customizing your site

I've done a few small changes to my Blog. Some of them are really easy, like the links on the side page, the picture of my dog, Bruno, and the small profile. My banner was made in by taking a screen shot of the home page, getting the dimensions of the banner that was there, creating the banner, and putting the banner into the header customization option. You do have to go into the code and delete or comment out the header that was there previously in the .CSS sheet to make it show up correctly.

Most of the CSS sheets are fully customizable, and if you know a little about CSS you can get a pretty custom version of your site by doing small edits; the hard part is done for you.

If you want to make some changes without being scared of not being able to mess things up permanently, copy and paste whatever CSS section you are editing and comment it out. That way you can mess with the one that is there already, and if you make some changes that you decide you don't want, you can easily switch it back by deleting the edited sheet and uncommenting the section that you changed. I'm also pretty sure that there is a "default" option on the sheet somewhere.

If you want some tutorials on CSS, check out the World Web Consortium's site on CSS tips and tricks. Also, a simple Google search will warrant a million (exactly 1,460,000) links to different free CSS tutorials.

real simple syndication...

Real Simple Syndication (RSS) is essentially a way for people to subscribe to frequently syndicated sites easily, without having to visit each site to check for updates. An aggregator, which works like a search engine, will scan sites and pull new media from that site in a .XML format, laying it out as some people refer to as a "personal newspaper".

Jonathan Glazer...

Mabye not the most appropriate place to post this, but it is a blog... A quick video from Unkle with lyrics from Thom Yorke, produced by Jonathan Glazer.

Another small, but cool resource...

I could not think of the program that the site 80spurple.com used the other day, and I was looking around and finally found it.

Simpleviewer is a java/flash program that has optimization characteristics, and is incredibly easy to use. Check it out.

Resource? Totally.

Ok, one more before bed:

Since most people in this class probably use PS for a lot of the graphics, I thought that Photoshop User Tv is a pretty cool resource for learning new tricks, as well as advancing as a PS user.

I've also found that Scriptaculous is an awesome program to get some pretty cool effects without having to write your own Flash or Actionscript files to do it. Check it out.

The most coolest site, EVAR!

Maybe it's that fact that it's 1:30 Am, or that I'm indecisive, but I think that the ecomm site of 80s Purple is pretty damn cool. It's actually a pretty basic site that uses a Drupal CMS for the backend. But, it's actually the front page that I think is a good idea. They change it quite often, and it always has a fresh look that matches well to the demographic of customers. The front page uses a simple Javascript/Flash program to scroll through the thumbnails of product, and a simple background image.

So yeah, I'm going to bed now.

goodnight.