The Goof Sheds Some Weight
Unless you're reading my posts via an RSS aggregator, you've probably noticed that I made some significant changes to the site layout this weekend. I'd long been unhappy with how slowly my pages load due to the large amount of imagery, so I've eliminated much of it, and greatly reduced the size of what remains. It seems much faster to me now, hopefully, you'll agree.
I'm also planning to tweak the overall palette of the site to make the text more readable, although I've tried that before without much success. Seems my choice of background lends itself primarily to Halloween-y variations of orange-on-black. Guess I'll have to dig more deeply into my dimly-remembered graphic arts education to come up with something that fails to suck.
Now if I only knew how to clean up the dire state of my CSS templates without having to resort to days of tedious trial-and-error.
Comments
The orange on black is at least very easy to read.
Posted by: Kimberly | February 12, 2006 2:36 PM
That's why I've stuck with the current scheme for so long. What I really need to do is get rid of the blue and purple links, because the human eye is far less sensitive to those colors.
Posted by: MrBaliHai | February 12, 2006 3:07 PM
I likes it, although i'd like a slightly larger font (or to somehow let it default to the browser's preference).
Posted by: rone | February 12, 2006 4:08 PM
I'm definitely looking at increasing the font size, and letting it default to the browser's preference is a pretty good idea if I can figure out how to do it.
Posted by: MrBaliHai | February 12, 2006 4:43 PM
I use a CSS generator/validator called StyleMaster. It makes stylesheets very easy to edit and preview.
Posted by: jkcohen | February 12, 2006 7:31 PM
I DO read you via RSS, but came around the real site to have a look, and it is very, very clean.
Posted by: Brittanie | February 12, 2006 8:06 PM
This yellow/gold look of the moment is pretty nice. Dark backgrounds give my eyes trouble, though. Dunno about the load-in speed -- I always have it loading in a background tab.
Posted by: M.Ace | February 12, 2006 8:07 PM
Thanks for all the feedback. I kind of like the current look, so I think I'll leave it up for a while.
M.Ace: as far as human vision goes, light text on a dark background is optimal for most people, but there's always exceptions.
Posted by: MrBaliHai | February 12, 2006 8:21 PM
While you at it: fix the comments cookie thingie. Your blog always forgets me when I want to comment.
Overall I like the blog - and I prefer to 'scale' the fonts with my browser settings - so don't you dare setting a fixed size in your CSS.
Your CSS actually looks a bit chaotic - I guess that must be web design tikistyle? ;-)
;-)
Posted by: orangeguru | February 12, 2006 9:29 PM
The comments and stylesheet are screwed up as a result of the MT 3.2 upgrade.
Posted by: MrBaliHai | February 12, 2006 11:05 PM
Yes, I am a freak. Dark bg/light txt gives me a weird burn-in phenomenon on my retinas. And if I go straight from a dark page to a white bg page, I'm practically blind from the stripes. This is why I have my oddball greyscale scheme -- it's the easiest thing on my eyes. Don't mind me...
Posted by: M.Ace | February 13, 2006 3:03 PM
I'm grateful that the page loads faster (it really does) as I'm one of the few people left in the world using a slow dial-up modem.
I've had a lot of problems with black backgrounds in the past, and stick primarily to boring white backgrounds now, but everything looks good here.
Posted by: Mark | February 16, 2006 6:41 PM
Glad to hear it, Mark. But blogging on a dial-up?! I just can't imagine that.
Posted by: MrBaliHai | February 16, 2006 6:51 PM