Well it’s been in development for quite a while, but the new look is finally active on the site. The one thing that remains sort of unsettled is the link colour. The grey I’ve got on it now (#666666 if you’re interested) seems to be working, but I may do some more experiments there.

I’ll also be doing some browser compatibility testing later. I got most of that out of the way while the site was still in testing, but there can always be another couple of niggling little bugs somewhere. If you spot one of them feel free to comment here. And if you just want to comment on some part of the new look, also feel free to comment here.

I’ve added a new set of photos I took over the weekend. I decided to take my camera along for a visit to my mother in Apeldoorn and ran across a waterfowl’s building work, and a steamtrain. I’ll probably do some enhancement work on the photos after a while, but I figured it was just as well to get them up immediately.

In other site news, I’m contemplating a full redesign, so don’t be too surprised if you find the place looks quite different in the near future.

If you come here more often you may notice the background image for the site has changed. It’ll probably continue to change slightly over the next few days, though I’ve now settled on the new basic image. The problem with this, as with any site background image, is balancing clarity with filesize.

The current version of the image, its 10th version at least, is an acceptable compromise for now, but will change when I think of the next tweak to improve it.

Another small change to the site: I’ve now got the top and bottom black bars in a fixed position setting, so that the content scrolls between them. I’ve also redone the top bar so that people can see where they are on the site.

I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, but could never find a reliable enough way to make sure the content scrolling beneath had exactly the right margins top and bottom. Then finally I hit on a hack: have exactly the same content appear on the bottom layer as well.

The only remaining problem is that the system doesn’t work in IE6, which won’t read the “position: fixed” element in CSS. So what I’ve done there is just eliminate one of the duplicates. Meanwhile this has reaffirmed my determination to put an IE6 only message telling people to get a better browser on the main page.

I’ve added another set of photos. These were taken only yesterday, making this my quickest turn around for a set of photos making it to the website so far. And since I wanted to add a short description with this photoset I decided to go through and add descriptions to all my photosets. I figured it was as well to do it now while there are only three of them.

I’ve you’ve been a very frequent visitor to my site the last few days you’ll have noticed lots of colour changes. After trying out what seems like half the colours known in HTML and CSS, trying to find the right solution for the main column, I’ve finally gone for another solution: a background image.

What you’re looking at is the heart of a flower I took a picture of in Berlin. If you have an indecently large screen you may actually be looking at a substantial part of the flower. It’s been covered with a semi-transparent layer of white to improve readability.

At 46 kilobytes it makes the site a little dial-up friendly, but I think it should still be managable for the broadband challenged. As soon as I can find someone still living in such primitive conditions who’s willing, I’ll have them try it.

Addendum: I may be playing around with it a little in future, but the majority of it is now right (in the fourth version). Still don’t be too surprised if it changes a little in the near future.

I put up two sets of photos recently. A recent set from Berlin, and an older set from Rome in 2005. The set from Rome is here partly just to flesh out site content and justify adding a “Photos” category to the menu. So don’t be very surprised if it vanishes altogether at some point in the future.

I’m adding this to the new site news category  retroactively. I had just put this news up on the main site, but now that Site News is there I’m working on a new text for the main page itself. And this of course really belongs in the Site News category.

I’m continuing the work on the site. The latest updates is the Site News blog category, which should also be appearing (with the last two items) on the front page.

Hopefully this very visible “what’s happened lately” system I’ll actually keep adding stuff to the site regularly, rather than in occasional bursts.