As many of you may know, I'm going to redesign the Lair next year. I've already started working on some of the work; specifically, I've begun working on the redesigned (visually and technically) sidebar.
It will look very different from how it does currently, with a slick and clean look that will work well with everything else. From a technical standpoint, I'm finally going to have the effect that I tried to have on the site earlier, but ran into issues; those issues are alleviated when doing it in CSS, thankfully.
But the big surprise is that the sidebar, as it stands right now, is roughly half the size that the current sidebar.txt. The current sidebar is 6,461 bytes, while the new one is 3,386 bytes. Ultimately, this 4k difference won't have a super-huge impact on the user, but it does cut down the amount of data being transferred on a daily basis just a bit; in the grand scheme of things, it eases a fair amount of stress from the server (4k here and 4k there really adds up over a few thousand hits).
I feel I should note that Jon Pearse helped me out very much with the sidebar, practically coding the damn thing for me (though I'm styling his code quite a bit, the main markup isn't being modified very much).
Once the sidebar is done, I'll still have several other things to work on:
Those are just the things I can work on now. Once the Lair is closed for the year, I'll be able to start going through all of the content on the site, giving it a complete overhaul. Here's a list of some of the things I'll be checking (more for my benefit than yours):
That will, of course, be on top of the process of applying the new layout code to each and every single page by hand. Why am I going to do it by hand, when doing so is such an inefficient and slow process (not to mention painful)? Firstly, because I'm a bit of a control freak, and don't trust a program to do everything perfectly. I love BBEdit's search & replace, but I don't trust it to catch every single instance.
The second (and more important) reason is to make sure that I learn these new rules and follow them to the letter. I know HTML as well as I do for one reason alone: I had to drag myself through massive amounts of code in very long, mind-numbing projects. As a result, I know it like the back of my hand. If I do the same thing again, I'll be re-educating myself in a way that will make sure that it sticks.
The third reason is because I'm a glutton for punishment, it would seem. ;)
Posted by Eric at November 26, 2004 02:03 AMWow. That is a lot of work man. Mass props from a complete stranger here.
Posted by: Tashimojo at November 26, 2004 12:45 PMTime to change my vote for president, I now vote for Mr. Pearse, he seems to be the coder supreme, you lackey.
Posted by: Sterling Peoples at December 5, 2004 08:40 PM