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Patrick • 06/28/03 • 1:11 PM:

I’ve finished up the Category Archive pages. Click on a category and you’ll see the layout. The pages display the short version of each entry in the category (i.e. you may have to “read more”), and the righthand column lists all the entries, their dates, and their authors. This is redundant, but may be useful if you’re looking for something quickly in a category that’s got a lot of entries. Note that the author names are links, but they don’t yet work. They will. We’ll each have our own “author” page that we can put some info on. Coming soon. If you have any suggestions (i.e. for sidebar), let me know. One thing I’m going to try to do, but not just yet, is divide long categories into several pages of 10 entries each or something. I know it can be done, but it’s a bit tricky.

Dan • 06/28/03 • 4:50 PM:

ok, for readability considerations check out under consideration.

also, the dates on maddenation entries are too tracked out. don’t track them at all, please. i’m dead serious. stop it. write it normal. then put the date below the dotted line, not above. do this. this way every bit of information for a post is within dotted lines. the css stuff is looking nice, especially when resizing. it works on a PC as far as i can tell, except:

the calendar is WAY right. push it back in towards the picture.

the last 3 categories are flush left (like, all the way on the left of the page) because there aren’t many entries to occupy the center spaces. i’m assuming that “authors” and “links” are supposed to be lined up to the right of the entries like the calendar and “recent comments” and “archives” are. they aren’t. they’re totally left also. check that out.

lastly, in order to easily create links and bolds and stuff in comments, add HTML quick tags (into the comments template).

Dad • 06/28/03 • 6:20 PM:

OK, I just did a comment, but before I posted it, I clicked on another comment link and the new comment overwrote my comment and I lost it. I know it was a stupid thing to do, but I was looking for something to make sure my comment was accurate, and I ended up loosing the whole thing. Can this be prevented from happening?

anyway, now when I visit maddenation, the sidebar is gone, but appears at the bottom of the page after the entries. Will this be fixed later?

I like the new authors sort, and I like giving the name of the person making the recent comment. However, I’m not sure we need the word “entries” after every number. Isn’t it obvious what the numbers mean?

Also, I’d like comments to be included in the search space as well as entries. Is this possible? Sometimes the comments head off in a different direction and some good thoughts might be difficult to find if we have to remember which entry precipitated it.

Patrick • 06/28/03 • 10:58 PM:

Dad:

1) If you lose your comments like you did, you can just hit “Back” under the “Go” menu in your browser. Unless you don’t have that on a PC. Or try [ (left square bracket). That should get you back to where you were. Sorry you lost your stuff.

2) Re: the sidebar. I am working on it. It appears in the right position on my computer. For Dan, it is on the right, but it shoots left under the entries (now the entries are shorter than the sidebar). Dad, you should probably update your browser. Can you tell me what version you have? In any case, I’m going to fix it. Please let me know how it looks now (remember that it looks correct on my computer).

3) I thought the recent comments thing was a little better with the commenter’s name, because then you know if someone posted a new comment after your comment on the same day. It’s still not perfect (for instance, it could tell you how many comments were made on a particular day, but I don’t really know how to do that). I just changed it so you can see total comments, and date and name of most recent comment(er).

4) I agree that “entries” is unnecessary, and I will remove it. Gone.

5) Do you mean that you want to be able to search within the comments? Confirm that that’s what you mean, and I’ll look into it.

Patrick • 06/28/03 • 11:36 PM:

Dan (sorry for answering out of order):

1) What do you mean by checking out Under Consideration for readability issues? It looks like a nice site (too wide, of course), but what am I looking for?

2) Remember that the dates are for all the entries on that date, so they may be over several entries (even though they aren’t that way currently). That said, why don’t you like the tracking? Offer me some variations to consider.

3) I tried something to “fix” the calendar’s position. Since it looked fine on my computer, I don’t know if it worked. Let me know. Even on my computer it’s a smidgen to the right (lines up under the U in JUNE) because the dates are centered. But I never saw it “way right.”

4) I believe I have fixed the problem with the sidebar kicking left or hanging left. We just worked it out with Dad over the phone for his machine too. Make sure and let me know.

5a) I believe I can do something like those HTML quick tags, but I’ve deleted the example from your comment because a) you just typed in the tags, so the browser renders them, b) I spent far too long trying to get them to show up as code (using > and < etc.), c) but there was a problem with the quotes, and I couldn’t fix it, even after trying several things, d) since it was meant for my benefit, and I know what you mean, I just deleted them.

5b) Everyone should also just remember the dang Textile codes that can format your text in HTML. I can put a reminder thing in the comments box too.

5c) I may not get to that right away. I’m not sure yet how to do it.

5d) I’m converted to the idea that you shouldn’t use the target=_blank tag, but instead allow visitors to choose to “open link in new window” if they want to. But if you are going to open a new window for them, use target=_new which opens one new window, and then uses that same window for future newly opened window. It’s slightly better, more conscientious.

Patrick • 06/29/03 • 12:49 AM:

I have just finished making the Individual Archive pages uniform (i.e. the page for each individual entry, the page you get when you click on “read more”). They’re a little bland. I’m open to suggestions. They have links above the entry to the previous and the next posts. I took the sidebar off. Do you think we should have it there? If so, what features should it have?

Dan • 06/29/03 • 11:29 AM:

hey, can you encode email addresses in the comments? does it do that automatically? look at www.typographi.ca. comments.

also look at typographi.ca’s dates. they’re serif and untracked and below the line. i know why you put the date above the line, for multiple entries per day, but just date each entry. who cares if there’s 2 or 3 of the same date sometimes?

i have nothing against tracking, but only when necessary. don’t track the dates. it’s not necessary and it doesn’t really look cool.

could you put a vertical dotted line extending 100% down the page to the right of entries, dividing them from the links and stuff? line it up with the maddenation picture. this would mean bringing in the entry text a couple points. you also might want to consider dotting the outline of the picture.

i also don’t like the blue you use for entry titles. it’s a grey navy blue or something. try just navy blue.

try putting the date in the same orange as the headings on the right.

for “recent comments,” left justify the “29 Jun 03 by Patrick”. it looks bad blocked right. also, for the titles of the entries there, try making them the same color as the titles of the entries on the left.

bolding for everything on the right side seems unnecessary. try it without bold. the gross ugly color you’re currently using for that you will have to change, make darker. i know this because the comments and times after entries are difficult to read. that color needs to be darker.

formatt (css) that search box and button.

i’m viewing everything now on a mac. geez, serif fonts look way better on a mac than PC. i almost want you to change the entry font to serif. of course, that changes for most people. oh well. keep it sans.

about comment searching: the current search only looks for words in original entries. it doesn’t look in comments. this is a problem. google, however, does find stuff from our comments i believe. that is weird.

at any point will we consider password protecting this site?

target=blank IS the way to go. what are you thinking? i see no argument against it.

Patrick • 06/29/03 • 12:24 PM:

1) Our email addresses are encoded to ward off spam (read MTCommentEmail). It’s automatic. How? I dunno. A human being can see the email address in a browser, but it’s hidden from spiders. (Check the source code of these comments and find your email, and you’ll see.) (By the way, what’re you giving a maddenation email address for if you thought it could get spammed? Jerk. You want our web server space filled with spam?) What I can definitely do is not show the email address at all (people who don’t enter a URL will show up without a link to their name). But I don’t know if that’s necessary.

2) I can change the date format, no problem, but I can’t get it to show above every entry. Only once per day. Typographica has it only once per day anyway. If there’s more than one entry on that day, they’re both under it. Give me time to work on more pressing issues, then we can change the colors and tracking of all sorts of things. But thanks for the suggestion.

3) I cannot, under the current site setup (the way I’ve done the CSS), put the dotted line like you want it. This is because the picture is in the same div tag as the entry text. If I put a line it, it’d be next to the picture as well as next to the entries. I will keep in in mind, though, when I have time. I don’t think it’s an essential change, but I can see where it might be good. I don’t like the idea of a dotted line around the picture.

4) Color changes, unbolding for titles, dates, links etc. Good. But that will come later. Why not get the hex codes for the colors for me?

5) Under “recent comments” the date and author are not blocked right, they’re indented 1.5em. They look really bad left justified with the entry title, and since they’re a continuation of the same information, they should be indented. If, in some case, in another list, they were also linked, you’d be confused if everything were left justified the same. Like a resume or something. I can indent them less if you like.

6) I will format the search and login boxes and buttons. Later.

7) New browsers are starting to anti-alias text. My new IE does it. Looks kind of cool. We’ll stick with sans-serif for now. Can change it quickly later if we want.

8) Both you and Dad want to let Search find comments. This can certainly be done if we display the comments on the individual archive pages (one page per entry, what you get when you click on the time of entry, or on the title in the “recent comments” sidebar). That will make the pages bigger, filewise, but I think I’ll go ahead and do it. It’s a good feature, and that way you don’t have to have the popup comments when you’re looking at an individual entry. On the main page, they’ll still be popup comments though.

9) I can easily, easily password protect the site. Let’s hear arguments pro and con. I’d like our extended family to be able to check in eventually, and telling everyone the password will cause problems and forgettings. Why don’t we want other people to see the site?

10) You’re crazy about target=_blank. What if you have, like I did yesterday, a main popup page with a series of 6 categorical links. Each one opens a new page. No. Ugh. Much better: Open one page in a target=_new window, then I go back to the “table of contents window” when I’m done and I open another section in that same other window. At the end I have two windows, not seven. And anyway, if people really want a new window, they can choose “open link in new window.” If they don’t know how to do that, they can use their Back button.

Patrick • 06/30/03 • 12:59 AM:

By the way, to see way super email encryption, check out coudal.com (look at source code where there are a bunch of huge weird javascripts in a row). Whoa.

Patrick • 06/30/03 • 1:37 PM:

By the way, I think the supercoolness I aspire to for our site is demonstrated on antipixel.com. (That’s a sample individual entry page, see also the home page, navigate around.) It’s got everything! So seamlessly integrated with things you might want to link to, so clean, so organized. It’s got dropdown links to the categories and month archives. It’s got related entries. It’s got good design. Check it out.

Patrick • 06/30/03 • 1:54 PM:

In doing some more research about the email encoding on the site, I’ve discovered this on antipixel.com (which uses Movable Type as do we):

bq.If you write a comment and provide an e-mail address but no URL, the address will be linked to your name but will be encoded to help protect against spammers. It’s not a strong level of protection, unfortunately, so if you’re worried about your address being ‘harvested,’ it’s best not to include it. If you provide an e-mail address and a URL, the URL will be used in preference and the e-mail link will not appear.

So, I’ll be taking steps to remove the emails from the links, or do something else to it. I think I can have it link only to URLs. But maybe we want to have other people’s emails if they ever comment on things? So maybe we should all use our spammable emails (like my yahoo account)? Dialogue?

Dad • 06/30/03 • 10:53 PM:

I always put in dad at maddenation, which has my “real” email behind it. I could make it my hotmail one, which is my spam catcher. However, hotmail has this nasty habit of filling up on garbage if you don’t clean it out. If I lose that ID, I can never get my real name back (Ask Kate and Karina), so I’m conflicted.

Patrick • 07/01/03 • 9:59 AM:

1) I haven’t really set up the maddenation email accounts yet. I’ve been stalling while I think about how to do it best.

2) I’d rather nobody ever know that there are any email accounts at maddenation. There is a default “catcher” email account set up that will grab any emails sent to maddenation. Someone sends to info at, and it gets caught. Someone sends to webmaster at, and it gets caught. I can turn that off, I guess, but anyway, I’d also like to keep maddenation totally secret from the email perspective. The reason is that if you get email, it takes up your server space (until you delete it, of course).

3) What I’m going to do today is make it so the comments don’t show your email address at all. If you enter a URL, that will show. I don’t know if this will work backwards and remove email links from comments that are already in the system, but if it doesn’t, I think I can do something else.

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