New Look

Hopefully you like the new look here at In a Dark Time, though I’m sure the look has much more to do with the second half of Roethke’s poem than the first half.

The layout, and Wordform itself, comes from Shelley Powers, aka Burningbird, but I had lots of input on the design of the site and the photographs all came from my ride home from Denver earlier this week. So, despite some trying times with my photographs, I did manage to get a few photos that I liked.

I still have quite a bit of fine tuning that I put off until I could convince Shelley to allow me to use her version of WordPress. I’m hoping that using her program slows down, or ends, the tremendous amount of spamming I got on my old site. I understand that those who haven’t commented before will not be posted directly until I’ve had a chance to look at the comment, but it was either that or get rid of comments entirely, and comments are one of the things that keep me writing here.

28 thoughts on “New Look”

  1. Loren, this looks lovely. I remember the first time I ever saw a site use a fixed background with “floating” boxes of text over it. This just proves how striking and powerful a design technique it can be. I like the semi-transparency on the sidebars, as well.

    You’re pictures are lovely. The first time I flew into Seattle (I already lived there but had driven there sight unseen), I could see four peaks above the clouds and was amazed. Thanks for sharing your lovely photos. If these were taken during your flight, I’m going to have to start asking for a window seat.

  2. They were taken during the flight, andru, and I fight hard to get a window seat when I fly back to Seattle. Actually, I had a hard time picking out which of the in-flight pictures I liked best.

  3. Wow! It’s beautiful. A breath of cool fresh mountain air. And what a nifty trick to preview the comment while I’m typing it … sheer magick!

  4. I’ll take credit for sharing our beautiful Mt. Rainier, Elkit, but Shelley Powers wrote the code for previewing the comment while typing.

  5. E gods, I hate having new things to figure out. This all looks readable enough, but your photos in this format seem smaller now. Am I imagining that? They look good, but not as SPLENDID.

  6. You’re right, Ron, they’re not as big. They’ve been reduced from 620 pixels wide to 480 pixels wide.

    Thanks for the input, though, and I’ll certainly give it some consideration because I like the bigger pictures too. Shelley, who did all the coding and much of the design for these pages has offered some other possibilities.

  7. It might be interesting to know how many people realized that my former page design was much wider than most designs that I’ve looked at since I made this change.

    Ignorance must be bliss because I just based my design on my computer screen and I hate to waste half a screen.

  8. Well, it IS your fault. When I first came to your site, I thought it was extremely wide, then I got used to it and the photos were so good. So if I’m griping now, you did it to me! It looks okay like this, though, if you decide to stick with the change. I realize we may have to wait a while while you sort through the possibilities.

  9. Thank you so much for your blog–and yes, the new look is clean, sharp and quite classy. I occassionally pull poetry off you site, send it out to other poets and from time to time, translate it.
    Rebecca

  10. Maybe it’s just my browser, but I see your posts at the top, but your links are all below the posts. I have to scroll all the way to the botto of the page to see the links.

  11. I imagine Harry’s using Internet Explorer – Shelley’s site also breaks in IE5/6 in the same way.

    Btw, I too have always been a fan of floating boxes over a fixed background 🙂

  12. Sorry, above I should have said “at least, on my computer”. I can’t imagine Shelley didn’t at least test in IE 🙂

  13. If it’s IE, it’s working now in IE. I did not test after last set of updates.

    My own site works in IE, and still works in IE.

  14. I agree with the comments praising your new design. Looks great! But I find myself trying to scroll down past the floating boxes so I can see the beautiful background photos!

  15. Harry, I tested Loren’s page in BrowserCam, with IE 6 on W2K and XP and it shows okay. Did you clear your browser cache before accessing the page. You might be picking up the old stylesheet still.

  16. I set my Win2K to the same resolution, but was able to see the page correctly, Harry. I am sure that you’re seeing it incorrectly in IE in your environment, but any changes I make now would be ‘in the dark’ and could impact adversely in other environments and browsers.

    I do so love the background pictures, though. I’m hoping Loren might add some others.

  17. Loren likes the background image, almost as much as not having to eliminate tons of spam everyday and actually being able to see my referrer logs as meaningful again.

    As soon as I finish eliminating several “gremlins” caused by the conversion, and fine tuning the column widths and tweaking the fonts, I’d like to add some new backgrounds. I’m thinking “water” and “greens,” since this is, after, the Evergreen State.

  18. Not wishing to be a troublemaker, I’m now viewing it using Mozilla on my Linux box, and it looks very nice and all lined up. But to insinuate that a Microsoft product might have a flaw – I just don’t know what this nation is coming to!!!

  19. And BTW, it is very, very nice. Like you’re reading something displayed on an aircraft window, looking out.

  20. Water and Green sounds lovely — and restful after the fire I see at my site.

    The graphics would be nice, too.

    Harry, I know it’s a sad state when we imply that Microsoft would do such a thing. And Loren living not far from the company, too. Sigh.

  21. Loren, This is wonderful.

    Thanks for turning me on to WordPress in February. I did use it for my class. I split the twenty-four students in each class into two jury rooms with a blogging assignment for each of the first two acts of “Twelve Angry Men.” It was probably the most successful thing I did all year from the standpoint of the students’ interest and writing practice.

    WordPress rocks, though I only scratched the surface of it.

  22. This is wonderful. Huge and breathing. And I so love the flower photographs. They are an inspiration.

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