Over the weekend, I upgraded the theme for Space Ninja. Firstly, I changed the header and footer color scheme and pattern for the holidays. I think it’s nice, and the little sprig of mistletoe over the logo cracks me up.
Secondly, I upgraded the site to “widescreen” format - which really just means that I’m targeting 1024px screen resolutions instead of 800px. Now that 95% of the viewing population is on the larger screen, I can upgrade to two sidebars, which is good, since it was getting pretty lengthy with just the one. Now the delicious links are near the top, but don’t interfere with the blog functionality like recent comments.
The other cool thing that widescreen format gives me is the ability to post larger photos. The previous design only let me post 450px wide photos, which causes problems for me, since flickr only offers photos at 500px and 250px. This new design is specifically formatted for 500px wide photos, which means that I should be able to post more photos in the future, and will make life easier once Zoe is born.
Speaking of Zoe, you’ll notice that there’s (still) no mention of her in the redesign. That’s coming soon, too. In the meantime, if you’re looking for baby information, head over to baby.spaceninja.com, where you’ll find my information program running. Annie’s convinced the math I’m using is faulty, so that will be revisited soon, as well as adding other content to the page.
Not many changes under the hood other than that, though. I did some minor cleanup in the markup and CSS, but left things largely intact, since this upgrade was focussed on widescreen. I may revisit this at some point, though, and get the code a little neater.
If you’re using IE6, it probably looks horrible. I haven’t had a chance to test for it yet, since I’m running IE7 at home, and haven’t installed the VirtualPC image yet. Sometime in the next week or two, I’ll get IE6 compatability working, but in the meantime, I’ll just encourage you to check out the site in Firefox or IE7.
I'm a 30-year-old 
pssst …
Just between you, me and the fencepost … mistletoe has rounded leaves and white berries. What you have is holly … pointed leaves and red berries. But, maybe if we don’t say anything, no-one will notice … B-)
December 11th, 2006 at 8:35 am
I like the mistletoe, too! Also, I think it is cool that you guys are keeping track of ‘baby stuff’ like you are. I hope you take occasional screen shots for a scrapbook or baby book. I know it sounds dumb, but when she is older I think she’ll be interested to know how excited you are. :-)
December 13th, 2006 at 12:34 am
What if Zoe is born and she doesn’t look like a Zoe? Is there a backup plan?
December 16th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
That’s such a great idea, I’m stealing it. Because it would be great to make Leilani (or Zoe) an iPhoto book with photos interspersed with blog entries about her. She’d probably get a kick out of that.
December 17th, 2006 at 1:20 pm