Admin: Better Readability
In response to reader complaints that some font/browser/resolution combinations resulted in the ads overrunning the text I've made changes to the template format to shift the body text further right. I've done some testing on the browser/resolution combinations available to me. If readers experience any problems, please don't hesitate to write.
posted by wretchardthecat at 7/25/2005 05:24:00 AM
21 Comments:
Back to the real world . . .
Seems to have corrected it for me on IE.
Mozilla definitely renders the page a little differently from IE. The reported problems come from users on Firefox with larger than normal fonts, which crowded out the body text. The solution I put in was to shift the body text rightward, a process which involved making the pixel width of the body text space wider. I checked out the results at 800x600 to see how monitors at that resolution fared. Looked OK, but you never know.
BTW,
Had an interesting private email conversation with an unnamed blogger who is field-testing digital cameras. He contends (if I am summarizing him fairly) that only a digital SLR is suitable for coverage, given that it can take pictures in lower light. I had plumped for an el cheapo pocket digital on the grounds that a camera you always had was better than one back in the car.
We fell to speculating on what sort of rig Michael Yon had (man! indoor weapons cache photos) but gave up in the end. Whatever else, the days of the Speed Graphic are over. On a related theme, Glenn Reynolds (I think) argued that cell phone cameras, not CCTVs were the modern day 'hundred eyes'. My cell phone company called me up last week and told me I had an upgrade phone on my plan, which turned out to be a Motorola V3. First camera phone I ever had. It won't be long before everybody and his brother have similar or better. I wonder what impact on news reporting that will have?
I think you will see what we've seen starting with the Tsunami last December (and what you commented on back then). The mainstream media reporters will become collection points, fanning out at a news event asking individuals for their digital memos, and the cable new channels will be the aggregation and distribution centers for the masses.
As for the middle to far future, I think this is incredibly pertinent:
"Researchers have produced a nanoscale device that can sense magnetic fields more than 100 times weaker than current techniques allow. If applied to hard disks this could increase storage by a factor of up to 1,000, turning today's 200-gigabyte disks into 200-terabyte devices.
The new system uses an effect called ballistic magnetoresistance, works well at room temperature and would be easy to integrate with current disk drive manufacturing.
So just how big is a petabyte drive and what could you put on it?
One certainty is that you will not fill the space with personal jottings or reading matter. In round numbers, a book is a megabyte. If you read one book a day for every day of your life for 80 years, your personal library will amount to less than 30 gigabytes. Remember a petabyte is 1 million gigabytes so you will still have 999,970 gigabytes left over."
One use of this, obviously, will be to "record every moment of life, in high-quality video."
News and voyeurism will then completely meld. We will be awash in raw data. I can't wait.
"Shifting the body text further right"
Wouldn't it be easier just to ban all the posters on the left?
left of whom?
Left of their senses.
ahhh so
looks good on safari/mac!
pork rinds for allah said...
looks good on safari/mac!
Are you using the default font sizes on that iBook?
( also, I've got more cylinders for you. )
standard install nothing special...
let the heat break, then let's move concrete!
wretchard
some font/browser/resolution combinations resulted in the ads overrunning the text
I've seen this problem running IE at 1024x768 resolution (on other blogs not Belmont). The resolution (pun intended) of the problem was to close the Favorites pane at the left of the window.
While 800x600 is a standard target resolution for Web development, I wonder how many people out there in blogland are running at the old VGA standard of 640x480.
ok off topic, but this tread seems underposted
from memri...
Former Kuwaiti Education Minister: All of Al-Qaida's Terrorism Started from the Ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood
Dr. Ahmad Al-Rab'i, former Kuwaiti minister of education and columnist for the Arabic London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat published an article titled "A Bit of Shame" on July 25, 2005.
The following are excerpts from the article: [1]
"If we were to go according to the logic of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood movement then we shouldn't condemn the Sharm Al-Sheikh crime, nor [should we condemn] other terrorist crimes!
"The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has its own justifications for violence. In a statement by the movement, in which it 'condemned' the Sharm Al-Sheikh crime, it laid out its justification for the crime. The statement said: 'the colonialist policies that the world's strong countries pursue, as well as the aggression against the peoples – they are what engender the culture of violence.'
"The Muslim Brotherhood's problem is that it has no shame. The beginnings of all of the religious terrorism that we are witnessing today were in the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology of takfir [accusing other Muslims of apostasy]. Sayyid Qutb's [2] book Milestones was the inspiration and the guide for all of the takfir movements that came afterwards.
"The founders of the violent groups were raised on the Muslim Brotherhood, and those who worked with Bin Laden and Al-Qa'ida went out under the mantle of the Muslim Brotherhood.
"If the imperialist countries' policy is what engendered violence, as the Brotherhood's statement says, then what is keeping a few citizens in Vietnam – which American planes utterly destroyed with millions of tons of bombs – from blowing up buildings in San Francisco? What is keeping a few citizens in Japan – which America attacked with an atom bomb – from blowing up Boston?
"Also, what do foreign tourists and innocent Egyptian citizens have to do with the policies of 'the imperialist countries'? Should peaceful and defenseless citizens be killed in Sharm Al-Sheikh, Baghdad, Riyadh, and San'a in order to take revenge on imperialist countries?
"In addition, who is it that is starting a dialogue [with America]…if not the Muslim Brotherhood, which is trying to convince the 'imperialist countries', and America first and foremost, that it is the one that represents moderate Islam and that those countries need to conduct a dialogue with it?
"The Muslim Brotherhood's statement is an example of total shamelessness. It is a continuation of the Brotherhood's self-contradictory and deceitful language which it has long been employing in the name of Islam."
[1] Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), July 25, 2005.
[2] Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) was a Muslim Brotherhood ideologue who was executed on charges of conspiracy to assassinate Egyptian President Gamal 'Abd Al-Nasser. He published his book Milestones [ Ma'alim fi Al-Tariq ] in 1964 when he was between prison terms.
http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD94105
Okay, totally, totally off topic:
Hey Exhelo and Desert - I saw "Fighter Pilot" at the Imax over the weekend. It's the best movie I ever saw (not including "Terminator" of course).
Anyone who loves jets will absolutely go crazy about this movie. I read a review of it a few weeks ago written by a fighter pilot in AWST and ever since then I have been determined to see it.
It only has one problem - It needs to be about ten times as long as it is.
tony
I went up in a sail plane one time, thought I was doing great when the pilot wanted to know if I'd like to do a loop, always game I said,'yeah, go for it'.
I should not have eaten that Beef Burro before heading out to the field.
Glad you enjoyed the movie, I'll check and see if it comes to town, saw Star Wars on IMAX in Vegas, that was quite the show.
Never had any problems with the old format, and I resent anything which wastes screen space that could be useful to me.
Tony,
The reviews I've read have been good, too. They just had the grand opening at NAS North Island last week, at the base theater. We used to have to go for our periodic safety training; sexual harassment training-as in what not to do, I mean; don't drink and drive lectures, etc. They never had the red carpet out like that for us, though!
Desert,
I did "Fighter Pilot for a Day" a couple of years ago, lifelong Walter Mitty that I am. We flew the Marchetti SF-260, fully aerobatic fighter trainer.
I guess the Marine Harrier pilot who was my co-pilot wanted to cut my flight short, because after the orientation, as soon as we went into the dogfight with my nephew, we instantaneously pulled 4.6 G's in a climbing, rolling reversal.
Yeh, I got sick. But so what, for that kinda money, I was gonna fly for the whole hour!
The planes have lasers on the wings, and when you hit the other guy (or in my case, when the other guy hits you) oily smoke comes pouring out of your plane. Fills your cockpit, too.
It was incredible. You literally don't know when you are upside down or sideways or whatever.
To turn, you gently nudge the stick, and all of a sudden you are looking vertically down the wing at the earth below and pulling G's. And moving rapidly in any direction you choose. And that's without even touching the pedals.
I finally shot down my nephew, when he finally got sick too. On the flight home, I realized I could actually fly a plane in formation, at least straight and level.
If I ever figure out how not to get sick, I would do it again and again.
http://www.aircombat.com/
Oh, it was like a dream. Or as one of the best poems ever written puts it:
High Flight
"Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God."
Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee
No 412 squadron, RCAF
Richard Bach wrote a book about flying cross country in a biplane, it was a great story. Jr. is learning to fly, his stomach seems to be sturdier than mine.
Desert,
I think you can get used to it.
That was the thing about Red Flag, the subject of "Fighter Pilot." They said most fighter pilots who live through their first ten missions, live through their whole careers. That's why they do Red Flag, to get them their first ten missions.
Seems they do the same throughout our military now, that's why they're the best in the world.
We're all proud of your Jr., btw. Thank you for him.
I will do that
Wretchard,
If you have some sort of spider to pick up on the ends of old threads ... here's my humble advice.
We should be able to post on the Web ... at least ... poems in their original iambic pentameter.
I posted "High Flight" a couple of posts up, which is a gorgeous stack of words in its original format, but in this overly-considerate-of-the-left format, iambic pentameter turns into a turgid sludge of broken lines.
That's a fatal design flaw. Must be fixed!
We can vaguely see the music in there in this 'Free Verse' layout of "High Flight", but it ends up looking like a post-modern effort by someone who can't write.
So, PUSH the margin back to left, at least until "High Flight" fits in its original pentameter.
Is that too much to ask?
(Tell the Ad Sellers that you don't want to work on Maggie's Farm No More.)
Peace
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