2011 06:48 PM (GfCSm)

4

Pat, I wondered if someone would ask about that.

There isn't any way to do what you want. The flash security sandbox requires that you choose either the ability to manipulate local files or to manipulate remote files. You can't do both.

These sample flashes include the images, but the eventual one I'll develop will be loading the image that's displayed from the mee.nu server. That means I have to choose "remote access" for the sandbox, which in turn means there's no way to read or write local files.

The only way you'll be able to make your own copies will be to take a grab of the browser window and then edit it with a graphics editor to extract out just that part. Which is obviously not something anyone would want to do regularly.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 15, 2011 07:02 PM (+rSRq)

5 By the way, the existing mechanism only changes the top image once per hour, using a fixed rotation that takes about a month before it repeats. Under this new scheme, it's going to choose a picture at random every time it's loaded.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 15, 2011 07:05 PM (+rSRq)

6 You are going to trigger a visitor's behaviour when people reload the site endlessly.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at May 15, 2011 07:34 PM (9KseV)

7

I thought about hashing the year, month, day, hour to figure out the image, but I figure that a random choice every time is just as good, and it's a damned sight easier for me to do.

Probably there will be people who do that, initially, but I think the novelty will wear off. But it will be interesting to see if I get a spike of page-loads after I introduce the change.

It's still going to be a while. I have to collect a couple hundred more grabs, then resize and trim them all, and I have to finish developing the flash file.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 15, 2011 07:38 PM (+rSRq)

8 The new images are wider than the current top image, which happens to be exactly as wide as the current "content" column.  So to see the full images, I have to click through to the stand-alone post.  (I always do, because it is invariably worth it.)

I don't know if this is because of the default mee.nu style, and whether it is easy to adjust, but it would be annoying if the top rotation picture has the right side (including part of the image source name) cropped.

Posted by: Hypozeuxis at May 15, 2011 10:47 PM (5eWak)

9 Hypozeuxis, when I start using this new approach, the page format is going to change as well.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 16, 2011 06:25 AM (+rSRq)

10 It would be great if there were next post/previous post links on individual posts.

Posted by: RickC at May 16, 2011 09:32 AM (VKVOz)

11 That's not something I can do anything about.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 16, 2011 10:51 AM (+rSRq)

12 I am trying to compare and contrast your font selections - really I am. I just keep getting distracted by the images behind them.

Posted by: dkallen99 at May 16, 2011 12:12 PM (A0vbr)

13 Well, good.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 16, 2011 01:38 PM (+rSRq)

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