I had some issues with the design I implemented earlier this summer so I went ahead and found a new one. Then I moved all the tailored code and spent some late evenings having fun with CSS, HTML and PHP. You should see the result in this blog right now.
Please click around and have a look. I still have some issues in Internet Explorer 6 (surprise!). If you use that browser I apologize. I will probably do some more adjustments, but the real solution is to switch to Firefox, Safari or Opera…
The current theme is based on a theme called Durable from Blaze New Media. Or, to be precise, it’s based on the widget ready version of that theme.
As you can see I have done quite a bit of adjustments and will probably keep experimenting. Feel free to comment on any errors, change requests etc.
eirikso 
And because I have activated a new theme I need to test that the comment feature still works… 🙂
It does. 😉
Have you considered using black or a darker background color? I find light color more intense for the eyes. Read somewhere that if most of the web-sites where using darker color you the use of electricity would drop significantly. So there you have the global warming aspect of websites! Do you feel accountable?
Interesting thought. eirikso.com – ecological edition
I will keep experimenting and who knows? Maybe the next revision is darker colours. A teacher once told me that a white background is best for informative and logical information. And dark backgrounds are best for communication of feelings and moods.
Maybe a darker background would add a human touch to this very technological blog?
I think we would need to get Google in to this plan to make a difference, Lasse. 😉 It’s like the mouse peeing in the ocean if only Eirikso goes black.
Yes! That’s what they probably would say about global warming and the T-ford as well!
I’m no fanatic, but making a difference is what it’s all about.
When using a laptop it would increase the use of battery for example. And the summer and winter would again become cold 😉
I think this is great. You have certainly already noticed but on my screen the text on right column is to wide. Or it doesn’t scale right.
I’m running Vista with 23″ widescreen in 1680*1050
P
It’s kind of embarrassing, but I am doing design decisions, CSS, HTML and PHP on this site without knowing much about design, CSS, HTML and PHP… And after I threw out all the windows boxes from our house I must admit that testing on windows and IE6 and IE7 is not done very well. I have seen my site on Safari and Firefox in Mac environments. At work I’ve had a brief look at IE6 and had to make the main column wider to fix a major problem in that browser.
I guess I have to install parallels and Vista on one of our macs to be able to test on that as well. Anyway, if you could provide me with a screen shot of eirikso.com on Vista it would be great!
I find it irrelevant to claim that the solution to problems with IE 6.0 is to install Opera or Firefox. After all IE 6.0 is pretty old, so even IE 7.0 is a major improvement. Stating it like Opera, Firefox or Safari is the only solutions sounds a little anti-M$ to me :). Anyway, the design is nice!
As far as I understand IE6 has a couple of non standard shortcomings. If someone started producing a car with lights that where far too bright you could solve that by fixing the car or by starting to produce shaded windows on all other cars. Making huge amounts of special non standard hacks to comply with a non standard browser is like starting to make shaded windows on all other cars. But, in this world of browsers huge amounts of people still use IE6 (for my web site about 30%), so we need to comply.
And I aplogize for not mentioning IE7. It’s much better than IE6 and is a very viable alternative along with Firefox, Safari and Opera. I am not anti-M$, I am anti-people-not-following-standards.
Hehe, I completely agree. I am just a little anti-people-who-claims-that-they-know-what-is-the-best-solution-for-everyone-else I guess 🙂
Yes. The internet is full of people-who-claims-that-they-know-what-is-the-best-solution-for-everyone-else. Currently the digg-crowd is in the lead regarding such… 🙂
Smugmug! Could you share your experiences with Smugmug, so far….
I’m looking for a place to backup my photo’s on the net. I would like to access them both on my desktop and laptop. I have read about some solutions, here at eirikso.com, where I can get auto-upload the images. I’m wondering about sharpcast and smugmug. What do you/everyone else as well think I should chose? and why?
I am planning a post on my experience with SmugMug. As some of you have seen I have abandoned flickr and started using SmugMug as my image publishing system here on eirikso.com.
Mainly because of two reasons:
1. SmugMug gives me the possibility to watermark my images serverside
2. SmugMug gives me the possibility to sell my images
Then, after using it I really start loving it and I think it is an excellent way to keep a backup of my most important images. They don’t have a free option, but you get what you pay for. I am running a PRO account. Lots of flexibility.
To put it short:
Flickr – if you want people to find and see your images
SmugMug – if you want a professional tool to publish on your blog, sell and backup your images
And by the way. Depending on what you want you should give Sharpcast a try as well. There’s something about the ease of use that I like about Sharpcast.
Thanx! So what you are saying is that Smugmug is better for publishing photos. About selling images, is it some kind of system that takes care of the sales’?
Sharpcast have auto sync with download/uploads of images to all computers connected with the software – right?
Smugmug has a very nice design and presents the photos in a great way. Besides it’s BLACK and thereby reduces the el-bill!! Looks like more people are peeing in the ocean Oyvind!! 😉
Yes. WIth a PRO account at SmugMug there is a complete system for taking care of sales. Both downloads and print. The only problem at this point is that they only pay you by check. As far as I understand Paypal and others are on its way.
And you are right about Sharpcast. The automatic Sync is very convenient.
Hi Eirik,
haven’t read your blog in a while.
I just have to comment on the remark claiming that a black background would require less electricity.
What a bullshit!
It doesn’t matter whether a monitor shows a black or a white window.
It’s the brightness setting of the (backlight in an LCD) monitor that determines the energy consumption.
Having said that, I really like black. Especially on my glossy MacBook pro screen 🙂
I am no motitor specialist, but someone have the opinion that black saves power:
http://www.microtech.doe.gov/EnergyStar/info.htm
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=google+black+background&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
Still I would guess that the brightness setting has far more impact that the colour of the pixels.
Anyway! Katie Mulua has a song called “Nine Million Bicycles in Beijing”, so what effect has “Nine Million black background in Silicon Valley” do? Fanatic?!
According to http://www.microtech.doe.gov/EnergyStar/info.htm, 9 million black lcd’s would make something like 135.000.000 W less than 9 million white backgrounds. Could buy out some rainforest for that savings?
The energy star link is very old.
It dates from the days that the majority of people were using CRT’s. Tubes.
For LCD screens I keep to my statement that backlight brightness does and color doesn’t matter.
That’s why black is never really black on an LCD screen: the backlight shines through the LCD.
Very similar to beamers and the good old slide projector.
In order to create true black there are developments to create LCD screens with a matrix of small backlights that are turned off when a dark area of even pixel should be shown.
But we are not there yet.
Here’s a link of someone who tested it himself:
http://snakesgemscoffee.blogspot.com/2007/07/my-blackle-energy-consumption.html
Sounds very reasonable. So until we have OLED or matrix backlight LCD screens we can keep our web sites white!
Seems like Sony will be the first to introduce an OLED screen (without backlight):
http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/01/the-sonydrive-xel-1-oled-tv-1-000-000-1-contrast-starting-decem/
It’ll probably take at least four years before the majority of screens we look at are without backlight.
But Eirik, if you plan to keep your design as consistent as Bang&Olufsen: start painting it black! 🙂
Argh. I want 37″ Full HD OLED now!
Have you tried the norwegian http://www.bmenu.no/?
It should make it a lot easier to navigate on web sites, at least some, for example nrk.no’s site, which is used as an example. Try it! Probably it will cost money at some point, but worth trying!!
Just wanted to say that the new design/theme of you site is very nice. Just a couple of points from me:
1) You should make the scrolling just for the left side-bar, where your post is readable.
2) Maybe also the right side-bare, with reacent post etc.
So that your header and the rigt side-bare is permanent on the site! Makes it more flexible due to the fact that you have links and “menus”there!
Ok!? Just kidding! Nice lantern by the way!