InsaneJournal

Site Updates & Random Babbling
Site Updates:

Okay, so Grazhir has a new look. (You may already have noticed changes if you peeked into certain areas.)

1. True Font Family (the free version) has been installed, which allows me a serious amount of freedom when it comes to what fonts I wish to use. Of course, it's not as good as actual web fonts, but it'll do for now. I'm only using it for the site name and a handful of pages that aren't normally accessible anyway. I have enabled the cache, but y'all probably won't notice that it is given it's just the one word usually. Though, I have considered checking into fonts for the headers and footers.

Anyway... for anyone who has graphics turned off or is using a screen reader, you shouldn't notice anything amiss. Even though it displays a graphic to replace the text, the text it still there. My only regret is that the free version doesn't allow for use of styles like bold and italic. However, somehow I think I'll find the courage to continue living.

It does use javascript, but since I already have javascript in the pages for the listboxes, I didn't think it was a big deal, so if you already have javascript enabled (or have Grazhir and its sub-sites allowed under NoScript), you're golden. (Actually, a combination of javascript and PHP.)

If you're curious, here's a sample page. (And in this instance, I almost think I prefer how IE handles it, as it has a tendency to blank the page until it's ready to display all the converted text, as opposed to Firefox, which leaves it visible while it's working.)

2. And speaking of scripting, I've removed the links for reviews [email, lj, ij] and replaced it with something else, that being a form. Therefore, if you feel moved to review a chapter for some reason, you can click on 'Review' (which, incidentally, is a fake link) and the form will become visible. I did the scripting myself, both for the visibility and the actual emailer. Go me! (Okay, so I trundled through an ancient PHP script of Rick's and gutted the sucker to make what I actually needed, updated the actual PHP to conform to current standards, and I got it to automagically provide the subject information based on the actual page title.) Or, you can just comment at the journal of your choice as per usual.

One point of interest is that attempts so far to style the Oops page haven't worked, but I was using a linked CSS file. I wonder what would happen if I embedded it instead? Dunno. Anyway, if you don't skip either of the required fields, the page you're on will be reloaded, so you'll end up at the top again, but there is the listbox and a "next" link, so.... I preferred that over using a pop-up window like FFN does. And besides, I'd have had to pass variables twice, and I don't like doing that.

3. I've done away with tables almost entirely (exceptions include stuff like the main fic menu). So far testing shows that I can use CTRL+ in Firefox twice before the menu table breaks, which should be more than enough leeway, especially as I use a decent sized font for everything else anyway. (In IE, who knows? Firefox's text size controls have no effect on IE Tabbed pages, and I usually can't be bothered to acutally launch IE itself... and I only have IE 6 anyway.) Tables don't themselves break, but since the tables I am using are no longer wrapped in a bigger table.... (Have I mentioned recently how much I despise IE?)

4. Every single chapter page should have been spell checked this time around. At this point I have no idea anymore, as my brain is more or less fried. Either way, I found (and expected to find) a bajillion errors, the cringeworthy ones being canon names spelled incorrectly. I still use words that aren't real, but that's beside the point.

5. Every episode of §imLife has a second home at Grazhir now as well. (No. 6 isn't missing—it's actually the Asylum episode.) The original journal entries are intact, though I did shift the image locations to make my life easier in the long run.

6. I am looking into a PHP-driven mailing list thingie for the site so that I can get away from having to manually maintain the list(s) for story updates. If I can get Rick to install the sucker (it looks too complicated for me to do myself) then I should point out that I'm pretty sure it's double opt-in, which means nobody can sign you up for a lark. And, of course, you could leave a list at any time you wanted. And... not have to rely on me remembering to actually add you or remove you from a list.

Random Babbling:

I've spent the last handful of days refreshing myself by reading almost every single Valdemar book I own (which is all of them), watching Resident Evil: Extinction, and eyeing the Rowan series. Maybe if I do that for a while I can finally find more inspiration for my own stuff... just by having walked away entirely and not had to think. Though... having read through all that, I've come to realize I've been influenced a lot by Mercedes Lackey in how I handle certain things. I don't know if that's good or bad, really. But... heh, and I thought I used em-dashes a lot!?

On another side note, I had to laugh when I realized that one of Talia's brothers was called Justus, and he was an angelically-beautiful sadist. I only picked the name because it was a play on "Justice" and it was an actual name. Meeheehee. Oh well, at least my Justus is also a sweetheart, and the sim version is merely bad-tempered.

And speaking of my beloved incarnation of Harry, I was just over at HP Lexicon double-checking some names/words so I could teach spell check properly, and came to realize, with much embarrassment, that Bane is not that dude's last name at all; it's Blane. I shall have to add a note to the story detail, I suppose, mentioning my bad eyesight and how I'm not going to fix the mistake?

Anyway, RE:E was all right, though not as good as the previous two. I still enjoyed it, though, but I have to wonder about our dear Alice. It almost looks like they did some serious air-brushing on her, or plastic surgery, or something... I dunno. She doesn't look quite right, while still being very recognizable as herself. Well, and aside from looking really, really heartsick tired a lot of the time. (And I hate what they did to her hair!)

The version of Dreamweaver I'm playing with (CS3) is very interesting, with a number of features I really, really appreciate. One of them happens to be that it will actually properly display CSS for a page even if it's been hard linked, which MX 2004 would not do. Of course, TFF doesn't like to deal with hard linked CSS, so I can't do things that way this time, but it's still very nice that you can have things set up that way and still see things properly while editing.