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« Upgraded to Roller... | Main | CSS Design Contest:... »
Sunday April 30, 2006

Rebooted

As you can hopefully see, I've rebooted the HTML version of this site. I apologize to anyone using IE - I haven't even looked at the site using IE. Everytime I startup Parallels on my MacBook Pro, it locks up the system and I have to reboot. Installing this new theme was pretty painful, mostly because I had to do it with a 20K connection through my cell phone. I'm staying at The New Yorker Hotel in NYC, and even though they advertise "free wireless", it doesn't work for me.

I hope you like the new theme - clicking on the different categories will give you different variations of it. Clicking the "Roller" category will allow you to see version I'll be contributing back to the Roller project. If you see any issues at all, please let me know. Most of them should be fixable with a bit of CSS. The only thing I still need to do is figure out how to get Roller to use the last entry's title in the <title> tag. Google loves good titles.

Update: OK, so most people don't like the reboot - including folks on the CSS Reboot site. Personally, I like the new layout, but agree that the default colors need work. I do like some of the alternative colors, like The Web category's. I'm open to suggestions - what would you like this site to look like?

Silktide SiteScore for this website Update 2: The colors might suck, but my Sitescore results have gone up significantly. The funny thing is the main thing I'm lacking is different titles on each page.

Update 3: I solved the title problem. You can do this in your Roller templates too if you like.

#set( $xmap = $pageModel.getRecentWeblogEntries(1,'nil') )
#foreach( $day in $xmap.keySet() )
   #set( $recentEntries = $xmap.get($day) )
   #foreach ($var in $recentEntries)
       #set ($title = $var.title)
   #end
#end
    <title>#showWebsiteTitle() | #if ($page.Name == "Weblog") $title #else $page.Name #end</title>

Posted in The Web at Apr 30 2006, 11:15:14 PM MDT 17 Comments
Comments:

Using IE 6 - except for "General" and "The Web" categories - the categories menu bar is not visible at the top of the page (have to scroll to the bottom to change category). Also for those two themes that do show the categories menu bar at the top of the page - they are strangely shifted to the right, with half not visible on the page. Firefox OTOH all looked fine.

Posted by Niall on May 01, 2006 at 12:00 PM MDT #

Thanks Niall. So it looks bad in IE - or just weird? This morning, I've discovered there's lots of validation errors, so I definitely still have a lot of work to do.

Posted by Matt Raible on May 01, 2006 at 12:06 PM MDT #

It looks like the website for a bible study group or something...

Posted by Vu on May 01, 2006 at 04:45 PM MDT #

Sorry Matt, although the new theme looks nice, the previous one looked way better IMHO. The fonts were clearer, the roll-over effect on links was nicer and it was easily distinguishable from other blogs. Now with this one it feels like I'm on any of the thousands of JRoller blogs (or, as someone remarked, a church-inspired web site). Why did you want the change?

Posted by GB on May 01, 2006 at 07:40 PM MDT #

Sorry for being off-topic Matt, but I was wondering . . .

As someone who has owned both a 17" PowerBook and a 15" MacBook Pro, which MacBook would you recommend for somebody who needs about the same amount of portability that you need?

I was thinking about getting the 15", until the 17" MacBook came out for the same price you paid for the fastest 15". Now I'm not sure which I want. Any insights? Does the 15" seem significantly lighter and more portable?

Thanks in advance.

Posted by kelzer on May 01, 2006 at 07:41 PM MDT #

P.S. I do like the new theme, though it doesn't display quite right under IE yet (but under Firefox, which is what I use 95% of the time, it looks great.)

Posted by kelzer on May 01, 2006 at 07:45 PM MDT #

I too prefer the old site and not because of its looks alone. The new page feels pretty sluggish. To confirm that I was not delusioning, I kicked up fiddler and loaded this URL. 32 requests, 220K just to access this page (the permalink of this entry) Those fancy prototype, scripaculous scripts and images do add extra ba gage (more so when they aren't gziped).

Posted by Sanjiv Jivan on May 01, 2006 at 11:12 PM MDT #

Vu - A bible study group, eh? LOL - that's pretty funny.

GB - the main reason I wanted the change was the old style was 2 years old. I like the layout of the new style, but agree that I need to find different colors. Do you like any of the category's colors better - or are you disgusted with the whole layout in general?

kelzer - while I love my 15" and didn't feel any buyer's remorse when the 17" came out, I'd recommend a 17". The big screen really is nice. The smaller 15" is nice b/c it's lighter and easier to ride my bike with, but the screen real-estate on the 17" is awesome. If you're traveling on a plane a lot - and hoping to work - the 15" is probably a better buy though.

Sanjiv - damn, tough crowd. ;-) Maybe if I use the old theme's header, enlarge the fonts and put some orange everywhere, you'll like the new layout better? I agree that I should do more to compress the JavaScript files. Roller has a compressionFilter built in - I'll try using it on the .js files as well. To compare the size of this site to the old one, I opened them both with Safari and saved each as a "web archive". Old site == 564 KB, new site == 500 KB. The old site had the same amount, if not more, included JavaScript files.

Posted by Matt Raible on May 02, 2006 at 12:18 PM MDT #

Man - I LOVE the bible study comment hahahaha - if they only knew the anti-christ designed it, it would have perspective huh? GOOD stuff! -maxi

Posted by Maxi on May 02, 2006 at 01:44 PM MDT #

So it looks bad in IE - or just weird?

On the whole it looks good - just the top "categories" menu bar is weird (or missing), starting 3/4 of the way across the screen and having to scroll right to see it all.

Posted by Niall on May 02, 2006 at 01:44 PM MDT #

Here's a <img src="http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/4069/rdwithie4qp.th.png" alt="Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us">link to what the site looks like in IE.

Posted by Ryan on May 02, 2006 at 07:35 PM MDT #

Ryan and Niall - thanks. I've managed to get Parallels working - so I can see (and hopefully fix) the issues with IE.

Sanjiv - I've modified my web.xml so Roller's CompressionFilter gzips *.js and *.css. The site seems snappier, does it for you?

As far as the colors, I'm working on a less "heavenly" theme. ;-)

Posted by Matt Raible on May 03, 2006 at 02:18 AM MDT #

css and js still arent gzipped (try checking with fiddler). The other issue is with the "modular css" style. Each css declaration is a separate server request. This issue was brought up by uses on the modular css article. Breaking down CSS files is good during development but should probably be bundled together for deployment. Again maybe I'm beeing extra paranoid but fiddler doesn't lie.

Posted by Sanjiv Jivan on May 03, 2006 at 04:40 AM MDT #

Hi Matt, Let me be more precise. The top image feels wrong. There's a "divine apparition" feel to it, with the faded clouds and the seemingly irradiating (is that English?) logo. The previous image was simple and peaceful. The blue colors also give the site a colder, more corporate feel. The previous colors felt, well, warmer and the site felt more inviting. Now I feel like I'm on some Microsoft support site. The layout itself is nice. Glad you're not taking all the criticism the wrong way, they're only opinions after all. And, obviously, I wouldn't be able to setup a professional-looking site like this one myself anyway :) Cheers!

Posted by GB on May 03, 2006 at 07:22 AM MDT #

Sanjiv - are you sure Fiddler is accurate? It is a windows-only application after all. ;-) According to Leknor.com, both theme.css and prototype.js are compressed.

Posted by Matt Raible on May 03, 2006 at 12:38 PM MDT #

I know this was an old post but would you have an updated version of how to format entry titles with Roller 3.2? I've recently upgraded and the script described no longer works for me. Thanks.

Posted by kslobodian on April 03, 2007 at 06:54 AM MDT #

Here's what I'm currently using with Roller 3.1: 

#if ($model.permalink)
    <title>$model.weblog.name | $model.weblogEntry.title</title>
#else
    <title>$model.weblog.name | #if ($model.weblogCategory) $model.weblogCategory.name #else Matt Raible's ... #end</title>
#end

Posted by Matt Raible on April 05, 2007 at 12:05 AM MDT #

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