Views from Medina Road

I just now posted a new version of the homepage that's been redesigned with more extensive use of style sheets and a simplified html layout. I started the redesign late last year when I was attempting a blogger/RSS supported version of the page, a task I'll get back to eventually. For now, today's redesign streamlines the html and makes it easier to edit and maintain. (There's no embedded table for the middle section anymore, just header and para tags suitably defined. And, to paraphrase Mommie Dearest, no more font tags!.) It should look virtually identical to the previous version -- captured for the moment here -- the only intentional difference being some tweaks to the coloring and linking of headlines in the center section. If anything else looks different, or wrong, let me know of course.

I'm sure the page will not look right in older browsers -- such as Netscape 4.7, which I still have installed -- but the same is true of lots of sites these day. And even current browsers have some css problems The one bug I spent some time solving, or avoiding, is something that turns out to be known as the IE version 6 'peek-a-boo' bug, where text aligned next to an image tends to disappear when scrolling the page, or tabbing to another application and back again. This was happening in the center section at every entry where a thumbnail cover is shown. There are complicated workarounds that css hacks have discovered; I think I solved it by just using different tags than the ones that cause the problem.

The next step is to extend the style consistency to all the current pages, which I've been doing piecemeal for a while, but not systematically. There are still pages with links indicated by underlines...