reset yer browsers
September 29th, 2009 | Uncategorized
I’m about to make a change here on the blog. One I’ve talked about in the past, but am only just getting around to implementing with the able assistance of my new web guru, the other Alison. Very soon you will see, when you come to dykestowatchoutfor.com, not this blog but an index page. The idea is to have a regular kind of author’s or illustrator’s website, on which the blog will be one of many options. I hope you’ll all keep coming to the blog. But there’ll be a little extra click, or a resetting of your bookmarks, to get here.
This is a change I’ve really been eager to make since it clarifies what I do, and separates my personal, actual self a bit from my job. Any suggestions or ideas as we make the transition are welcome.
97 Responses to “reset yer browsers”
Perhaps you can have some info about the most recent blog posts on the index page. I usually scan the first page looking for a new post or an updated message count. I’d be so disappointed to click through to the blog page only to find nothing new.
Also, for the blog page, I’m still hoping that Alison AG (all hail she who hath numbered the replies!) will find a way to put the date of the latest reply after the message count.
Just to echo what HOH says above. There should already be some code on the WordPress template that lists latest blog posts. And I know Towleroad and Queerty both have lists of recent comments on the posts, although not dates IIRC.
But yes, a list of the latest 4 to 6 blog posts on the index page will definitely add value to the home page.
You go, Alison… er, and Alison2.
Where you go, we’ll go with you.
Here’s to making a webpage that supports your awesome work. And to the community you spawned, even if we have to click a little more to find each other….
love the new page and the bike bell
The new home is stunning! All caps, boldface, and underscored — I love it!
Foo on the front page. It displays a blank page with Java and Javascript disabled. I took a guess and appended /blog to the URL to get back here.
@HOH
hmm, what browser with Java and Javascript disabled? I tested it with both of those off in Safari & Firefox and it worked for me. The rest of the browsers I mostly tested with that on though.
Cute as the bike bell is, it freaked me out a bit. I like my websites to stay quiet unless asked to make sounds, thank you very much… 🙂
I love the new website!
@AAG (#8)
Firefox 2.x, both Windoze and Linux. Source shows up, but I don’t see any provisions for non-Javascript.
Guess I’ll just navigate directly to /blog. Interestingly, if I explicitly add index.html to the URL, I get a 404 with the template sidebars.
The new entrance to your website is fine, Alison. You are our host, we are your guests, after all!Uh… I’ve got to ask: WHAT bike bell? And what’s that… OHMYGOSH, Mo and Sydney are really gettin’ it on like a couple of women geologists in one of the panels!!!! Should we even be watching??? 🙂
Kate — run your mouse over the CONTACT panel.
I love the new portico (is that the right word?) to the site. Gorgeous detail and color.
OMG I had no idea you had something like that planned! That’s fantastic. Very snazzy n’ classy indeedy. The bike bell surprised me too. How does it feel to ‘break the silence’ conceptually speaking?
HoH, you being you I’m sure you have a good reason to still be using Firefox 2, but what is it?
I basically like the new design of the home page. FWIW I find that brown wash a little dingy and off-putting. Any chance it could either be warmed up or made more neutral? I realize the idea is to set off the moused-over panel, but this could be done with a color that didn’t look so much like, well, dirt. (On a mac book, quasi-calibrated with Apple’s software routine.)
If you load the home page with your pointer in the middle of the window, the panel your pointer happens to be over will brighten and lose its label. This could be confusing to someone visiting the site for the first time. Is there any way to require that the pointer move before the panel changes? And why not leave the label on the panel even as it changes color and illustration? I’d like to be able to confirm that I’m pointing at the right panel immediately before I click on it.
HoH and Ian, 1 and 2, I also like the idea of showing the time of the most recent comment on each post, which would make it easy to tell if there are new comments. Alison, since the blog index page is no longer your home page, it might be worth putting the most recent comment from each post on the blog index page. That would make it easy to tell if there are new comments, and you no longer have the problem of potentially putting something troublesome on your home page. It would only be on the blog index page.
It would be nice if the words “Alison Bechdel” were more prominent on the home page — perhaps larger, and in a color? Just to make it perfectly obvious to first-time users whose site they are visiting. The idea for the home page is clever, but the viewer is expecting a centered web site, not a left-to-right comic. There’s nothing to draw the eye to the top left panel.
I hope some of that is useful.
Looks great!
I really like the new index page . . . the design and the idea . . . and, yes, of course we’ll all still visit 🙂
@Andrew B (#14)
More than you ever wanted to know about my laptops…
The Firefox version is at 2.x is because the little laptops I use most often are vastly underpowered with teensy storage. A tiny Asus Linux machine with tiny solid state drive, and an ancient tiny Thinkpad Windoze machine with serious disk size and RAM limitations.
Also, because once I set up all the Firefox extensions (some of which fight against each other), I dread having to hunt down new versions of them and getting them to peacefully coexist. I went through that going from 1.x to 2.x.
Why those two particular machines, I hear you asking. I can’t do anything even remotely personal on work-issued laptop or desktop (or on work network), so I tote one of these around with me in addition to the official work HP laptop (which could double as a boat anchor), test equipment, tools, etc.
I get my workout hauling all this crap from one job site to the next, so really small and really light are the overriding factors, I’m not running AutoCAD on them. They do e-mail, word processing, spreadsheet, and websurfing quite well.
Both machines get tossed around a lot.
The Thinkpad has taken a brutal pounding (quite literally) for nearly this entire decade and survived, including mishaps such as a klutzy colleague who knocked it to the floor from a desk and stepped on it while it was running.
The Asus is not holding up well, it was a cheap little machine and yes, it’s cheaply made. The Thinkpad was expensive at the time, but like all my other Thinkpads, it’s been very durable.
I love the change! It looks gorgeous, professional, engaging… I think it makes complete sense. And I love the little details, like the changes to the images when I move the cursor over them.
Beautiful!!
Debs
@AB & AAG: Love it!
@others: If you want to know when new postings go up, why not just follow the site on iGoogle? It will notify you of each update.
Cool.
Alison+Alison: Really nice.
Will it break the RSS feeds we’ve subscribed to for the blog?
I read your blog in my Netvibes page every morning, just need to know whether I will still be able to do this.
WOW!! Pretty impressive new layout! The doorbell rings when I get near the “Contact” box, LOL! Wonder if it rings @ AD’s house, too. (And thanks for keepin’ the mustard color.) Best wishes to all.
The index (welcome page? Thingy?) looks great!
Of course, I meant, “Wonder if it rings @ >AB’s< house,too." (I even used the Preview function, so no excuse!)
I like it a lot! My only suggestion would be some subtle background color – the white looks kind of stark and unfinished. (There’s my bias against white walls showing.) I agree with Andrew that your name needs to be a bit more prominent – maybe just a different color, as he suggests. But I think the overall look is beautiful. Also, while clicking through, I saw you’ll be in Chicago soon!
Acilius, 19, I don’t want to use iGoogle because Google already knows more about me than I’m really happy about. I don’t want to tell them what all my main interests on the web are. I am anything but a market fundamentalist, but as long as we have a market economy I want it to work in my favor as much as possible. That means not exacerbating the information disparity between myself as consumer and the producers I meet in the market. (Anybody who feels like reminding me that my economic privacy is already about as solid as swiss cheese: yes, I know that. I don’t want it to get worse.)
HoH, 17, yech. My Mac Book is still recent enough that I can run pretty much what I want, but Apple and the various developers are no doubt working to solve that problem for me…
Love the changing panels, hate the bell.
I don’t like my computer to make sounds I haven’t told it to.
To the Alisons, referring to my 14, above, stupid choice of words to describe that brown wash. I’m sorry about that. FWIW I still think the home page could be brighter and more inviting without wrecking the basic idea of highlighting the moused over panel. (I particularly like the “Books” panel.)
oh god. am i the only one getting a high-pitched screeching noise that stops my heart and rips my eardrums when i click on the boxes?!
I love it!!! Beautiful…. especially Mo and Syd!
and I only hear the bike bell when I go to the contacts box… everything else is silent
I like the bike bell.
Wow, what a shock to click my little bookmark bar thingy and to end up somewhere completely unexpected! I think it looks lovely –the color scheme struck me right away as being sort of sepia, in tune with the Fun Home domestic aesthetic.
I agree with Andrew B. (14) about doing something to make the first two panels stand out more. Larger font might do it, different colors, maybe something to capture the effect of a hand colored black and white photo? And is there a plan to have those panels change, too? I think that would be great–maybe to a drawing of young Alison drawing herself?
It looks like a labor of love for the Alisons.
So when do you change from DTWOF dot com to AlisonBechdel dot com?
Ian,
I’m not gonna change that, I’m just gonna make it so that if someone types in “alisonbechdel.com” they end up at “dykestowatchoutfor.com.”
It’s a surprisingly complex procedure, even though I own both domain names.
I suppose I was expecting that to be vice versa – that when someone typed in dtwof dot com they’d end up at alisonbechdeldotcom. I just get the impression that you now want to spread your wings to focus on you the artist and your work as well as the strip you’re known for.
But I do appreciate the complexity of arranging it! When I ran my own blog I purchased a domain name for it which in itself was a complex procedure. Wondering who to buy it from, what the difference was, just what was I purchasing? And then, the details of “pointing” your whatnots to your hoohas (technical terms both, but the correct terms elude me) were very bewildering to me. I wouldn’t mind, but I consider myself fairly web-literate, however I was flying by the seat of my pants with no idea of what I was doing. Luckily it all worked out ok, but I wouldn’t even have known who to contact if it hadn’t, never mind what to do about it!
it’s so pretty!
I like it too;so far,no bells and whistles have issued forth.
The index page is drop dead gorgeous Alison! I love the sepia tones and the use of your illustrations.
Hoorah!
love the new look
wow. i don’t understand it, but i’m still getting the loud screech. not on every box now, but for sure on the events and contact ones. it sounds like an amplifier that’s gone crazy. truly. it makes my heart skip a beat.
@Frances (#42)
There’s only one function in AAG’s Javascript that plays a sound. She’s got a mouseover function for the Contact link that plays the bicycle bell .WAV sound file when you hover the cursor over Contact.
Here’s the sound file:
http://dykestowatchoutfor.com/wp-content/themes/ab/images/homepage/bicyclebell.wav
Try clicking on it and see if you hear noise or the bell. There might be something screwy with your computer’s sound drivers (software) or your speakers (hardware). My little Linux box’s sound drivers got messed up when I installed VLC, so this isn’t just a Windoze thing, it can happen to a decent operating system too.
I find un-asked-for sounds on webpages offensive and rude. They interfere with screen readers for the visually impaired, and of course they are useless for the hearing-impaired. Able-bodied hegemony, if you ask me. As if the world needs more of that.
Speaking of bad software design for the differently-abled, in my hunt for continued gainful employment, I’ve had the misfortune of using a bunch of online employment applications. Some of these are truly terrible, and not only for those with disabilities.
The worst one so far has been the user-hostile POS that my current employer requires of all applicants. It’s a canned app from SAP, and it’s so bad that I’d short SAP stock if I owned any.
If an applicant has visual or motion impairments, using this app is like trying to nail Jello to a wall. And for all applicants, it’s a total joke. Summarize each of your prior employment experiences in 1000 characters. Show how you meet the requirements of the posted job in 5000 characters. Yes CHARACTERS, not words. Spend hours trying to fit one’s education and training into little boxes, and then discover that the system truncated two thirds of the entries. Print out a preview of the application and discover that it randomly drops words and characters, even though they appear on the screen.
I’m not surprised, however… My current employer makes us management types go through all these online training classes each year. One of them is a class on complying with the requirements of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). The online training class on the ADA, however, is itself NOT compliant with the requirements of the ADA for accessible design. I pointed this out to our evil HR director, and she just shrugged. I had to suffer through the exact same training the following year. :(.
@Ian #36: “the details of “pointing” your whatnots to your hoohas were very bewildering to me.” The last time I pointed my whatnots to my hoohas I wound up in the hospital for a week.
@h_o_h #43: “The online training class on the ADA, however, is itself NOT compliant with the requirements of the ADA for accessible design”- I can believe it. My wife has cerebral palsy, and every time she’s searched for a job it’s been like doing research for a Doctor of Juridical Science dissertation on discrimination against the disabled.
Looking good!
I don’t like the doorbell/bike bell, but at least I get it only on ‘Contact’. (I use Opera as a
browser.)
WOW!!! Beautiful! So very like a comix artist’s should be. Yet, if I may, slightly puzzling at first sight: I somehow thought it was under construction for a few secs.
I had not heard the bike bell (use my computer with sounds muffled, so I cannot hear the mails pouring in reminding me I should be working instead), but now I am fantasizing it rings when you touch a part of the site that has something new.
Congrats, you Allisons totally rock.
“I’ll just tell you right now, #368 is no longer available.”
Indeed!
The link at “#368” is broken, too…
@Alex K (#48)
Episode #368, like all the other ones which used to be available at Planetout, are lost somewhere in PO’s web reshuffle. It happened a few months ago, and I haven’t been able to figure out where DTWOF or Ethan Green are archived on that site.
HOH 49:
One interesting thing I noticed: When you go to the now-apparently-invalid page you don’t get the expected 404/”Page not found” warning.
Rather, you get blank page (for example, if you do a “View Source” the content comes up blank).
…at least that’s what happens on my system.
Of course, if someone’s really desperate for an old-school-DTWOF fix (as presented on PlanetOut), there’s always the WayBack Machine:
http://www.archive.org/index.php
(The link for the cartoon in question is:
http://www.planetout.com/entertainment/comics/dtwof/archive/368.html
)
I like it!
This looks really neat! A good concept and very, very nicely done! And easy to navigate too ( not always the case…).
Shouldn’t be that hard to set up a redirect, as long as one has hosting set up for both sites. Only minimal hosting is required for the site doing the redirecting; storage and bandwidth only becomes a concern for the destination site.
A single line of code in the header of the index section is sufficient to send all to the desired destination. [META
http-equiv=”refresh”
content=”0;URL=http;\\dykestowatchoutfor.com\”] is the obfuscated version of it. Change the semicolon and two backslashes to a colon and two forward slashes, and the final backslash to a forward slash as well. Of course, change the square brackets to angle brackets too.
The zero at the beginning of the content parameter represents the number of seconds before the redirection takes place. The result is that users who visit alisonbechdeldotcom will be instantly redirected to this site.
Previewed it twice and STILL made an error. It should say “in the header section of the index page” instead of “in the header of the index section”. The other Alison should know what I mean anyway. 🙂
Most excellent
Excellent!!! I love the feel, very illustrative.
Okay, the bike ring did throw me… I kept thinking Skype was calling or something.
Wow, the new welcome page is amazing! Professional and beautifully done. Congrats.
Ginjoint!
I’ve been trying to email you. Have you changed your address? Can you email me please?
Wohohoho!!! Awesome!
My only reservation is about the bells. I think sounds should be used very seldom if at all on a website. Your visitor might be listening to music full blast, and then what? Deaf visitors. Can’t have that.
Everybody is so enthusiastic about the new web site that I’m reluctant to change the topic to a real downer, but if I didn’t I wouldn’t be me. My friend had a PET scan yesterday, and when she finds out the results she’ll have better idea of what the future holds for her life expectancy-wise. As we say at such times at the Fellowship, either your prayers or your positive thought energy for my friend would be appreciated over the next few days!
I do like the new look of the website, btw…
I love the new look! Bravo Alison and Alison!
Love love love this. It looks great!
I love the way you’ve rearranged the furniture on your website. The feng shui rocks, and you do, too! Excellent.
In case you forget amid all this electronic freszy, another way to track down former DTWOF strips is to buy Alison’s books. Yeah, those paper and ink things.
@ Kate L, positive thoughts on their way right now.
@Kate L, best wishes to your friend.
@KateL: Positive thoughts winging their way through the ethereal plane as we speak.
Kate L – another cliff-hanger – I wish your friend well.
I am now slightly concerned that every time I post a whittery comment the masses are alerted on igoogle – they flock to read the next pithy witticism or life changing wisdom and it is me and my “Hoorah!” ???!!!??? Oh well – bad luck – but have a lovely, if blustery day!
Naturally I waited until everybody else had their say to drop in! I love the changing panels, I haven’t heard the bell yet (my speakers are wired weird) but I’m so happy that the blog is still mustard. I love the color of the index page, but my favorite color is mouse anyway. St Jerome likes the mouse color too. He is sleeping rather than pouncing, but he is one old kitty cat, and doe4sn’t pounce much any more.
Totally off topic (but when has that ever mattered around here?), comes the announcement of this year’s Ig Nobel prize winners. The most-noted winner at the 19th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony was the entry by Dr. Elena Bodnar for a bra which converts to a pair of gas masks.
Check out the drawing from the patent application, it reminded me of those wacky inventions from Mad Magazine:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8285380.stm
I can just see it now… lots of “accidental” releases of noxious gases just so someone can get her/his jollies watching women removing their “over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders” and perhaps getting to use one of the pair of gas masks contained therein.
My favorite of the winning entries was the Chemistry prize, awarded for creating diamonds from tequila. I’ll drink to that.
Beautiful!
Though for a brief and splendid second I thought I was being treated to a new DTWOF episode. I can always wish, can’t I?
Creating diamonds from tequila?? Isn’t that a waste of good tequila?
@HOH Newcastle University got an ignoble prize for discovering cows with names produce more milk – Animal husbandry indeed?!? In the UK it makes the news if anyone British gets an international prize – in fact it is pretty much what all the Oscar coverage is about. But bless the men and Daisy for their hard work.
@AB I think the two tone of the white and sepia look great and it accentuates the highlighted image – a shaded background would detract from this. I love the animation of our two horny love birds and I think the bell is a nice touch – just when we expect a changing image – aha. In short the home page is fun, attractive, stimulating and a little bit quirky – not unlike our esteemed host.
The moving pic of Syd and Mo takes me that little closer to visualising an animated DTWOF. The only question is that I can’t decide which character would be voiced by Lily Tomlin …
Good point, Ellen. Kate, I’m thinking ’bout your friend…I hope she has a lot of support around her.
@Kat (#73)
I suppose it could be considered a waste of good tequila if you like tequila (I don’t).
I’d be more concerned about the waste of good beer that ensued from the research which garnered the Ig Nobel prize for Peace, which sought to answer the question, “Is it is better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle?” (Answer: The recyclable half-liter bottles used by Swiss breweries are capable of skull fractures when used as weapons regardless of fill state, but empty beer bottles are more dangerous to the skull.)
@Ali (#74)
I love the title of the cow name research study, “Exploring Stock Managers’ Perceptions of the Human-Animal Relationship on Dairy Farms and an Association with Milk Production.”
In case you were wondering about the photo of one of the authors of the cow naming study, Catherine Douglas, that’s included in the BBC article above… she was unable to travel because she recently gave birth, so she sent a photo of herself, her infant daughter dressed in a cow suit, and a cow to the award ceremnony.
The complete list of Ig Nobel winners (along with links to the research papers and some photos), can be found here:
http://improbable.com/ig/winners/
The new homepage design is just perfect.
It’s a beautiful front page, showing the enormous range of what you’ve accomplished, Alison; paying homage to DTWOF as the seed from which all else gew; easily navigated; lovely, not-done-to-death colors; humorous; and with a preponderance of diverse powerful female figures.
Good, good job.
Hairball, until recently I was convinced that tequila and nail polish were secretly the same thing….A friend took me and Boyfriend to a swanky tequila bar a couple months ago, though, and it turns out that there are vast differences in taste and harshness. The smoothest and least nail polish-like, however, are also the most expensive….Still, gin and good dark ale are far better.
and yes, wasting good beer for an “Ig nobel prize” is pretty dumb…If you get a chance to try “1554-an enlightened black ale” from the people who make Fat Tire, do. It’s delish!
(hey A2 – the Strip Archive hyperlink in “Art for Sale” comes up as NOT FOUND)
Maggie said it eloquently (natch), and I agree wholeheartedly. It’s just gorgeous, Alison. I love it.
(and speaking of diverse powerful female figures — love ’em — isn’t it kinda funny that we bloggers hafta click thru Stuart to get here? I think AB may be having a little fun with us… 😉 )
May I make a humble suggestion (to keep or toss)? – that you create a link to News and Reviews from the About page. A lot of folks will enter the site via the About page (it’s like Page One), to learn about you. And it does seem like a shame, at least to me, that all your numerous awards are buried under News and Reviews – somehow I expected to see them (or at least a few of the most splashy ones) on the About page. Perhaps a link there would suit your modesty, AB?
ps Scratch Comment 83. Since Stuart’s profession is listed as Blogger (among other things), I guess that’s why he invites us into the blog….
R2A:83: (and speaking of diverse powerful female figures — love ‘em — isn’t it kinda funny that we bloggers hafta click thru Stuart to get here? I think AB may be having a little fun with us… 😉 )
Not sure how JR would feel about that… 😉
@R2A #83: Is it my imagination and I could be wrong (as I’m partly colour blind), but isn’t the colour of the wall behind Stuart a paler version of the pumpkin/mustard of the blog?
not your imag, Ian 🙂
@Ian #87:
I was going to say that it WAS your imagination, but then I’m partially color blind, too!
Something you’d like to tell us Kat? 😉
Ian, huh? (I think cold germs have me stupid today…)
Kat (#91)
I think Ian is referring to the sex chromosonal link to color blindness. It’s exceedingly rare in females because born women have two copies of the gene, one on each X chromosome. If one gene is defective (color blindness), the other copy (normal) takes over and provides color perception.
A female would have to inherit copies of the color blindness gene from each of her parents; the father would have to be color blind, and the mother would have to either be a carrier of the gene (one X chromosome with the gene) or color blind herself (both X chromosomes have the gene), for the daughter to exhibit color blindness.
Not entirely unrelated question… are you left-handed?
What HOH said. I’d be more eloquent but I’ve not had my morning cup of tea yet.
ah, yes, the genetic rarity that I am…
My dad’s not color blind, but relatives on both sides are. I’m luckier than my uncle, actually, who only knows which traffic lights are red and green based on their position. I’m not that bad, but I can’t play the card game “Set” because I can’t tell the red and green cards apart.
No, I’m not left handed, but I do have green eyes (another recessive trait).
And NO, it’s not funny to point to colors and demand that I identify them. I know you think it’s hilarious that I might call it beige when it’s pink, but I’m not laughing.
Oh Kat I feel ya! The time’s people have asked me to identify colours (or not) just so they can gratify their apparent need to go “oh how weird!” is really, really irritating.
Sadly my clothes have generally tended to be monochromatic ever since I bought what I thought was a grey shirt that turned out to be pink. I was sent an email recently advertising two waterproof jackets and the only difference I could see was that one was called “Forest” and the other “Burgundy”. I’ve since taken a stand against buying clothing companies who use euphemistic names like this as I can’t possibly be expected to know what actual colour they really mean.
yes! I tend to wear 3 colors: grey, black, and red. That way its really hard to muck things up. And I ask or check tags for color names so that I’m sure grey is grey….
Hey AB!
Love the new set up.. Awesome.. Totally your look and artistry. YAY!