Actually, we thought about calling it Making Elect, just to appeal to that all-important Presbyterian demographic.

Liberals don't drink the Kool-Aid. We like Gatorade.

;)

Thanks for bringing over the "HTML Tags" cheatsheet.

We'll be fiddling with the details for some time to come.

Noted, though. As I said, a reasonable idea.

With the new layout, in order to make the text comfortably readable, I have to use most of my screen space for the browser window - and half of its interior area is the left and right columns, which are usually blank for most of the length of the page.

The lower-contrast comment body text (especially with the dark bold links) is also rather uncomfortable.

This is probably partly an unconsidered reflex at the moment, as I'm mainly thinking "Hey! Put it back!".

(I wish I had something more positive to say in my first comment.)

If I can make one small suggestion that might not matter to anyone but me (at which point please ignore me):

You may want to widen the central column, wherein the actual entries are located. When it was just Patrick on Electrolite this format didn't matter much, but Teresa's posts tend to be a little longer, which makes for more scrolling down.

Of course, my browser doesn't sit at the full width of my screen, so maybe I am the only one who might be bothered by this.

BTW, Mac OS X 10.2.8, Firefox 1.0.4 - looking good.
Same for IE 5.2.3 for Mac.

Haven't tried my Windows machines yet.

I can't duplicate this. You may have run into an artifact of the two or three hours during which we were throwing heavy objects around. I'd suggest emptying your cache, quitting your browser, and trying again.

Umm, I don't want to upset any major compromises or anything, mind.

And yes, I'm just posting right now to say that I was one of the first five hundred to post on the new and improved "Making Electrolite" site. I'm so trendy.

I don't think it's a bug: the layout looks consistent.

Here's some screenshots, of an estimate of the window size I was using comfortably before: before, after, top of after.

(Yes, this is quite a small window. I use many windows simultaneously, and don't have space to waste (1024×768). As the screenshot shows, the previous layout fit quite comfortably in that window.)

But it's definitely growying on me. The first time was a bit of a shock, because I hit refresh, and it refreshed, all right... :-)

It shouldn't, if you restrict the link colouring to the banner id. The following should do it:

#banner A,
#banner A:link,
#banner A:visited,
#banner A:active,
#banner A:hover { color:#EEE; background: #660000; text-decoration: none; font-weight:bold; }

Looks very nice. This is one heck of a massy weblog.

Wow -- if I'd known that eating light could do so much for me, I'd have tried that Uncle Fester trick long before I actually did it!

On a design note, perhaps it's just me, but in Safari the very bold blue text of hyperlinks and headings somewhat overwhelms the flat gray text of everything else. Makes it just a tiny bit harder to read the important bits.

I also think your lefthand column is too wide, making the center column (where all the interesting stuff is) too narrow on my typical window size. This may be an exaggerated perception stemming from the fact that at the moment, that wide lefthand column has almost nothing in it.

(Safari 1.2.4, Mac OS X 10.3.8.)

Same for me. I'm using a 800x600 screensize at the moment, so that may make a difference. Using the Opera browser (6.01) on Windows 98. Will have to check with the Safari/Mac combo later.

Anyway--looks good other than the small size of the center column. Yay!

MKK

Also, Macs ship with lots of very nice typefaces, so consider adding Gill Sans or Lucida Grande or whatever your preference is to the stylesheet ahead of verdana.

I'm a little homesick for the old page.

It's still lovely.

Wow. Like everyone else, I wasn't expecting this so soon - so far, looks good (though I'm in the "center column a bit too narrow but I'll get over it if that's the way it's going to be" camp as well).

Particles and Sidelights in the same place, oboyoboy.

We also agree that the central column on the individual-entry-archive pages (which you're probably looking at right now) is too narrow, and the left-hand column uselessly wide. This'll get fixed in a way that, happily for Kevin Reid (thanks for the screenshots--now I understand), will also fix his problem.

A question for all: It seems to us that the column width on the comment-preview page is about right. Agree? Disagree?

Kevin Marks: Yeah, I realize we could use CSS to specify a long series of alternate fonts (font-family: Shatter, LincolnLog, GrotesqueExtraUgly, DillPickle, oh all right we give up sans-serif;), but our aim is to have everything more or less harmonize within the range of fonts most people are likely to have.

We do know about Mac greys vs Windows grays; in fact, we're pretty much an all-Mac shop here at Casa NH these days, with four machines all running 10.3 or 10.4. The old PC, built years ago by Mike Farren and me from parts, is downstairs in pieces, gradually giving up its components to repair the superior beings that have taken over its ecological niche. Our actual problem is making sure any site changes don't blow up common Windows browsers. I do try to remember to check stuff on my PC at Tor, but that doesn't always happen in a timely fashion. (Anyone who wishes to donate an unused copy of Virtual PC for the Mac will receive the thanks of a grateful nation, and possibly some fine NH-branded anthologies of their choice.)

(Noises off.)

Ok, looks good to me.

As for the small bold blue hyperlink text, it's fine for me in most places, but when it's italicised, as in the Recent Comments section, it's blocky and hard to read. Either less bold or bigger would be nice. I'm using Firefox 1.0.4 on Windows XP, and it isn't antialiasing the text (since it's so small, it would probably be worse if it did).

Actually (previewing the sample in the previous paragraph) it doesn't look so bad now. Maybe it's only a problem when it's on a grey background.

(No humor glyph on this keyboard, so I'll just have to start the laughter by hand: "Ha!")

Now, how far behind am I on the comments? Urg.

Patrick may have fixed that already.

As I understand it, comments and archives are inheriting layout constraints and specifications from the front page, and will do so until Patrick gives them their own proper constraints and specifications.

For me, this process of amalgamation is like having a beloved S.O. move into what has long been a single person's apartment. It's agreed that it's a good idea; both parties understand that there will have to be adjustments, and are willing to make them; but you keep unexpectedly finding some changes upsetting on a purely visceral/territorial level. Like, you walk into what's always been Your Kitchen, and discover that Your Spice Rack has been relocated to make room for a coffee maker. There does need to be a space for the coffee maker, and this rearrangement is the best of several imperfectly satisfactory options; but there's still this irrationally furious moment of feeling like it's Just Plain Wrong.

I won't deny that it's been an interesting exercise in discovering what's important to us, and why.

The narrowness of the center column on the main page bothers me. That may or may not change. Part of our disagreement is a matter of visual acuity. Even in middle age, I'm comfortable with small type, crowded layouts, narrow gutters, and signals encoded in fine distinctions of color. Patrick was myopic to start with, and keeps getting more so. The old Electrolite design was optimized for his eyesight.

But there's more to it than that; and here we come to one of our primordial differences, a standing disagreement like a chunk of Canadian Shield granite worn smooth by much friction, but still immovably there. You know those standard lists of things couples fight about -- money, children, sex, in-laws, and religion? I always add "typography." My writing runs long, and I tend to favor cramming as much text as possible into the reader's field of vision. Patrick's writing runs shorter than mine, and he'll trade off less text immediately visible for larger type and more white space.

I write in Bitmap; Patrick writes in Postscript.

Back in the days when we published via mimeograph, too many of our arguments started with Patrick saying "I'm envisioning two sides, one sheet," when my draft material was already six pages long. Two pages of single-spaced 10-pitch typescript is what I produce when I'm trying to write something he thinks should run to five or six sentences.

I think this falls under Smart Maureen McHugh's rule that all arguments between couples boil down to "You're not me!"

So, merged blog. It's like you guys are married or something. ;)

(Not that I get a vote, but as a reader, I'm nearsighted and prefer larger font. But I just realized I have a double standard, since on my occasional blog I frequently write in small font.)

(Of course I dream about HTML colors. It goes along with having dreams about paper stocks, typefaces, and print resolution levels.)

I'd almost prefer a slightly different layout on the comments page, using a noninherited CSS definition, that moves the right column to underneath the actual text in the left column. I'm not entirely sure how well that would work visually, but the coding is simple enough. Two columns are enough for anything serious; more than that and you've got a mere newspaper.

BTW, I like the new layout better than either of the previous sites. Just one opinion.

I second this.

I'm also in the "middle column is too narrow, but if you're not going to fix it I'll deal" camp.

--Mary Aileen

Also, I have bad eyes, and the typeface has not been a problem either.

Just so you know.

So far I am not having any issues with the column widths.

I'm with the liking it crowd.

The broken links to older Electrolite archives have been fixed. Thanks to Andy Perrin for spotting it.

This is my work machine and not only is adding browsers in kind of a grey area, it would be politically unwise - in an eat your own dogfood kind of way.

Whew - you guys fly low to the ground!

It's a combination of Javascript and an alternate CSS stylesheet and works quite well. It's also not too hard to do.

I note with some amusement that upon reading their source code, the default small sans-serif stylesheet is labeled "Default", while the larger serif type is labeled "Tom".

I eagerly await some posts on issues, literary, political, and otherwise.

While I'm waiting, I'll promote a few blogs: Alas, a Blog , Left2Right and Orcinus.

Most of you have already heard of them, but I figure there's the chance that someone hasn't, and my recommendation might mean something.

Patrick: Yeah, I know about the alternate-stylesheet trick. Someday when I'm feeling really ambitious I'll go for it.

Amused to note that the title piece of the welcome to Making Light, incorporating Electrolite post has no indication of the author and yet I could tell Teresa wrote it.

-I know it was Teresa because I checked and, as I expected, the front page of the blog indicates author, but then when you go to the comments page, the author indication is lost. I came here through the Making Light RSS feed on LiveJournal, which took me straight to the comments page. Considering all the discussion of it beforehand, I suspect you'll want to change something about that so that those who continue to subscribe to the notification-rather-than-fulltext feed will be able to see which of you wrote the post. (It may be an issue for the fulltext feed as well, I don't know, I haven't seen it.) Also handy for those following any other type of direct link.

And once you're settled a bit, don't forget to change the text in http://www.blogads.com/qoiqbojydpn/electrolite/advertise and http://www.blogads.com/qoiqbojydpn/electrolitemakinglighttextads/advertise

Add a contextual selector:

#banner A { color: #EEE; }

That should do, since text-decoration and font-weight should be inherited from the regular A definition.

You may want to add selectors for #banner A:visited and the like as well.

Christopher, you're talking to me as if I actually have some training in this stuff. Please understand that mostly what I know is what I call "cargo cult programming"--I can extrapolate from the code I see in the default MT templates, but I have no idea what a "contextual selector" is or what I'd do with it.

If you want to look at the template for the individual entry archive, it's here . While you're at it, maybe you can tell me what portions of all that Javascript we can dispense with now that we no longer have any popup windows.

Thanks for the feedback--I don't actually mean to sound as curt as I probably sound.

Contextual selectors are basically a way to specify styles based on the entire HTML element hierarchy, not just the individual element.

So in this case, "#banner A {}" sets the style for an A element inside of any element with id="banner" on it, and takes precedence over the regular style for A elements.

You would add this in whatever template becomes newstyle2.css, and then change the individual entry template to make the Making Light banner link back to the top page.

The JavaScript remaining all seems to be relevant to "remember user info", so I don't think there's any more that should be removed.

And I agree with Teresa about smaller font and more text in the window.

Otherwise, congrats on getting everything up and running so quickly.

I like what you've done and am astonished at the speed with which you did it.

How do you incorporate the Particles and Sidelights blogs? Is it a plugin?

Just kidding, guys!

Keep up the good work.

Staring at it for too long will give me a headache.

#banner A { color: #EEE; }

That's pretty much what I suggested last night, but I think to override the default anchor behaviour, he'll need to do more than set the colour of the text.

Patrick, you would add the changes to newstyle2.css. I don't know if you edit that in MT's template interface or not, but if that's where you work, that's what we're talking about.

You should not have to change any of the actual templates or do any rebuilds. (your CSS file is not a template. MT has you edit your CSS file in their template section, but that's just them.)

Lisa: We used to do it with the MTOtherBlog plugin (now, I think, superseded by the same author's MultiBlog). But now we just do it with includes:

<?
include ("/home/pnh/public_html/electroside/10-most-recent.html");
?>

--where "10-most-recent.html" is a file spat out by a custom Sidelights index file every time a new Sidelight gets posted.

Like I said: cargo-cult programming.

The reports of odd text effects are quite consistent with this -- they don't have to be anything to do with the web browser being used. More screen resolution helps, but things happen when the pixel size is large enough to make rendering a font difficult. There can also be apparent discontinuities in how test looks. On this monitor, the text seems to turn bold at about 14 points. Suddenly, the rendering can use two pixels for a stroke instead of one.

Displaying at 120% also removes most of the apparent greyness.

The CSS1 spec on how cascading works implies that the more-specific style will override the less-specific style, but only on properties that are given (in this case, color). The other stuff should be inherited.

I make no claims that any particular browser, or any browser for that matter, gets it right.

One thing: I just recently started using a feed reader. But I set up about 50 at a time, so I popped in Electrolite and missed Making Light from my list (along with about 10 others I'm catching up on).

The point is, the Merging of the Blogs didn't show up on the feed I had in the reader. I've changed things now, but for those folks who had one feed and not the other set up, you might try to add one more post to the old Electrolite feed, announcing the change.

I'm here from the open thread, becasue this is more of a style thing, but you know there was a comment about how three-column format eats up the real estate. Here's how it works.

On the Making Light front page, in a roughly 9"x12" Firefox window, I get columns about 3", 7", and 2" wide. The front page goes for about eleven screenfuls. But the left column is only 7 screens tall, and the right column is only 3.5 screens tall. So if the right column matter were transferred to the left, there would be more room for the middle column, or I could use a 10" wide window.

People who have narrow monitors get this much worse, because the left and right columns can't shrink much, so the middle column becomes very skinny and long, and at the bottom you've got this skinny middle column with huge margins.

Oops, I've got to leave; more about this later.

The font is, still, too small for me to read comfortably, so hitting Ctrl-+ is still the first thing I do upon reaching the page. This is not a complaint, just a report. Two keystrokes (sometimes followed by hitting "reload" to get back to the particular comment I was going to) is a pretty minor burden.

Knowing Teresa's fondness for small fonts, I compensate by using the "text zoom" function in Mozilla to make the type REALLY BIG (generally 150% - 200%. I'm a tad near-sighted). In the new Making Light, this causes the text in the side columns to spill out of their frames. Just thought y'all would like to know.

Other than that, looking good!

[I'm running Mozilla 1.7.7 on Windows XP at 1152 x 864]

best, Derek

The CSS1 spec on how cascading works implies that the more-specific style will override the less-specific style, but only on properties that are given (in this case, color). The other stuff should be inherited.

Absolutely. And I was tired and didn't twig that the default anchor's background colour is the same as that of the banner background. But still, using the more wordy #banner specs ensures that if you later change the default anchor specs, it won't break the banner link appearance.

Of course, if you change the banner specs, it may break the appearance of the banner links as well. You can't win.

Interesting. I'm getting in Firefox as well. Perhaps it's a Windows-specific glitch? I'll pass along a jpg so that you can see what I'm looking at.

You could always just use Making Lighter. Just go click a few times on our ads before you do. :-)

Charlie Petit, I generally favor two columns, but when one column has to contain ads, three columns starts looking good. That's nothing new in journalism. When you're putting together a conventional newspaper page, you paste up the ads first, and after that it's "all the news that fits."

Mary Aileen Buss, Patrick's been fiddling with the main page, trying to get that center column wider. We'd happily sacrifice the excess gutter space between the left and center columns, but so far everything Patrick's tried has generated strange and sucky display effects in MSIE.

Michelle K, are you still having trouble with the visited/unvisited links colors? I've changed them a couple of times today, so I'm not sure which set you're reacting to.

Anne, I figured the "I am the Empress of the Universe" tone was the tip-off.

Dan Hoey, it's hard to attract advertising if you bury the ads halfway down a very long page, but we're not willing to have Particles, Sidelights, and the who's-commented-on-what list get shoved down the page either. It's a compromise. But I can promise you this: if I ever win the lottery, the ads will go away forever.

Lexica, of my argument to Patrick was that if someone really needs a larger text size, they can have it with a keystroke or two. Thanks for the confirmation.

I'm on Firefox 1.0.4 in a Windows XP platform and everything's showing up fine. Loving the new wider middle column for comments. Still not quite reconciled to the three-column front page, so go Teresa! Win that lottery!

Hey, no fair! Someone else got to plug my blog before I did! ;-)

It's a combination of Javascript and an alternate CSS stylesheet and works quite well. It's also not too hard to do.

If you want to see that script in action without any other hoohah, it's here. Feel free to borrow any or all of it; that's what it's there for.

(And hey, I managed to get a plug in of a different site of mine!)

I note with some amusement that upon reading their source code, the default small sans-serif stylesheet is labeled "Default", while the larger serif type is labeled "Tom".

As I've mentioned in the comments here before, the non-geek of the couple is named Tom, and the geek of the couple is named Dori. So of course the styles are "default" and "tom" (although in the example I linked to above, I believe that they're called "default" and "serif"; our editor must have objected).

P&T: I have to say that it's somewhere between stunning and amusing how many of your "I want it this (read as: correct) way but my spouse wants it that (read as: obviously insane) way" discussions sound exactly like us.

The style sheet changer really is pretty straightforward to just drop into a site. If there's anything I can do to help, just say the word. (Hmmm... wanna swap a JavaScript book for one of those anthologies?)

True. Although for me, if I change the style of a section, I expect that I'll need to at least look at any of the bits styled especially to work with that section. "Winning" is something I gave up on long ago, where computers are involved.

I did a CSS demo hack of one of James Lileks layouts to show this off the other night - it uses a classic face (Cochin) and drop-shadows in Safari on the Mac, but still looks good on windows, and is more legible than the pre-anti-aliased (for CRT) image version

One way to resolve your domestic difference over type sizes is to specify the page em instead of px and adjust your individual browser defaults.

The distinction between the links is better, but still not quite as distinct as when they were two different colors instead of two different shades. But it is much easier to spot the visited links now, so I could certainly live with the way things are now.

As far as viewing the page in larger text sizes--I'm in Win XP using Mozilla 1.7.3 and I get the same thing--text overlaps the columns. Moving along to other browsers... I can't get the text size to change at all in IE, which is quite strange; Opera is okay, unless I change the text size to 200%, in which case I can't read the center column at all; I thought I had Firefox on this computer, but it seems I don't. (Better go install it.)

I second whoever said the problem was pixels vs ems. ems do a much better job of being resized than pixels, so you may want to consider changing your text sizes and your column widths to ems. (And if I remember correctly, there is a difference between the way macs and pcs resize text, which may be why you can't repeat the problem on a mac)

And I can provide screen caps for any particular problem if desired.

MKK

I am excited about the change and what it means for P&T. I hope it brings them renewed committment to blogging, more traffic, and more money from blogads, and through those things I hope it makes the new Making Light Incorporating Electrolite into an even more fun and educational place than it is now. And it's pretty fun and educational already. Great bunch of people in comments.

But as to what it actually means to me personally: very little. Virtually nothing. I used to check Patrick's and Teresa's blogs several times a week for updates. Now, I check Patrick and Teresa's blog several times a week for updates.

Just to be clear and to avoid giving offense: I would compare the change the NH blogs to one or both of them getting promoted at work. I'd be happy for them. But I'd still like them as people just the same amount as I did before, and I'd continue buying Tor books from my favorite authors, just like I did before.

And, Mary Kay, I respect your view of the Web. I'm just pointing out the difference.

With absolutely no offence to Patrick, it was Making Light that I came to read, not Electrolite; I tried that a few times and didn't really enjoy it much. Since the posts are now lumped together, I have to come to the website just to see whether a new posting is Teresa or Patrick, rather than relying on the live bookmark (lazy, aren't I?).

Something that's either a bug or an enhancement request: Particles and Sidelights feeds both link back to here. Given that I can read everything you've written about them in NNW, and that there's no way to comment on them, could they instead link to their intended destination? It would cut out a step in getting from here to there. Thanks!

Good point about Particles and Sidelights feeds; I'll fix that, but right now I need to go home.

NNW now shows it twice: once as it always did (under creator, as it should), and again as part of the headline (new, and so less of the actual headline is now visible).

Thanks; I'll check when I get home.

I should probably emphasise that my preference for ML is absolutely no reflection on you as a writer - you are indeed very good at making things entertaining. It's just that I think there's some difference in the subject matter that we find enjoyable. :-)

Okay, now I feel guilty... doh.

I suspect that I'm not the only one who will ever use a laptop to read the blog, so please add changing the link color to your very long list of things to get to someday.