Stupid Evil Bastard » Web Design

Preliminary SEB templates are in place.

Les — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 06:16:49 +0000

As you can see, if you’ve stopped by the site instead of reading its RSS feed, I’ve got a half-assed port of the old SEB template moved over to WordPress. It’s missing a few things here and there, but it appears to be functional so I wanted to try it on the live site and see how well it holds up. I may yet try to make use of one of the frameworks instead of doing it this way, but for now this feels more like home.

One other advantage is that I’m able to incorporate plugins when and where I want them instead of hoping they work with the theme I was using. You’ll note, for example, that there is now a “preview” and “post” button on the Comment form. Try ‘em out and let me know what you think.

As always let me know if there’s any glitches or bits that don’t work.

I’ll be messing around with SEB’s theme soon.

Les — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:50:51 +0000

I’ve mentioned before that I’m currently using the Atahualpa theme for SEB because it’s the most configurable one I’ve found outside of Thesis. The latter of which costs money while the former does not, though they do accept donations. Athualpa has a few annoying quirks, but it is amazingly malleable so working with it is worth the effort. I’ve already made a major modification by reducing the layout from a three column format to a two column format as several folks seem to prefer that. I’ll be working on the color scheme as well in the days to come to get us back to a darker look. Alas, this means updating a lot of different sections one by one so as I do it the site will look somewhat funky during the process.

So this is just a note to say that if you stop by and the site looks a mess it’s because I’m working on getting it back to something a bit more familiar. Just so you know.

Mozilla to IE: You will be standards compliant whether you like it or not!

Les — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:47:50 +0000

I literally laughed out loud when I read this ArsTechnica.com article:

Most browser implementors are quick to adopt emerging Internet technologies, but Microsoft can’t or won’t make Internet Explorer a modern web browser. Despite some positive steps in the right direction, Internet Explorer still lacks many important features. Its mediocrity has arguably hampered the evolution of the web and forced many site designers to depend on suboptimal proprietary solutions.

IE’s shortcomings won’t hold back the Internet for much longer, however, because Mozilla plans to drag IE into the next generation of open web technologies without Microsoft’s help. One of the first steps towards achieving this goal is a new experimental plugin that adapts Mozilla’s implementation of the HTML5 Canvas element so that it can be used in Internet Explorer.

That’s certainly one way to bring standards to IE, but it’s not perfect by a long stretch as Microsoft seems determined to make it as hard as possible:

Vukićević is confident that a lot of the holes can be filled without substantial effort, but his primary concern is with the challenges posed by deployment. The plugin is designed to snap into IE as a binary rendering behavior, but the browser’s defensive security mechanisms insist on prompting the user before every time it is used. This detracts from the seamlessness of the plugin and makes it difficult to use for conventional web applications.

“Currently, the experience is pretty crappy: you have to click through an infobar to allow installation of this component, then you have to click ‘Yes’ to say that you really want to run the native content, and then you have to click ‘Yes’ again to allow the component to interact with content on the page,” he wrote in a blog entry. “In theory, with the right signatures, the right security class implementations, some eye of newt, and a pinch of garlic, it’s possible to get things down to a one-time install which would make the component available everywhere.”

Let’s hope the Mozilla folks are composed of some skilled witches then. Having a few plugins to help make IE standards compliant would be a welcome development for anyone who codes in HTML.

SEB’s Christmas template is now up.

Les — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 04:10:00 +0000

It’s starting to look a lot like Christmas around here because I felt like it. Slightly different from last year, but same basic color scheme. Was going to try and get a pic of me in my new Santa hat, but haven’t found a good background for it yet. If I get around to it soon I may set it up as a rotating image similar to what I did with the Halloween pics.

We’re slowly decorating the house as well. The tree is up and we’ve got a string of LED lights (a 33% energy savings over standard lights!) across the fireplace mantel. I need to get the outside lights strung up and the animated deer set up as well. Oh, and I finally broke down and bought myself a USB powered Christmas Tree that blinks between several different colors. It was $3.99 at the local Micro Center so I figured what the hell.

How about you guys? You got your Christmas decorations up yet? Are you an early starter like me or do you wait till the last minute?

SEB Reviews back in action.

Les — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 02:21:00 +0000

I just spent the past couple of hours reworking the long neglected Stupid Evil Bastard Reviews sub-blog in preparation for the various reviews I’ve been working on. In addition to getting rid of the now defunct ExpressionEngine Amazon Plugin, I’ve updated the listings with current pricing and reintegrated it into SEB’s front page so you won’t have to check two sites to keep up with any reviews that come along.

I’ve not updated SEB’s RSS feeds to include content from the sub-blog yet, but I plan to do that very soon. If you click on either the product image or the listed price you’ll be taken to Amazon.com’s listing for the item in question and your’s truly will earn a couple of cents in the process. As I’ve said before I don’t hold any illusions of making myself rich by writing deeply insightful and informative reviews, but if I can eek out a few pennies here and there I’ll be happy.

Now I can sit down and finish up a couple of these book reviews that are in various stages of completion.

Halloween template is now in place.

Les — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 23:23:00 +0000

As you can see, unless you’re reading this through an RSS feed, I’ve updated SEB with a Halloween theme. It’s mostly just a lot of orange with the first of the Halloween images in place of my usual picture on the left.

Hopefully it won’t end up melting your eyeballs.

Bookmark: Ultimate Web Developer Lists - 4000 Web Development Links in 200 Topics.

Les — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 12:36:00 +0000

Every now and then I come across a really useful collection of links on web development. This has to be one of the biggest I’ve found so far. Ultimate Web Developer Lists: 4000 Web Development Links in 200 Topics.

Everything from Ajax, CSS, HTML, XML and more to sites with free fonts, cheat sheets, color pickers, graphics, RSS, site tools, and so on. If you’re always on the lookout for learning more about how to do this stuff yourself then this is a great resource to add to your bookmarks.

Christmas theme is up and man is it ugly.

Les — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 18:34:54 +0000

And I’m not just talking about my picture either. Yes, my sense of color schemes is comically inept and I admit to that. Truth is I’ve been trying to come up with a new layout and graphics for Yuletide and just haven’t been able to pull of any of the things my imagination has cooked up lately. Seeing as this is about all the Christmas decorating I’m going to do this year I wanted to get something up before too much more time passed. I’ll probably still try to come up with something less garish later in between getting ready to move out of the apartment and finding a job, but with as crappy as the last dozen designs I tried to do have turned out I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for it if I were you. If nothing else I’ll keep playing with the color scheme to see if I can’t tone it down a bit…

Updated Halloween SEB skin.

Les — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 04:05:00 +0000

I’ve updated the SEB Halloween theme with a new pic of me created by Beau Tochs who is much more skilled with Photoshop then I could ever hope to be. I had attempted something similar myself and it looked damned silly so I’m very grateful for Beau Tochs taking the time to realize my vision for me and allowing me to make use of it on the site. Besides, it’s probably how more than a few folks see me even when it’s not Halloween. If you’re still seeing the zombie pic just do a page refresh and the new logo should show up.

Thanks again, BT.

Comment Previews now working properly.

Les — Wed, 22 Dec 2004 13:51:18 +0000

If you’ve been using the preview function in the comments here at SEB you may have noticed that after hitting preview the first time any subsequent previews didn’t update the display properly even though the changes would take effect if you posted the comment. Well, it’s working as it should now with each click of the preview button updating the page.

Turns out it was a problem of my own making. I have most of the templates set to cache for a period of time to help reduce server load and the comment preview template was one of them. For some reason it didn’t occur to me that this would be a bad idea. Anyway, caching is turned off for the comment preview template so you can preview as many times as you’d like before submitting now.