Dear Browser Makers:

Please implement tables properly, so if I have a row I want to be a certain height so that something on the left can align with the bottom of the thing on the right, the thing in the middle can use the handy "rowspan=2" tag in order to spill over that alignment line without screwing everything else up.

Do not continue to implement tables so that if the cell with the rowspan tag happens to go longer than the height of the row it's spanning out if, the height of that row is ignored. This is wrong, and whatever average row height your browser thinks it wants to come up with is wrong and inevitably looks ugly.

Crankily yours,

Fedward.

Note to readers: images have been moved to their old location, but I didn't remove the email link or the link to fedward dot org. Neither of those will work right now. I'll let you know.

link (2000-08-13)

In case any of you are interested in this sort of thing, here's some info on the new design:

The images are all mine. Software used was Photoshop 5, Fireworks 2, Dreamweaver 2, and Homesite 4. The photograph used in the top banner is courtesy krapsnart and dates from about this time last year. All other photos were taken with my own camera (an Olympus Infinity Stylus) between 1996 and 1998, and developed to PhotoCD.

The only effects done to the top banner were to blow it up, then gaussian blur the hell out of it to get rid of grain and pixelization, and unsharp mask to distress it a bit. The colors were not adjusted.

All other images were cropped to square, then either enlarged or reduced to 95 pixels on a side (from anywhere between 18 pixels square to about 140 pixels square - the 95 pixel target is the height of the top banner). They were then tweaked with gaussian blur and possibly unsharp mask, depending on the magnification factor. The target appearance was one of slight surreality or airbrushedness (to coin a phrase).

Colors were then adjusted using the "Adjust Color Balance" command in Photoshop, mostly through shadows. "Preserve Luminosity" was checked. There was no pattern as to what target color was used for any image shift. Mostly it was experimentation, as some images lent themselves to becoming reddish or sepia, others went green rather nicely, and so on. There were a total of 18 "usable" eyes, although the one from the 18-pixel image is the least usable of the lot and therefore isn't useful after all.

From Photoshop, all images were saved in .psd format, then edited in Fireworks to add the text (20 point Trebuchet MS). The final images were selected from the original 18 based on contrast and room for text, by process of elimination. From Fireworks they were saved as .png images, as it's a 4.0 browser world now. If you're still using a browser that doesn't support the .png format, (1) send me email, and (2) upgrade, luddite.

The original concept was to use mouseovers to reveal the text on any given "button" eye, but it turns out that the Diaryland upload script makes this impossible (or at least a secret). I suppose it would be possible to use old-fashioned mouseovers without preloads, or create the rollovers as Flash images with the rollover behavior built in, but I don't think I'll go to the trouble at this point.

If you're interested in the particulars on the page colors, well, look at the source.

My concern in going with this design was that it not be too creepy, but slightly unsettling was perfectly fine. Unfortunately the only way to figure out if it would be too creepy was to do the design and look at it, and by the time I got there I'd been looking at the images far too long to find them creepy anymore. If you're totally creeped out, let me know.

Not that I'll change anything, but I'm always curious to find out how my designs are accepted outside my own egocentric universe¹.

 

 

 

 

(1) I actually noticed the same thing back when I was still majoring in Architorture in college. You spend so much time immersed in your idea, honing it and making it the thing it wants to be, that when you're done you have no concept at all what other people will think of it. I think this is how ugly buildings get designed. You become totally detached from the reality outside your studio, because that sort of focus is necessary in order to let the building out. So the ugly buildings maybe were conceived as better ideas, but the idea didn't make it out of the architect's head.

link (2000-08-13)

Bah. The day after I put something on the net that requires my DSL to be there (the DSL that's never been a problem), my circuit goes down.

If it's a Bell Atlantic issue and not a Covad issue (they didn't know yet) it could be out until the end of the strike. Bah.

I'll probably move the images over tonight, so fret not for all those broken image icons. It'll be dealt with soon enough. Bah.

link (2000-08-13)