I know this site is a little odd. It's supposed to be. This was an exercise in creativity, just to see how it would turn out. Yes, I'm well aware that the site scrolls horizontally and not vertically, as most blogs do.

I also realize the site is a little slow to load. That's from all the external links that are included here. Some are the huge blogrolls that take quite a while to load (like the Alliance), while others are external links that are just plain slow on some days (like Google). At least the content loads first, so you have something to read while the rest of the page loads.

For those of you used to using your scroll button to scroll down the page, you may still do so here! Just press down and hold the scroll button and drag your mouse left and right and the page will scroll for you. Click in an individual post or box and you can use the scroll button to scroll down in that block. The site was designed for Internet Explorer, version 6.0, mainly because that still is the browser of choice for the masses. I've researched the numbers and types of people that use that browser to view my pages, and despite Firefox being a relatively superior browser, the majority continue to use Internet Explorer.

In some testing environments, IE had some trouble displaying the page. The page is designed with extensive amounts of CSS combined with javascript and php. In some situations IE had trouble converting and displaying all the various boxes. I think it had to do with low amounts of memory, but it was just spotty enough that I couldn't duplicate it with regularity. If you experience boxes on top of boxes, please let me know.

The web page is also designed to be flexible and adjust to your browser and monitor. It should always fit in your web page without requiring you to scroll up and down. Viewing on very small monitor settings (800x600 IS small), you will see a few odd things like extra scroll bars on the blocks between blog posts -- there's only so much I can do for you. It appears best at about 1024x768.

A few of the blogrolls you see may look a little odd. They are designed for vertical display, so when I forced them into a horizontal layout, they didn't actually fit. In some cases I was able to adjust them easily, but the blogrolls that are owned by others do look strange. Some will list the blogs with no spaces between blog names. Other force themselves into a vertical layout, so they end up in scrolling boxes. Again, sorry, I'm trying to force a layout that clearly was not intended.

I'm not sure, in the end, how successful this layout is. I think it's too abnormal for many people to adjust to, but again, I was just doing it to prove it could be done. I think it will stay this way for the month of June, but after that there may be an entirely new layout -- only time will tell.

If you like this layout, or completely hate it, just drop me a line in the comments. If you see anything extremely odd (taking all the above into consideration), please mention it as well. Everything should be visible, no matter what browser you are using. There should be no text hidden behind other text.

Posted by: Ogre at 12:32 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 587 words, total size 3 kb.

1 I am in awe of all the work you must have put into this blog to get it to work to your specifications...I'm just trying to get color right and I feel good about myself. It is kind of interesting to go horizontally, but I must go vertically as well, so, I don't know that the enjoyment of the layout will outlast the fun of the newness. Congrats on the work and experimintation however.

Posted by: Rachel Ann at June 01, 2005 02:18 PM (Jgwqx)

2 Thanks for the kind words! You should not have to scroll up and down -- I'm still tweaking the final settings to make sure no one has to. And yes, I bet when the newness wears off, people will quickly tire of this layout and I'll have to make something new for next month!

Posted by: Ogre at June 02, 2005 10:16 AM (/k+l4)

3 Very nicely done! I hate it, but I appreciate the work and skill that went into it. In Firefox, your "recent posts" box is a bit of a scroller (not much), and your blogroll isn't showing up at all. That might be a problem with blogrolling itself, I dunno. Congrats on doing something interesting and different. Excellent job.

Posted by: Ted at June 03, 2005 09:01 AM (+OVgL)

4 Thanks for the nice comments, I think... Yes, both the boxes on the left there resize depending on your browser height. Sometimes they will have scroll bars and sometimes they won't.

Posted by: Ogre at June 03, 2005 10:49 AM (/k+l4)

5 Where's the RSS feed? Someone got me hooked on using Thunderbird for RSS. I can't remember if it was you, Flannel Avenger, or Shanktified. Anyway, new blog calls for a new link!

Posted by: Echo Zoe at June 03, 2005 07:53 PM (keU2o)

6 Oh, I hate to share this with you now that you have gotten this blog up and running, but there is a key feature to Wordpress 1.5 that is perfect for you. You can have many different layouts stored fro your blog and can switch between them with just a click, no replacing stylesheets and index files. That said, I am sooooooooo happy to see you are moving on and leaving blogger.

Posted by: Echo Zoe at June 03, 2005 07:56 PM (keU2o)

7 RSS Feed? Oh yeah! I know I had something small I was going to place in the blank space over there on the left! I'll get that in today (I read all the blogs I can with a newsreader, too).

Posted by: Ogre at June 04, 2005 08:18 AM (YgrHs)

Hide Comments | Add Comment