Fontification

I was told by a Blogolista today that my type was honkin' big.  I'm trying a different size.

Looking for feedback from you Firefox users.

Thank you.

Comments

[Uncle Kenny]

Type size is fine in Firefox. Your photo links still embed code that resizes the browser window. That is extraordinarily annoying.

[vanderleun]

Much better in Firefox now. Not opening at around 36 points.

As to the photoembeds resizing the browser, I don't know directly, but I will suggest that if the width of your photo embed is even a pixel wider than the set width of your text column it will blow up the frame set.

The solution is either to keep the width of the photo less than the width of the text column or, better, make the text column wider by default.

What's happening here is that your are letting the logo / title picture determine the width of the page rather than setting a good width to the page and reworking the logo picture to fit that.

In general, the logo picture is too large to begin with. Too wide and too deep. It causes one to scroll to even begin the text. You've got to slim it down in all dimensions. Better yet you've got to redo it. (maybe I'll give it a shot and email it along.)

If you ask me, and you haven't but so what, here's what you need to do to make this page more readable and appealing.

1) Get rid of the black background. On wider monitors it just means large black swathes and more and more wider monitors are the default. Just default to white. Magazines and newspapers have black type on a white background for a reason.

2) Reset the layout overall. Typepad has some default templates for this. But make it wider since it will allow, in the main column, for wider and more impactful pix.

The CSS that controls my basic layout is (with the IE controlling code I spoke of)

=====
/***Layout Stuff***/

#wrapper {
width:1122px;
height: auto;
margin:0 auto;
padding:0;
_width: 1152px;/*playroom for IE-win*/
}

#header {
width:1122px;
height:auto;
text-align:left;
padding:0;
margin-top:0;
float:left;
white-space:nowrap;
}

#col1 {
width:673px;
height:auto;
text-align:left;
padding:0;
margin:0;
float:left;
display:inline;
}

#col2 {
width:448px;
height: auto;
text-align:left;
margin:0;
padding:0;
float:left;
display: inline;
_width:440px;/*--compensate for border-width*/
_margin-right: -2px;/*--a little extra playroom*/
}
====

If you read that carefully you'll see what widths work for me.

3) When you redo the layout, move the widgets bar to the left side. We read from left to right and a bar on the right side means the eyes are skipping over it all the time... annoying.

4) Lose most of the widgets -- they are fun but they cause load time lags since they have to reach out to another site. You've three search widgets and you only need one. Googles.

Widgets not highly important should be placed last in the html since they will be loaded last. That means the main part of the page will load first. That's what you want.

Remember, if a widget is just pretty or signals some affiliation it's not necessary.

You might want to, for the nonce, look at some of the standard Typepad themes (2 column right sidebar) and select one of those to customize.

[Irish Cicero]

Well, there goes a night of Saranwrap and Safflower Oil.

Thanks, guys!

[Uncle Kenny]

OK, I see the problem now. You want people to click your pics and then they will pop up into a nicely sized window of their own. Very nice ... except for those of us who don't want little popups, willy-nilly all over our screens. We right-click then "open link in new tab". Boom! Your popup code just resized my whole browser and I got pissed off all over again. Rule #2 of good web design is (or should be) let users view your site the way they want to view it and don't impose your workflow on them. Hope the clarification helps.

[Irish Cicero]

Ohhhhh . . . .

That clears that up. Actually, I like the popups on blogs, which is why I chose that. It's not a "workflow" thing, but . . .

I will now no longer do that, as I see your point.

You okay with the new outlay, Uncle Kenny?