Another Tech Update

Okay, first, it's nice to finally get a post up having the fifteenth letter in the alphabet as the opening letter in the opening paragraph. In the world of oversized first letters, the O may well be one of, if not the most endearing. And it's been all I could do to keep from forcing it into a post since we first added that feature a few days ago.

As for the rest of the blog and our continual work behind the scenes to improve upon and refine its quality of appearance, I think it's coming along very nicely. If you've been reading the comments, you're aware that Mom is responsible for the idea of the background color change in the header (I think it's a keeper, Mom. Thanks!), and that my good friend MT offered a suggestion along with an excellent example to study over at Katie's Dad's. Mom's suggestion was a bit easier to incorporate, of course, since it merely involved a color change. But we certainly won't allow the difficulty of adding a feature to deter us if in fact we count it a worthwhile addition. As Dad used to say: 'anything worth having is worth working for.' So, Mike, CTO knows how to do it, and he's just waiting on me to give him more specified instructions on that addition.

One of the coolest features newly added, in the opinions of CTO and I, is the scrollbar in the post section. It also happens to be one of the most challenging installations we've run across to date. Apparently blogger isn't set up for the addition of such a feature, and as of now there are no tech support resources to be found out there which explain how to do it. But I'm told that once you understand the limitations inherent to blogger, the addition of that and other features is really a fairly simple procedure. I'll take the word of CTO on that'n. And on that note, our very own CTO, to whom so many accolades have been directed lately, is himself working on his own 'tech support' blog. Look for it listed under my recommended links in the future.

To close this post out, let me reiterate that I'm very happy with the changes we've made over the last couple of weeks. The left and right sidebars, as opposed to just one sidebar, along with the post section in the center column was an absolute must as far as I was concerned because it would make or break the overall appearance I was looking for. It took a lot of technical work (again, on the part of CTO) to get that feature exactly as we needed it. But we finally got it, and I think that it makes for an outstanding feature overall.

And though I appreciate MT's honesty in expressing himself on the scrollbar feature, not to mention that his opinion on any matter ranks high with me, that's one feature that definately shall remain. But to show how much I value Mike's opinion on such matters, what we've done is to incorporate the feature with Mike's concern in mind. Essentially the way it'll work is this, and I need to get more material up to get the most benefit out of the incorporation, btw, so I have a lot of work to do: Whatever your preference is (use of the page scrollbar, and/or, use of the post scrollbar), both will be available to you, and both will function usefully in and of themselves so that the reader's personal preference is actually considered and accounted for. So with the addition of the post column scrollbar, we've very nearly 'had our cake and eaten it too;' a significant accomplishment in my books. ;)

Otherwise, if there are any other features that y'all can think of, or that you've seen somewhere else around the blogosphere, that you might think useful and appropriate to Web's, please do not hesitate to offer them up. I should say that we did try one feature that didn't really work out for us as we incorporated it -a 'read more' feature in the post section. This is not to say that we won't add it back in eventually, but it's very unlikely that we'll utilize it in the post section. The great likelihood is rather that we'll utilize the feature in conjunction with some other feature yet to be added. So once again, keep your eyes peeled for newly added features to this blog. But I think the overall look of the blog as you see it now is pretty much the way it shall remain, and I like it a lot, don't you?

-DW