Welcome to Antipode
After five years of writing on the web and a year of doing it in a traditional weblog format, I’ve spun this blog off from Altering Time into its own site. Specifically, antipode.ca is now home for my writings, personal info, and more. Altering Time lives on as before, but able to focus on being a site where the community forges the content and direction. I have a redesign and some new features in mind for over there. This is great news for both sites, which now have a clear purpose in life.
Antipode will move ahead from where Altering Log left off. The subject matter and writing style1 will continue to evolve. A new addition will be links – that is, I’ll post links to thinks I find interesting or important, even if I don’t have an article to write about them.
One big advantage the new site has is that comments and blog trackbacks are now open. Before, comments were routed through the Altering Time Forums, which made sense as the blog was part of Altering Time, but severely limited the number of people who would comment on the posts. Back at Altering Time, a news blog will be the home of site-specific updates, such as Faith progress2. The new design is a lot classier than the old one. I took advantage of features that Internet Explorer 6 doesn’t support – more on this later. Overall, I think it turned out great.
So, what do you all think?
- I’ve now added support for doubly-linked footnotes, which should keep me from getting into excessively-nested parentheses. Inspired by John Gruber. [↩]
- This, of course, will have the comments through the Forums there. [↩]
Oct 12 2007
3:17 pm
Comments now work properly!
Oct 12 2007
3:28 pm
FIRST!
OK, I had to do that at least once in my life.
Looks good in Opera (on MacOS) too. I’m really all choked up that you had to drop support for IE 6.
Phil
Oct 12 2007
3:31 pm
Your header/footer that don’t go away bother me.
Also: antipode has the same initials and # of syllables as your name! Coincidence?
Oct 12 2007
3:42 pm
I’m glad it works in Opera, and also glad I didn’t need to install it to test.
Jen: depending what people think, I might make the header and footer smaller vertically. Really, though, you can only read one line at a time, so they don’t get in the way per se.
Oct 12 2007
8:52 pm
definitely smaller, I find the header and footers distracting. However, if the smaller doesn’t work…maybe deletion?
Oct 13 2007
8:55 am
The site looks slick, colours, fonting, etc., are better balanced than the Altering Log … and they fit your personality.
The footnotes are cool too, and they hint at the potential for more in-depth content (crosses fingers).
I agree about the fixed header/footer, though. They could work if they were subtle, but ATM they’re a stark contrast (and obtrusive) to the page. The ones that I’ve seen work were full-width, and blended more with the content (or used shadows, etc.). The best fixed element I’ve seen actually was a fixed sidebar, where the sidebar *was* the header/footer (it was slick). Try looking at some other sites that do it, and find something that rocks your world.
Good luck with the new site!
Oct 13 2007
9:36 am
hey, looks good. like the layout and colors. having said that, I think the persistent header / footer are distracting. They cut down on the useful area of the screen. You only need to see the header once to obtain the name/tagline of the site, after you have read it, it is just taking up valuable space. I’ll rant about fixed width pages at some other point. I know (from experience) it makes things easier / look better… the concept still annoys me.
Cheers,
Andy.
Oct 13 2007
9:50 am
I’m with the anti-persistent header/footer crowd. It’s just distracting and doesn’t really serve any purpose after you’ve read them once. Other than that, the colour scheme is not blinding and the font size is good. I would suggest that if you want something persistent, make it the sidebar. It doesn’t get in the way of content and gives you that warm, fuzzy feeling inside that you enjoy from floating things.
Oct 13 2007
11:13 pm
I’m going to re-examine the header and footer then. I’m sure I can come up with something less distracting (it’s been suggested that the off-side alignment of them is what’s distracting.) I would make the sidebar fixed instead, but then you won’t be able to read all its content when it’s taller than the page.
As for the fixed-width, it’s on my todo list to make the layout collapse when you drag the window narrower. That said, I do believe in content being more readable when you only have a certain number of words per line.
Thanks for the feedback guys, and I hope to see this many comments on future posts!
Oct 15 2007
9:32 am
Persistent top & bottom.. agreed.
Your logo is too small, man! And your tagline is in Arial!
(Boo Arial)
The name is awesome, and I like finally being able to comment on your darn blog.
Why include an XHTML validation button if your site doesn’t validate?
Oct 15 2007
2:15 pm
I’ve now tweaked the layout somewhat and made a couple improvements – it will surely be an ongoing process.
Glad you like the name and commenting system Curtis. I can’t believe you’d accuse me of using Arial – it’s Helvetica, thank you. As for the validator link, I include it so if I break the validation (as I had with the comments page) then somebody notices (as you did). Everything on the site does validate, except for old post content, which I might go through and tidy.
Oct 15 2007
11:35 pm
As techies, it’s our responsibility to kick your tires. Kick them mercilessly! *buahaha*
Oct 19 2007
11:37 pm
Much better without the floating header. I don’t even notice the floating footer now.
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Dec 13 2007
1:14 pm
[...] Antipode launched two months ago, I’ve been slowly improving things as I go and get feedback. At first the [...]