It's just a test page for right now, but you get a taste of artwork. See if you can figure out which stories the art represents.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
I hate to say it, but I'm not sure I like the look. It feels a bit, well, 16-bit to me for some reason, and the font for the primary logo doesn't have the same "spirit" as the cartoony (in a "South Park" way) images.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
It reminded me of something out of an LDS Church publication from the early 90s (since that's my most up-to-date experience of them),say a Friend or New Era issue or something. I think the art is nicely done, but I was thinking this was something for children or young-adults, mostly.
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
That's it! I knew it was familiar, but I couldn't figure out why. But yes, the 80s New Era or Friend sounds about right, although it's possibly the 70s. I don't know - it's all a big blur.
Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
The site is a prime example of an excellent candidate for CSS making layout easier (I assume the current code will be pretty much scrapped anyways, as its in a form very hard to maintain or update, particularly with all the use of deprecated practices).
Set the background color, create a div to hold the page area, give it a background color of white and set the background image to be the wraparound border. Create a div for the menu with a list inside, a div for the tower column on the left, and a div for the content (setting the border-left on this to create the divider). Move those into position easily (relative positioning to the containing div'll be fine) and you're done.
I estimate the amount of HTML+CSS would be less than half what's currently there, and far clearer.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Oh, and in IE it may appear strangely truncated. I haven't yet put in the min-height hack for IE, instead using standard CSS. If you see other problems, though, let me know.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Perhaps you didn't get it because you remembered that in pastwatch the spheres didn't actually have lids, they were half-sphere bowls and the occupants had to be careful to keep inside of where the top half would be. So you assumed there must be another story that you couldn't think of or hadn't read.
Whereas I looked at it and assumed the artist got it wrong. Which is the conclusion I usually jump to with cover art.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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The deer (I'm assuming) is actually a hart, as in Hart's Hope.
I can't place the ladle or the bear, though I'm sure I should be embarrassed that I can't place the bear.
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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fugu, on my computer, your version loads more slowly and only shows the top part (as a banner). The left part doesn't slow up at all, and the background is sort of an olive-gray, instead of white.
Posts: 289 | Registered: Apr 2005
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fugu's is faster and "pops" into place in a nicer fashion than the original on my version of firefox.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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*nod* It's almost as if Russell deliberately designed the page to be broken for 90% of users. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Icarus: that's because I haven't put the min-height hack in place for IE, yet. The color thing is because you're seeing mostly the overall background of the page (which is exactly the same between the two, I used the same hex code).
I only had about half an hour to put the thing together, while doing other things, so didn't bother with the min-height hack. I'll do it after I get home.
Any differences in load speed are due to servers/connections. My page should load faster on any browser I know of, though load order may change perception of this.
The min-height hack is because IE does not implement a very simple CSS style called min-height, which understandably gives an element a certain minimum height. In order to get this to work in IE, one must actually put in code to check if the rendered height will be less than the desired minimum height, and if so sets the height to be that height, which is a very stupid necessity.
However, its relatively trivial to implement, so I always do. I just didn't bother because I assumed when I said it was temporarily broken in IE people would believe me, and check in one of the alternative browsers they have around for when IE gets borked .
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
I don't mind the images around the edges- it is retro but it works- but I agree that the logo is off kilter. The others are sort of eighties or seventies serious sci-fi, the leaping, grinning, spaceman is very fifties twelve year old boy.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
The whole design kind of screams "young adult" to me. And I'm not sure why we've gone from "Uncle Orson" to "Orson Scott Card" in the logo...?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Yeah, the only part I don't like is the logo itself.
-o-
fugu, I wasn't picking a fight. Nor was I criticizing you. You seemed to want feedback on how it was looking to people. I didn't realize you specifically didn't want feedback from us lowly IE users, though now I'm not surprised. It seemed like you had said that some things weren't working, but you weren't sure exactly what all would look different in different browsers. I was trying to answer your apparent question. (Remember that you specifically have asked me over AIM what a page looks like in IE in the past.) I can't help it if people teased you, but they only teased you because of your very teasable zealousness.
I didn't disbelieve you, I was trying to provide information. And my work computer doesn't have any other browsers, so I could hardly use a different browser to look at it.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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O.K. I know this is kind of late in the game to be saying this, but why are you basing the whole entrance page around OSC in particular when the magazine is based around sf in general?
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
Darn it, is the "joking but anal retentive about programming stuff" setting not working again? *pokes microphone*
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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