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[tomomichi]

This is something I've been meaning to do for awhile and took me about two solid days of little else (well, except for taking an unscheduled break for, well, you know >_>), but I finally finished it up to my satisfaction. I've completely revamped Fleeting Fancies into what I hope is a more streamlined layout, as well as switching over to using a little bit of CSS in there, which should hopefully make things so much easier in the future. (Many, many, many thanks to morning_songs for holding my hand and explaining the basics of CSS to me. ♥)

I also expanded a lot of pages, fixed up a lot of broken links (goddamned FFNET changing their URL system, grrr), played with the icons a lot, and just generally (hopefully) cleaned everything up. And, well, yes, adding all the recs up until now. (I actually updated a couple of times since I last made a post about it, but. >_> I got lazy in marking my place.)

....I'm going to go notstare at the damn coding for the archive for awhile now. ^_~




[ edit ] The layout is now viewable, but I'll keep fiddling with it when I'm not about to fall over from exhaustion. *grin* Many, many snuggles to Yin again, for she caught the mistake that I'd made that was giving me problems.

Comments

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

errr, is the layout supposed to have all the recs & things cramped over in a very narrow column on the left? 'cuz they're sorta hard to read there ^^;;

[tomomichi.livejournal.com]

*stares at it* I... have no idea what went wonky. The basic template of the layout I uses works fine when I load it in IE (I play around with the site and test it in Netscape and it lays out perfectly there), but loading the pages in IE, you're right that the left-side column is super-tiny when it should be 435 pixels wide. Hmm. *fiddles with*

[startredder.livejournal.com]

Well, aside from the aforementioned problem with the recs being super-ultra-narrow (and rather glad to see I'm not the only person with that problem - my monitor does NOT have leprosy, dammit), it looks shiny and nice and good! Have a cookie, dear.

[tomomichi.livejournal.com]

The layout is going to drive me crazy in IE. I just finish changing all ~250 pages when I noticed that the banners for the fanart pages aren't displaying properly and I have no idea why that is and I suspect I'll kill something soon, but at least it's not all squished now.

*crawls off to pass out, chewing on cooking on the way*

(And this time it doesn't matter if it's poisoned! I planned on collapsing anyway! :D!)

[startredder.livejournal.com]

The day you're too tired to look for poison in my cookies is obviously the day you've been working too hard. Poor baby.

[tomomichi.livejournal.com]

I've literally spent about ten plus hours on this layout in the past two days. (It's eaten pretty much ALL of my time when I wasn't dealing with The Wank That Ate Hoboken, because I really, really wanted it done. ....that seemed less sad while I was working on it....)

[startredder.livejournal.com]

Dude, stop making me feel sorry for you. It'll make it all the harder to smite you down later! (This ontop of the Wank of Wanks. You poor thing. Hopefully those cookies will kick in soon and you won't have to worry about any of it. ^_^)

[tomomichi.livejournal.com]

*ufufufufufu* My genius plan is at work! (Actually, don't feel too badly for me, I got some good sleep, I chose to work that long on the site, and the Wank of Wanks actually isn't all that wanky, most people were pretty reasonable. I just. You know. Like to complain. ^_~)

[enishi-sama.livejournal.com]

New layout looks good! I like!

[tomomichi.livejournal.com]

Sankyuu~! Despite the trouble with it, I actually really do like the layout for it's cleanliness--everything's there, it's almost pure text, and it still looks pretty. Everything I wanted. XD

[harukami]

Psst, there's something wonky with the formatting around the HawkeyexHavoc fic section of the FMA recs page.

[tomomichi.livejournal.com]

That one I actually know why it is, so I just added some extra break tags as a sort of space-taker until I can scrape my brain together long enough to write the description. XD Thanks for the head's up!

[sharona1x2.livejournal.com]

A couple of the images on that page aren't coming up for me with Mozilla Firefox. They would be the bottom pic and the one for Havoc/Hawkeye fic. Otherwise, it looks very good. I may have to look at the gen stuff you've rec'd. FMA is a series I like just fine without any pairings. ^_^

[tomomichi.livejournal.com]

There are still a few broken images around the site because I have trouble finding images for them--try finding an official image that would match the quality of the ones I have (ie, screen caps look different than official scans) where Havoc and Hawkeye are standing next to each other, you know? And so I just leave it blank until I can find an image that'll work well. ^_^;;;; *is lazy* Happy hunting for the gen stuff in FMA--there's a decent amount of it out there, but it seems like the real gems head towards the pairing stuff, so you may have to look a bit. Not that I mind, of course, because the pairings just make the series all that much better for me. (Since I have a few issues with the series and all. ;;;; )

[mklutz]

XD Looks awesome, very neat and tidy! My only suggestion would be a new paragraph or free line between series' blurbs under each category. But wow! XD I wish I knew CSS.

[tomomichi.livejournal.com]

*laughs* There actually are supposed to be free lines between the series' blurbs and between all the recs, but CSS apparently goes completely psycho on the < br > tag. It's the most baffling thing I've ever seen--two break tags make it work sorta like it should. Three completely fucks it up and hides my images. And it's only break tags, there's nothing else between the paragraphs to be getting in the way. I am well and truly BAFFLED. .___.

[mklutz]

O_o That -is- weird. I asked my friend Anna for you since she was online anyway, and she said it might be line difference -- "...you set it up so there's like, it skips down at a certain height... so your probably have it spaced out to much. I forget what it's called (it's too early for me attempt to figure that out)."
>_> Hopefully that helps some because I didn't get it at all. >< But then, I too have just woken up...

[beckymarie.livejournal.com]

Actually, this helped me figure out whatever the problem was. I still don't get why it's so, but apparently, setting the letter spacing messes with the break tag or is just a pain in general, but whatever the problem was, it seems to have been fixed now. So thanks for giving me an idea to fiddle with the height, since that was driving me NUTS. XD;;;;

[mklutz]

LOL Well even if neither of us get it, I'm glad it worked out!

[tarahime.livejournal.com]

Oh, if you want the link to Destined Dragons is
http://destined.mazoku.org

I remember you linked to it a long time ago so if you still wanted to there ya go. ^^

[tomomichi.livejournal.com]

Ahh, thank you for the new link! ♥ I'd probably have had a hell of a time finding it again (Google seems to be very tempermental with me--some days it hates me), so I appreciate the heads up.

Also, your icon is lovely. *__*

[tarahime.livejournal.com]

Sure, no problem. I'm happy you liked it enough to want to link to it. ^_^

Glad you like the icon! It was made by _linainverse and is shareable if you ever want to use it. ^^

[koenma.livejournal.com]

The cramped sides don't look very nice in the recs, but I think you can rectify that problem easily. It'd look very nice too if you justified the text too :D The cells need to be a bit more spread out so people can read each box easily...

IE editing is such a pain in the ass, but a lot of people use it... I'm too lazy to use anything else but IE X3 *dodges tomato* Whee~ If you'd like I can help you out with some of the editing when I have the time... Or you can just use DreamWeaver to edit the pages easily ^__^ It's been a while since I've used notepad for that type of stuff... X3

Other than that, i love the way you did your rec layout. The colors are good and the font isn't too small, perfect. Just need a bit more tweaking here and there and you'll get a lovely layout.

[tomomichi.livejournal.com]

The cramped sides probably should be fixed now...? The problem was that I'd set the wrong td columen to be 435 pixels wide, so the entire table was that width instead of just the gray 'box' column. (It displayed perfectly in Netscape, which is my browser of choice, and my test file was a fluke because it had an image that was ~400 pixels wide so it forced the column to be that wide and I didn't notice the problem in IE.) So I went through and fixed all those, but my problem now is that the break tags are behaving bizarrely with the CSS.

If you'll notice that with any fanart page, it'll only display the top linked banner, all the images/banners beneath that are hidden. (They still display perfectly in IE.) And the only thing I have seperating each rec are three break tags, so I don't understand why that is. (I've played around with the break tag in the CSS file but nothing seems to affect it.) And it boggled my mind because on any given index page, I link those images the exact same way, yet THEY show up. The only difference I can find is that three break tags causes the CSS to go completely psycho, but if you have an even number (two or four), it works okay. WTF, I say!

If you have the time to play around with it and can figure anything out, I'd be much obliged, since I really have no clue why it's spazzing like that and morning_songs is just as baffled as I am.

Other than these small snafus, I'm actually pretty happy with the layout--I wanted something without a lot of graphics because they tend to take away from the text, and yet it still looks pretty and pleasing to the eye. I'm glad the colors work, too, thanks! I was a little wary of using pinkish-purple colors, but they seem to have come out okay.

Ahahahaha, I'll shut up about the layout now. XD;;

[koenma.livejournal.com]

Hm, which browser do you use besides IE? Certain things that are viewed perfectly in IE will not work in other browsers like Netscape. That's why you see a lot of those anime collectives say "IE only" because other browsers won't support certain styles that were used in the layout. Certain CSS styles won't show in Netscape, but will be apparent in IE. Netscape isn't as powerful as IE when it comes to viewing fancy html/dhtml stuff.
So you might have problems with Netscape with CSS.

As always, Netscape doesn't support certain viewing abilities, so if the banners dissapear, it could be just Netscape. You have to find another alternative to get that style, but not use CSS. Lol, it's a pain in the ass because Netscape doesn't like CSS most of the time.

I'll tweak with it if I can, I've yet to finish my quarter (almost ending) so I won't have too much time. I think I've got the problem down, but I don't have Netscape to view it X3; So I'll have you either poke you online sometime so you can view it with your Netscape. I usually call Netscape, Crapscape because it's usually that >_> Drives me nuts when I used to do websites and they'd view perfectly in IE and in Netscape it looks like crap *_*

Very nice layout, simple and pleasing to the eyes indeed. High-graphic layouts are nice, but sometimes the text will make it look awkward and then people will try to blend the text in with the images and BOOOM! The text is way to hard to see after >_>

*chortles* If you can send me a html of one of your pages with the problems on it, please do X3 I'm not sure if I can view source on your pages... If I can, I shall do that ^_^

[beckymarie.livejournal.com]

Netscape. Netscape, Netscape, Netscape. I meant Netscape. I can type, honest. *sheepish grin* I tend to be more of a Netscape girl, just because I like the slimmer, cleaner, more streamlined look it has, versus the clunkier style IE has. It's also vastly easier to save HTML files in Netscape than it is in IE. And I've always looked at designing this way--if it works in Netscape, it'll probably work in IE, and that way I don't have to worry so much about being multiple-browser-compatible. And the problem was in IE, so that's why I wasn't noticing it, because it's not as easy for me to check a layout in IE as it in Netscape. Everything displayed perfectly in Netscape, right from the beginning, even when the text was squished in IE.

After something in the above comment thread caught my attention about 'height', I went back to look at the CSS and started playing with it again and, sure enough, take out the defined setting for the letter spacing and *bam* back come the images in IE again. I don't understand why the break tag affects this (even numbers work, odd numbers make the images disappear again), but as long as its fixed, I'll live with whatever the reason is. XD I totally appreciate the offer for help, though, and it's been nice to have someone who understands my frustration. *grin*

I totally hear you on the cross-browser funking up of layouts--I used to design graphics-heavy layouts that depended on getting the images to line up perfectly with each other or using frames that would line up with each other to make one bigger layout, and it was a PAIN IN THE ASS to get them exactly right in both browsers. One would be PERFECT, but the other would be, like, a pixel off and it'd look weird. I'd fix it and it'd look fine in the other browser, but then the original was messed up. Drove me nuts.

And high graphics layouts are indeed nice, but they can be a strain on loading time and I've always thought that, with sites that are text-centric (like fic sites or essay sites or rec site) that there shouldn't be a hugely graphical layout, that the site should be more geared towards focusing in on the text. (Of course, I might just be justifying my lack of Photoshop skills. ^_~) If you're going to have an image gallery, by all means, go nuts with the graphics, because people are expecting high-loading times. But if you're going to a text-centric site.... Plus, I've got all those banners to take up loading time, too....

*look at how long she's gone on for* ....oh, my god, I am shutting up now. :x

[ukefied.livejournal.com]

I was going to comment before on how nice the new layout was, but then I got distracted with recs, so... yeah. <3 I like the new look!

[beckymarie.livejournal.com]

*laughs* Well, hell, I'm glad to have pointed some useful stuff out at any rate. Anyway, thanks! I'm oddly proud of how well it came out, so... yeah, it'll be a bit before I shut up about it. ^_~