Following Suit

Well, I finally decided to implement friendly and logical URLs for the individually archived entries. As more and more people have switched to using friendly URLs, including Douglas Bowman, Contact Sheet, and the guys over at Ensight, the pressure has built. So, I caved, and now you can enjoy the very personable URLs. Cheers!

The Colophon Has Arrived

If you’re slightly more perceptive than the average person, then you may have noticed the brand new section at AdamPolselli.com: the Colophon.

It’s nothing too exciting, but I figured I’d point it out because you might learn something about me or the site that you never knew before. You also might notice that the format is very a la Dominey’s “About” page. Yes, I admit it; I was inspired. I think it’s more interesting than a bunch of paragraphs, and it’s easier to find the information that might interest you.

Next on my list of things to add is a history page, where I’ll display thumbnails of all the previous versions of AdamPolselli.com and its accompanying websites. Stay tuned!

Some Changes

I have made a few changes to the layout of the site. Nothing too exciting, but the changes include:

• The width of the container box has been increased 50px, from 650 to 700.
• The increase in the width of the container box was made in order to be able increase the width of the sidebar. It was increased 40px, from 160 to 200. I have been wanting to do this so that the recent entry titles do not wrap, and to give the sidebar more flexibility; now it can hold paragraphs of text, without looking too cramped, if ever necessary.
• The border on the footer box was changed. The 1px, dashed, white border looked a little sketchy.
• In the “Personalize” section of the sidebar, I got rid of the wisp background. It was kind of ugly, and clashed with the design. I also put all of the background thumbnails on one line, because now there’s room to do so – yea!
• I added three more buttons to the “Buttons” section in the sidebar: an RDF feed, an RSS valid button that links to the validator, and a “CSS Tableless” button, just because. I also split the buttons into two columns because, you guessed it, now there’s room to do so – yea again!

Well, that’s about it. Here’s to hoping you enjoy the subtle, but worthy, changes.

More Get the Look News

As previously reported, the Get the Look design guides are under renovation. Actually, the guides themselves are complete. I’m in the final process of editing the articles that go along with the guides, and writing a new article to go with the new look, “Chic Simplicity.”

“Chic Simplicity” began as a remake of “Crisp & Clean,” but eventually turned into its own look. It still follows the concept behind the “Crisp & Clean” guide, but the colors, color schemes, and techniques have been completely recreated. Therefore, the “Crisp & Clean” design guide and article are being retired. Sad, I know, but it was the very first guide and article, and it was created when I was still a design novice. The colors needed improvement, and the techniques were far from great. That said, I am sure that you will enjoy and find useful the new look, “Chic Simplicity,” once it’s published.

Give me another few days to edit the articles and finish everything up, and then I’ll publish them to the site and make an announcement. Until then, you can enjoy a preview of the new guides, seen above.

Good News. Bad News.

What do you want first? The good or the bad? Let’s go with the bad.

The bad. So, it’s the weekend and I’m just hanging around the house. It starts to rain, and then I hear thunder, so the little meteorologist in my head tells me that a storm is coming. I head to my room to shutdown my computer and switch off the power cord, but, stupid me, I switch the power cord before the computer finishes shutting down. I didn’t think anything of it because I have done it before, so I just went on my way.

About an hour later, I no longer hear rain, and the sound of thunder is slowly fading into the distance, so that little, genius meteorologist tells me that the storm has passed. I head back to my room and turn on my computer, fire up Internet Explorer, and it freezes. No biggie! Not yet, at least.

To make a very long, arduous, and frustrating story short, IE6 no longer works on my computer. It simply freezes, if not as soon as I open the browser, then a few Web pages later. I have been troubleshooting over the last few days, with help from the great minds over at the SitePoint Forums, but a solution is yet to be found. I’m sure you’re asking yourself, “uh, why not use another browser?” Well, the answer is that I am (Mozilla), but I’m very tense and won’t feel relaxed until I know that everything is back normal.

The good. The Get the Look design guides are in the process of being made over. Exciting, huh?! Here is a list of some of the changes, all of which are intended to either (1) make the guides easier and nicer to use, or (2) improve the guides from a content and helpfulness standpoint.

• New headers and borders, which improve the overall look and usability of the guides
• 50px wider, giving more breathing room for the content, thus making the guides easier to use
• Cleaner layout of the content, overall
• A new color section that will include suggested colors from the 216 web safe color palette
• Updated techniques and a couple new “Putting it all togethers”

The new guides should be posted to the site within the next couple weeks, so keep an eye out!

Say “hello” to Portfolio!

Well, the portfolio is finally up and working. It only took a couple of hours, and was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I would definitely say that it looks better than the old portfolio design. Anyways, take a gander!

Catching Up

AdamPolselli.com has finally made its way to a new, more stable server, so I will be able make updates on a daily basis now. For example, the Get the Look section of the site has finally been completed, and I will work on the Portfolio and Photography sections over the next week. For now, here are some more noteworthies:

If you’ve ever wondered just how many blogs there are out there, or just how many blog entries are created every hour, wonder no more. The World as a Blog is a very cool little device that shows blogs being posted in nearly real-time, with only a 3-mintue delay when it’s at its worst. At times it can seem a bit sketchy, so I’m not exactly convinced that it’s a credible blog-tracking machine, but if it is, it’s pretty damn cool!

The person behind zlog recently posted a link to an article that explains how to choose a good password. It’s a great, detailed article that will make you think twice before choosing your next password. It might even make you wonder if you should change some of your current ones. Overall, a good read!

The CSS Zen Garden has three new designs: Friendly Beaches, Calm & Smooth, and viridity. Some of the graphics are not the most pleasing, but the designs still implement some great CSS. Friendly Beaches takes the supporting text and creates a one- and two-column layout, which is quite different than what others have done. Calm & Smooth turns each supporting text section into a two-column block of text, making the layout quite interesting!

It’s official: IE5/Mac is dead. Read all about it in Mr. Zeldman’s report.

We’re open, but not for business…

After 24 hours of insanity, I finally got this site up. Yes, I know, it’s still not completely functional or finished, but I’m trying!

It all started Sunday afternoon. (Honestly, only 24 hours!) I knew that I wanted to completely redesign the front- and back-end of AdamPolselli.com, but I didn’t have much knowledge to go on. I feverishly jumped from site to site learning the basics of CSS positioning, and when I thought I had it, opened up Fireworks and created this design.

Next came the coding. I felt like a toddler trying to build a house – I had no idea where to start! So, I headed over to the CSS Zen Garden, opened up Dan Cederholm‘s “A Garden Apart”, and walked through every tag and every style rule until I had figured out how it all worked.

Ten mintues later, I had the basic layout – I never knew it could be so easy! So, I went to bed, woke up, and spent today refining the design and installing Movable Type (oi!) The installation went fairly well, but working with the templates is killing me for some reason. I thought it would be easier.

I have yet to create the rest of the templates (so far I’ve only done index.html), template the entire site with PHP, and move all of the Portfolio, Photography, and Get the Look content to this site. Sounds like fun! (Not!)

So, wish me luck, and check back to see how close (or far) I am from completing the site.