pardon my dust

By Todd Stadler · Thursday, February 28, 2002 3:20pm

Phew! I'm now done with the Cock-a-hoop redesign.

Fine, I still need to fix the webcam page, but that only affects a small number of you, so I'm going ahead with putting this beast out there. Sorry, webcam viewers!

After all, I couldn't risk disappointing all the other Cock-a-hoop readers who were awaiting the new design, or were perhaps thinking that I had finally succumbed to the terrorists (or, worse yet, the recession).

That's right, I'm talking about you. You, dear Cock-a-hoop reader, are the reason I've been staying up into the wee college hours. You are the reason I listened to the entire They Might Be Giants catalog (well, most of it), in reverse order from Mink Car to They Might Be Giants. And a whole lot of other music I can't remember because sleep loss wreaks heck on short-term memory.

But don't worry. Because the above paragraph is a lie. I'm just grumpy from the lost sleep. I'll take a nap tomorrow.

You see, nobody really knows why I decided to up and redesign Cock-a-hoop. It certainly wasn't an overpowering clamoring from the masses. Nor do I imagine it had much to do with a desire to make Cock-a-hoop appeal to a broader audience.

Indeed, of those select few who were part of my test audience - namely, because they have browsers I don't have installed, or because they're my girlfriend - there seems to be no consensus as to whether the new color is better than the previous electric blue.

There isn't even a consensus as to what to call the color, although "peach" seems somewhat popular.

I will say, however, that the color choice was not influenced by any other weblog that happens to have been redesigned in recent days. Although the coincidence disturbs me.

Look, my point is that the fourth paragraph up is also a lie. I redesigned Cock-a-hoop because I wanted to make it more standards-compliant, and to do that by designing it with XHTML and cascading style sheets (CSS). But nobody wants to hear that. It's so very not rock 'n' roll.

And once I had gotten around to completely replacing the old tables-based code, I decided I might as well try for a new look. I attempted to make a design that is easier to read and use, as well as one I find more attractive.

But once I got started on all that, I couldn't stop changing things. I noticed that a lot of the journal entry files from months past were kind of poorly written, from an HTML perspective. So I set about changing them to be more standards-compliant, too.

It's quite possible that the only thing I didn't change in all this coding frenzy was my pants, because I'm a grimy unemployed computer person.

All that, and what do you, the end user, notice? "Um, it's less blue." Great.

Of course, you may also notice some things you don't like, layout problems, or even bugs. If so, please feel free to tell me about them. Really, let me know what you think, even if it's good.

And I'll really try not to write so much about this site from now on. Oh, except in the next two entries. Sorry about that.