Content-Type: RST

Those of you with eyes may have noticed the new site layout. I have
gotten a fair amount of complaints about this, since the new look/feel
is nowhere as shiny as the old one, but let me explain my reasoning. 

The old layout was requiring users to download aroung 500 KB of data
for every page load. This is, needless to say, pretty ridiculous,
since the primary download was the around 300 KB background image,
which adds nothing to the content, if not even drawing attention away
from it (sorry, jwalsh_). Secondly, I realized that between the side "panes" of empty
background and the main content, I had between two or three separating
"lines", which, while illustrating my underlying ``<div>`` structures,
didn't really do much for the design in and of itself. Thirdly, the
``fsufitch@ubuntu:~$`` banner was a rather useless use of "real
estate". There are other reasons, but all these plus a night I
couldn't sleep too well equals the design you now see.

.. _jwalsh: http://www.jwjwalsh.com

.. figure :: http://blog.opensourcenerd.com/upload/cat-ew

   Or, in a website's case: "rm it! rm it! rm it! rm it! rm it! rm
   it!".
   
I know it's not the prettiest thing, and I plan to remedy that. So, on
that note, some lessons learned:

- Prettyful landing page is `prettyful
  <http://www.opensourcenerd.com>`__.
- Non-centered pages are not very prettyful. 
- Pull-down menus are good. They conserve screen space.
- New theme will almost definitely be dark, since some of the images
  in my blog using transparency are currently broken.
- Need to put headers in the right spots, and meta tags on all pages. 
- Clear-cut CSS separation between overall site theme, and
  blog-specific rules.
- Absolute positioning *only if strictly necessary*.
- Font sizes should be scaled by ``em`` values (maybe?)
- Sorry, 5% of my readers, I will no longer make sure IE looks decent
  on my site, and a feature or page will be considered supported if
  supported by Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, and Opera. As
  such, you all will get a warning whenever visiting my site that
  *your browser sucks*.
- That being said, even if the browser supports CSS3, or has a fast
  engine, no browser is happy with heaps and heaps of it...

At this point you might be thinking "okay, that's all well and good,
but where is the actual new theme?" Well, I'm hoping to have some
input from **you** first. Anything is good, really, from suggestions
like "I wish your menu were rendered upside-down" to quick sketches of
designs to (maybe) full CSS demos of a site, though that would be
overkill.

A couple of notes, though.

Nobody should expect credit on every single page in the style of
"Layout copyright such-and-whom". I am not going to use any design in
exclusiveness, and unless you want me to claim intellectual property
for your ideas for my site, then don't give them to me. I'm serious.

.. figure :: http://blog.opensourcenerd.com/upload/tumbleweed-anim

   People who want to help now.

But really, I will thank those who give me the best ideas. Just don't
expect auto name-promotion.

Secondly, this is **not** an opportunity for blog feature
requests/wishlisting. I know I need a list of all uploads, a BBCode
preview button, comments via AJAX, using Atom feeds instead of RSS,
having a comment feed, etc etc etc. However! The WSGI infrastructure
of my blog is getting... clunky. Plus, I am unhappy with Durus and a
couple other things I'm doing, but that's a post for another day. For
now, let's leave it at strictly stylish changes. 

So, ideas?