There must be some kind of way out of here.
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After weeks of work that have surely accelerated the graying of my hair, I present to you, loyal readers, the new and (improved?) WITFITS. Huzzah!

There are still some tweaks that need to be made, but enough was in place that I felt confident in sharing it with you. It was tested mostly under Firefox, so I cannot vouch for its appearance under any other browser (IE7 should look mostly correct but I suspect IE6 makes it looks like a monkey coded it, which isn't far from the truth). I hope to polish up the remaining nitpicky details this week.

Take a look around and familiarize yourself with the new digs. The oh-so-common blog sidebar is gone--you'll find it's former contents existing on separate pages accessible through the menu bar above. I strove for a clean main page with this new template, hoping to strike a fair balance between usability and aesthetics.

I am interested in what people think of the new look. Please vocalize your opinion, either in the comments here or by e-mailing me at witfits@gmail.com. I want to know what you like and dislike. I can't promise I'll change anything, but hopefully I won't have to.

Oh, and you may have noticed WITFITS is now parked at www.Katonian.net. The URL is a little bit easier to type. Don't worry, your bookmarks, feeds, and links that point to witfits.blogspot.com will still work.
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20 comments
Paulius said...
See? I Photoshop a new Header for my blog, spend about 2 hours (and all my html knowledge) getting it in the right place...then JUST as I'm feeling proud of myself, you come along a wee-wee all over my 'achievement'.

In all seriousness tho, great work. Very 'Web 2.0' looking.

A little light on the ninjas tho. Everything's better with ninjas.
MC Etcher said...
I'm still using IE6 (crazy, no?) and the new template looks a smidge wonky. I might have to update just for you!
MC Etcher said...
No more peek-a-boo comments? I loved that!
MC Etcher said...
OK! I now have IE7, and the difference is like day and night!

It turns out, a lot of what seemed like bad formatting on the new template was just the browser.

Looks great now!
candace said...
Verrrrry nice!
Kato (post author) said...
Paulius: You should be proud. And you should remember those two agonizing hours if you ever get crazy like me and decide you wanna rebuild the whole thing from scratch. I think I may have spent two hours just deciding on the size of one of the fonts.

You're right, it doesn't have enough ninjas.

Etch: IE6 is pretty wonky. I probably should fix the layout for it, but I might not be able to--it has a couple of annoying bugs in how it interprets CSS.

I miss the Peek-A-Boo comments as well. Unfortunately, for reasons only Blogger knows, with the new version of the API you can't have comments on the main blog page. It's a step backward. I'm hoping they'll change that.

Candace: Glad you approve.
I feel like such the slacker. I'd put a good deal of time and thought into my old template, but when I upgraded to beta, I just went with a default offering (adding a "watch this space" notice in the sidebar, something which I'm sure all of my 6 readers have stopped watching by now). I've been actively *not* spending any time at all working on it for about 3 months.

And so, as I did when you implemented tags into your old template, I will spend way too much time digging through your code to see how you did it. I'm sure, as before, I'll be way too impressed to even try to borrow any of your code.

Oh, if I haven't said it yet -- and it looks like I haven't -- awesome template.
Kato (post author) said...
The code is pretty hairy, I'm doing all sorts of crazy stuff. I'm amazed the damn thing even loads. I'm gonna try to post some stuff about how I did certain things and what I learned about the Blogger API in the process.

I'm glad you like it.
MC Etcher said...
Just a few things that stood out for me - I'm sure that half of these are by design and the other half are me being persnickety. But input can be hard to come by.

1) Why no mouseover text for the persona pics at the top right?

2) Perhaps a few more pixels of padding could be added between comments

3) The POST PAGE tab at top right is visible only when viewing comments - is this by design?

4) The SEARCH button is small, seems forced in, doesn't line up with the other buttons in its row

5) The large Kato pic, the WITFITS header, and the top of the small Kato pic do not line up along the top (likely by design)

6) Is the Spock pic a legal issue?

7) The day/date box at the left is somewhat small and easy to miss

8) The day/date box at the left does not line up with the elements to its left - seems about 2 pixels too far south

9) The main WITFITS title is not a link to the home page (yeah, I saw the HOME button)

10) The post text feels crowded in its frame - The spacing at the end of the posts would be a valid yardstick for gauging this - same padding would be good at left and right, though the top seems spaced correctly.

(Are you sure you want Beta testers?) :o)
Kato (post author) said...
Good comments, thank you :)

1) I forgot.
2) The comments need some work. The font is too small, but the line spacing is too large (which will not be a problem if I up the font). It's cramped too.
3) Yes... when using the widgets-based blogger template, comments ONLY appear on individual post pages (hence no more peek-a-boo).
4) The search button is small because the box above it is where you type search text in. Because of my color scheme, that might not be obvious.
5) By design. It looked a little stiff with them all in a row, so they are offset. Originally the profile/bio pics moved diagonally, to break up the boxiness of the header, but that took up too much space.
6) You better believe it is. :) But almost all the images on the site are taken from elsewhere so it's somewhat of a moot point. That Spock one is pretty obvious, though, and will probably be replaced by another pic in the near future.
7) I noticed that too. In my designs it seemed adequate but in the full page it seems easy to lose and I find myself not having the same sense of what day a post comes from as in my previous template. I will probably at least make it bigger, if not scrap it for a different scheme.
8) Originally that was intended because the layout was slightly different. When I changed some things I didn't adjust.
9) I should make the main WITFITS a link--that's the scheme I had on my old template and it's pretty standard.
10) The bottom of the post was originally smaller--but I had problems with the "number of comments" box overwriting the end of long sentences on posts. Anyway, the sides of the posts do seem a bit cramped, I will give it some more padding to adjust.
PikaPika said...
Not being able to resize the "leave a comment" popup is ass. I didn't get any scrollbars in Firefox and some of the comments got cut off. It's only marginally better in IE6.
Miss Scarlet said...
You asked for input on design? You're either a rookie or a masochist. :-) Although at least here you get constructive comments. At work I get "This sucks." It's a real ego booster, I tell ya.

I think it looks good, especially since my image gets prime real estate. It's about time you gave credit to the real brains of this operation.

The font on the comments is a bit teeny, though this is coming from someone who has been told I have "pathologically bad vision."

Awesome. Congrats on getting it up. Er, your new template that is.
Kato (post author) said...
PikaPika: I agree, and the behavior is inconsistent between browsers. I have very little control over it, but I'll see what I can do.

Scarlet: I am a masochist, apparently. The comments were the first thing I noticed. It'll be the first thing I fix.
WildWeazel said...
Hmm... my previous comment never showed up.
As I said before, I like the new look. It's clean, simple, and has a cool comic-book flavor.
The popup comment page is being stubborn, stuck in a small non-resizable window that I have to scroll through with the arrow keys to get to the comment area. I don't suppose that's anything you might have done with the template.
Kato (post author) said...
That comment popup box was being jerky, so I changed my Blogger settings so it's a separate page now. Should be better.
WildWeazel said...
And better it is.
Kato (post author) said...
I massaged the template a lot last night. Most of the minor, and a couple of not-so-minor things, should be better now.
milo said...
Cool layout, colour scheme is lala, but the whole theme is definetely cool.
MC Etcher said...
The mouseover text for the persona pics uses " instead of '
Kato (post author) said...
Ah, yes. That's a Blogger bug where it decides to replace single quotes with double quotes when it shouldn't.

© 2009 Kato Katonian
"I'm glad to be with you, here at the end of all things."
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