Techie Catch-All

by Stacie

Hey everyone, and welcome to our new digs. Long time readers will know my work as "shamanic" at the last place, but I'm getting older and grumpier by the day and just didn't see any reason for the anonymity anymore. Besides, my legal name is Duncan Black.

I'm technically on sabbatical from the writing side here, as I've got major life things going on, a serious poetry addiction, and full scale burnout on the Democratic party's war (oh, and Iraq still sucks, how bout that?), but I am the person responsible for the layout and coding of the site. So, dear readers, I ask you:

• Any problems?
• Any weird layout stuff?
• Any usability issues you're encountering?
• Anything at all layout or usability related you'd like to comment about?

In particular, I wonder if the banner is now showing properly in Safari. A reader commented that it wasn't. I replaced the .png with a .gif, and hopefully that resolves. Are you on a Mac? Shout out if there's no banner there.

Or whatever. I'm fixing and changing and adjusting as issues are brought up, so feel free to leave comments on this post or any other. The rest of the crew e-mails everything to me in case I miss a comment thread, so don't be shy, and thank you for making this transition so successful for us here at the Hog.

Comments

[Susan Kitchens]

Mac/Safari here. (Version 3.0.4 (523.12)) Header Banner shows at top: Newshoggers name in center, w/ either end flying pig illo that's white reversed out of blue.

[Stacie Boschma]

Excellent, thank you Susan. Not sure if it was single user affecting or all Safari, but at least we have one Mac display working. :)

[BJ]

Maybe it's just me, then. Mac Safari v3.1. Pigs show up on Firefox at home and IE at the office, but MIA on Safari. I've had other issues with browsing, so it may in fact be at my end.

No worries in my case, I don't come here for the pictures anyway. Wouldn't have even noticed if Cernig hadn't posted about it.

[Stacie Boschma]

That's so odd. I'm gonna go check with Mr. Google and see what he says about Safari and images. I would have bet money on the .gif conversion fixing it. (Good thing I didn't.)

[E L]

Duncan Black:
I am using Safari on an iMac running OS 10.4.11. My only negative comment is that the shadow used on Crew, Blog Ad, etc. causes the lettering to look fuzzy and out of focus. There are also what appear to be some minor letterspacing problem such as between the "a" and "t" in "ca tegories".
Lew Scott

[carol]

I'm on a Mac, running safari, and agree with Lew Scott. i see the banner, but some of the stuff is fuzzy- I didn't know if this was desired font effect though.

[nait deth]

I had made a comment right off the bat about the readability of the links and you guys took care of that. Thank you very much, that is a big help to us colorblind folks. Love the new site!

[nait deth]

I had made a comment right off the bat about the readability of the links and you guys took care of that. Thank you very much, that is a big help to us colorblind folks. Love the new site!

[Klaus]

And thanks for the margins too. And the blog.

[Stacie Boschma]

Hm... I'm a font freak, and I really love the font I chose for the section headers, fuzz and all. (The font is called Ketchup Spaghetti, if memory serves.) But, since several people seem to think it's a little too fuzzy, I'll take a look at other font options in the next few days.

Thanks for the input everyone, and keep any usability/readability comments coming.

[Klaus]

I suppose that, if I have a gripe, it's that the site looks so utterly functional, a little boring in fact. Maybe I miss the blue headlines...I don't know. A dash or two of colour.