blogger

We are the robots

posted by robott_rock @ 12:46 AM 0 comments

Down with non-standards browsers

Is it just me, or does IE6 not support blogger's pencil and garbage can icons for quick editing and deleting comments?

I tried it with a template that i created, and then checked it against one of the minima black, one of the standard blogger templates, just to be sure. It worked fine on firefox. It worked fine on opera. Why not on IE6?

IE has been such a headache in designing sites that i'm quick to point my finger that way. Is it? It's a background image reference by a css background.

What a pain.

posted by robott_rock @ 12:22 AM 0 comments

k10k.net/

Awesome site. http://k10k.net/

Searching for a little inspiration for the design of lj.com i decided to cruise around A List Apart for a while.

I was looking for a design nerd sort of site, and from past experience ALA has had awesome design related links. I started reading an article called Thinking Outside the Grid by Molly E. Holzschlag. Good article. I didn't quile get half way thru it when i found k10k.net.

K10k.net or "The Designers' Lunchbox" is just the site was looking for. It's pretty much an (mostly InfoTech) art centred web zine with lots of goodies. Each issue centres around an art peice. There are other artsy displays, news feeds and other exciting things to feed your brain.

My favorite feature so far is the project matchmaker. What an awesome idea! You navigate thru a table each row being a project and its basic stats. When you click on a project name, the area to the left of the table comes up with more info including: the project name and timeframe, the project website, a project contact person, a description of the project, and people & skill needed.

People can put their projects up for free. There's tons of cool projects up there. It's very inspiring. I'd like to recreate this idea in a more localized context. One day.

posted by robott_rock @ 11:42 PM 0 comments

Learning Blogger Template / Trackbacks / WebGUI

I am getting more comfortable with blogger templates. I spent the last day and a half finding and disecting a good one, Minima Black. Things are starting to make more sense, but there is still a lot to learn. I'm just starting to grasp the basics and it can get really really complicated.

I like the one used on this blog. It was made by Beccary. The only one of theirs i saw that i really liked. I like how the images go thruout it. I like how some of the lines extend the whole page. I'm going to have to learn more about repeating background images. Most of my design so far has been very contained. I tend to make a medium sized box and fill it with content.

I also learned about trackbacks. Very interesting. They are a way of linking to sites that have linked to yours. They are a function of blogging programs. Say that i was super excited about something i read on a blog. I wanted to tell the world, so i linked to it from my blog. If the organization providing the blog had a trackback (permalink +) function then that blog could automatically see that i had linked to them and put my linking address in a trackback list of sites linking to that site. Seems pretty cool. I've heard that it has a tendancy to get abused, and that some have even decided that is outdated at this point. I will learn more about it, and report back when i do.

Next big learning adventure... WebGUI. What is WebGUI? I know it's open source. I know it works for content management. I know quite a few groups that use it. Other than that i don't know much about it. I'm on the hunt for WebGUI information and tutorials.

posted by robott_rock @ 1:07 AM 0 comments