Fun With Stylesheets

[Fritz]

It's been a while since I did any major revision to the look of the main Ectozone site. Almost three years, really, when I started experiementing with tables.

Well, recently I've been playing with Cascading Sytle Sheets, and wondering what I could do with those to improve the look of the place. They have all sorts of advantages: I'd only have to change one file to make a change on every page, instead of changing every single page affected. I could make seasonal changes (ie the Halloween orange, the red, white, and green for Chrismas) affect the main Ectozone site just like the message board. And there's some things that are just plain easier--you won't believe how much less code it takes to do one of the GBI-style pages with CSS than with <table> tags.

Anyway, I'm not going to make a change like that without input. Here's a set of examples I created that show what I'm thinking of doing.

www.ectozone.com/indexcss.html
www.ectozone.com/gbicss.html
www.ectozone.com/gbi14css.html
www.ectozone.com/gbinesccss.html
www.ectozone.com/xmascss.html

And yeah, I've got some ideas for the GBWC too...

www.gbwc.net/gbwccss.html

Let me know what you think. Heck, let me know if they even work for you--the pages that have the side nav bars tend to look a little wierd on my Mom's computer. That's a javascript application that I also love--once again, if I wanted to change or add a link, I'd only have to change one page instead of every individual page that's affected. It may be the version of Firefox it runs, but that's one of the things I'm hoping to figure out.

[Miss Janine]

I voted I dunno, but there's an explanation...

I go with whatever's easiest for you. As long as all the info is there, and I don't have to log in 80,000,000 times to do anything, I'm cool. I like the look now, but sometimes change is good.

[ghostdiva]

I think the text is too small, other than that, I say go for it.
ghostdiva

[Fritz]

I've been a little worried about the font size too--but thankfully, I've found a relative font size selector that will work with the brower settings the same way the html <font size> tags do.

I've already been tinkering behind the scenes with some things I'll try to upload in a day or two. For one thing, I'm experimenting with separating elements--like where those horizontal lines are now, things will be broken into seperate boxes.

[Fritz]

As promised, some new experiemental pages. Among the experiements is the remote linking of the .css and .js (link bar) scripts--since Freehomepages doesn't even allow javascript files on their servers, I have to remote host it to do it.

www.ectozone.com/indexcss2.html
www.ectozone.com/gbicss2.html
www.ectozone.com/gbi14css2.html
www.ectozone.com/gbinesccss2.html
www.ectozone.com/xmascss2.html

www.gbwc.net/gbwccss2.html

If you have any problems with stuff showing up, please, let me know.

[ghostdiva]

I think it looks fine Fritz. I would go for it.
ghostdiva

[SuperStantzio]

yes I agree with that. Sounds like a good plan!

[Miss Janine]

I'll miss the current look, but...go for it! Looks great!

[EGBFan]

It looks great. Do it.

(Bossy? Me?)

[Fritz]

missjanine said:

I'll miss the current look, but...go for it! Looks great!

I dunno...I don't consider this so much as "changing" the current look to "evolving" it to the next level. The same basic look (black background, red navbar, Arial text) is still there, it's just a little more high-tech.

Some pages, such as the Gallery pages, may not actually change any from what they are now.

And there'll always be the Archive pages to remind us what the home page used to look like

[Miss Janine]

Oh, okay. Go for it!

[Kingpin]

I've got to stop by here more often.

I like the second batch and the idea behind it... having the date/time/location sections in a separate colour will more then likely help those who are reading the longer stories and can't read them in one sitting... all they'll have to do is count down the appropriate number of red separating sections and they're at the part of the story they were last at.

I also like the separated links as well, as there's been a number of times I clicked for the Forum but actually clicked on the art page.

Plus if it's easier to revise and update, so much the better.

[SuperStantzio]

Yes I have to agree what Ben said. What you decide, Fritz go right ahead and do it!

[Fritz]

If I haven't been clear about it, the Message Board will stay the same either way. Actually, looking at the board, the main tweak I still might make to the stylesheets is to have the borders around the the sections be the same greyish as the Message Board borders.

Does this page show up all right for everyone?

www.ectozone.com/indexcss3.html

It's the same as the second version, but the scripts are linked from a file in the Ectozone itself instead of some space on Tripod.

[SuperStantzio]

It came out good for me when I went into it. So it's good.