New Template

I get a lot of messages complaining about web presentation. Some people did not like the blue background. Some people did not like the use of italics to show quotations. Some people found serif fonts difficult. Some people found sans-serif fonts difficult. The text wasn’t large enough. It was too large. Some people like Times New Roman. Some people like Arial. No one liked Garamond. Whenever I tried to fix some feature for one reader, it seemed to make things worse for another. It tells me that the software engineers are still behind the curve. Web pages ought to be dynamically generated on a viewer’s browser according to the specifications set by the viewer. It wouldn’t be so hard to do, and IE does use dynamic fonts already. But my readers shouldn’t have been having all these problems with a simple thing like viewing a web site.

My own advice to people with these problems is to use the latest version of Netscape or its open-source analogue, Mozilla. Under View, it has a text zoom function. You can set it to say 120% if the text seems too small. I am puzzled by the trouble people have with viewing the site, since I travel a lot and use lots of different computers at internet cafes or hotel business centers, and I have never ever found it difficult to read on any of the machines I’ve used.

But, anyway, I’ve decided to upgrade the template. I’m using Douglas Bowman’s Minima (www.stopdesign.com), with warm thanks to Mr. Bowman. The new design seems to me to solve most of the problems people have complained to me about. No doubt it will create new ones. People with browser problems could use an rss feed like that at livejournal.com (which might solve a lot of the problems readers have with the blog itself).

Blogger has upgraded its services and seems to be functioning really well now, and I feel very comfortable with it. The new template is one of the standard ones they now provide. In a way, it is not a big deal, since I could after all simply design an HTML page and update it, and ftp the updated page myself. The automatic inclusion of archive anchor links is nice, though, and that is something I would otherwise have to do myself. If I get too many complaints, that is what I might start doing, though.

By the way, please use the email address listed at the side bar. This site is mostly analytical, but occasionally politics does enter in, and I should use private resources to communicate about politics. I may not always be able to reply to comments and suggestions, for lack of time. I appreciate the many expressions of support.

cheers Juan

New Template

I get a lot of messages complaining about web presentation. Some people did not like the blue background. Some people did not like the use of italics to show quotations. Some people found serif fonts difficult. Some people found sans-serif fonts difficult. The text wasn’t large enough. It was too large. Some people like Times New Roman. Some people like Arial. No one liked Garamond. Whenever I tried to fix some feature for one reader, it seemed to make things worse for another. It tells me that the software engineers are still behind the curve. Web pages ought to be dynamically generated on a viewer’s browser according to the specifications set by the viewer. It wouldn’t be so hard to do, and IE does use dynamic fonts already. But my readers shouldn’t have been having all these problems with a simple thing like viewing a web site.

My own advice to people with these problems is to use the latest version of Netscape or its open-source analogue, Mozilla. Under View, it has a text zoom function. You can set it to say 120% if the text seems too small. I am puzzled by the trouble people have with viewing the site, since I travel a lot and use lots of different computers at internet cafes or hotel business centers, and I have never ever found it difficult to read on any of the machines I’ve used.

But, anyway, I’ve decided to upgrade the template. I’m using Douglas Bowman’s Minima (www.stopdesign.com), with warm thanks to Mr. Bowman. The new design seems to me to solve most of the problems people have complained to me about. No doubt it will create new ones. People with browser problems could use an rss feed like that at livejournal.com (which might solve a lot of the problems readers have with the blog itself).

Blogger has upgraded its services and seems to be functioning really well now, and I feel very comfortable with it. The new template is one of the standard ones they now provide. In a way, it is not a big deal, since I could after all simply design an HTML page and update it, and ftp the updated page myself. The automatic inclusion of archive anchor links is nice, though, and that is something I would otherwise have to do myself. If I get too many complaints, that is what I might start doing, though.

By the way, please use the email address listed at the side bar. This site is mostly analytical, but occasionally politics does enter in, and I should use private resources to communicate about politics. I may not always be able to reply to comments and suggestions, for lack of time. I appreciate the many expressions of support.

cheers Juan