Design within the verge

[elfs]

I've been thinking a lot about the redesign of the Pendorwright site and have been trying to wrap my haed around the basic concepts. It's not that the site "looks old": actually, I kind of like the 2002 design, personally. It's white and crisp and that splash of color on the left, when read in depth, says something important: I value my privacy and I'll value yours as well.

I've been playing with a whole bunch of ideas but, really, the original site's design worked pretty well, all things considered. But I have to address a few realities, both as a designer and as a writer, in addressing the serious move to a new server.

Here's what I'm thinking: I'd like to ditch some things. First, there are plenty of sites out there that now offer the What to say to the police section. I'd toss out my webdesign and code sections and put those on a different website, one that I use to sell something other than the stories. Pendorwright is for the Journal Entries and writing in general, not about my less-than-l33t design skills. The site needs a re-alignment and a revision in accordance with 2006 CSS and XHTML, but I'm trying to resist the new color scheme.

I am planning on installing a mediawiki, where each story will get its own wiki page, as will each character, setting, major events, and even concepts and organizations (such as The Fall, The Taboo, Wish's Children, Singularity Firewalls, and so on). One thing I did settle on this morning is that the HTML story pages will not be static. I wrestled long and hard with this one and decided that there were far too many benefits from generating the stories on the fly, such as search term highlighting and external link decoration (not to mention the inevitable return of Swedish Chef Mode).

Now to find the time to do it all.

(Oh, and if you think the title of the song is long and pretentious, the album it comes from is entitled The Transmutations Of Supposed Angels Or Beings That Once Were Girls.)

Comments

[kenshardik]

Whee, PendorWiki! *Rubs hands gleefully together*

Finally, something that may distract me from WoW every night.

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

Now, this is not to be taken as any kind of browbeaten "rar! ungrateful hurryup get-on-with-it!" or anything, but...

will we see any new pendor stories in the near future?

[dossy.livejournal.com]

"I wrestled long and hard with this one and decided that there were far too many benefits from generating the stories on the fly, such as search term highlighting and external link decoration (not to mention the inevitable return of Swedish Chef Mode)."

While there are good reasons to make everything dynamic, what you listed aren't. Search term highlighting and link decoration are both things that can be done on the client-side through JS/DHTML on top of a statically served page.

Just trying to give you another reason to continue wrestling with the decision.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

So, when someone comes in from Google, that being my one major example, how would I decorate the chosen search terms other than by embedding their requests in the DHTML some way?

[dossy.livejournal.com]

document.referer

Parse it client-side in JS, then use DOM manipulation to highlight terms in your content.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

So, how do the terms from what is essentially the REFERER line, a server-side object, get down to the client-side?

[mundens.livejournal.com]

I suspect what dossy is implying is that you can have static URL's and static pages, but that you can still decorate the request with additional information via request filters.

If all URL's on your site go to one servlet, (because thats what I'm most familiar with, you can do it in CGI if you realy want to) then not only can you actually store the pages individually (if thats useful to you) but you can run whatever code you like before serving the page, such as XSLT tranforms on the static pages to make them work better for phones or other special browser types like audio.

Of course, there's no need to actually have seperate pages if you do this, you could dynamically generate every page differently for every client if you were being perverse, but it will look like seprerate static pages to anyone trying to find it from the web.

They are right that you can off load the stuff to the client, only you need completely diffent code for compliant browwsers like firefox, and need to use DOM objects for I.E and it requires the user to turn off all their safety nets.

[dossy.livejournal.com]

"They are right that you can off load the stuff to the client, only you need completely diffent code for compliant browwsers like firefox, and need to use DOM objects for I.E and it requires the user to turn off all their safety nets."

Or, use a decent JavaScript library that handles the cross-browser support for you, like I did. (see: jQuery)

My approach works with 100% static HTML and only truly requires the addition of a bit of static JavaScript to be included. It's a write-once operation.

[dossy.livejournal.com]

First, I got it slightly wrong ... the widely misspelled "referer" is atcually spelled correctly in the JavaScript document object, so it's document.referrer.

Second, here's an example I whipped up, using jQuery (a fantastic JavaScript library):

http://dossy.org/referer-demo.html

If you have questions, just ask.

[dossy.livejournal.com]

Oh ... also, the referrer is sent by the client browser to the server. It's only natural that the client has access to that information, too, right? (Via the document.referrer element.)

[spiralsong.livejournal.com]

Oh, and if you think the title of the song is long and pretentious,

It may be pretentious, but it's also a Neuromancer reference, and, therefore, acceptable. :)

Good idea

[(Anonymous)]

This is mementh from the ASSD.. i say go with it.. but give a option for those that want to downlaod the old style (for reading say on a ipod.. or PDA (which i doubt could do the advanced CSS and stuff)

:)