SITE REVIEW: Hello Blog ! (updated 3/8/2008)

I tried my hand at Bloggers template system & came up with this.

http://develobert.blogspot.com/

I don't want to hear about the validation errors.

In fact I'm going to save you the effort. There's upwards of 300-400 validation errors on the front page & I'm pretty sure what's causing each & every one of them.
I did the theme as a Lorem Ipsum page on my desktop & validated it as I went along, then worked the blogger data in.
Even with those 300+ errors I haven't seen any major differences between the the browsers I have at my disposal.

Screenshots from Linux or Mac based browsers would be much appreciated.
Especially Safari, I've been noticing more Safari numbers in my logs lately.

Any other comments are appreciated, but I can not promise Chuck Norris will cut you any slack if you mention the validation errors.

cannot find server ... I'll try again later ...

It looks fine on Mac Safari. As for your site I like the design but am not to over struck on on the colors. It just feels a little brown I guess.

I really like it, except the right-hand side content took absolute ages to load. So long in fact, that I'd already started to write a comment asking why you've got so much empty space on the right hand side....

I like the browns and pinks. the header is brilliant.
all in all it's nice.

Nice looking blog Joebert, some interesting and useful artciles. You've improved my CSS (not hard to do ). Is there a final chapter to "Don't leave half-assed feedback" Did you get a working stick of RAM

Cheers, Prime ...

A good template... noticed it a while ago actually when I was visiting your blog More review coming from me when I get my computer back into working condition should be soon now

The Template is really good. I like it a lot. The content is good. I recommend changing the colors of your template.

I don't like the font color for your general text. In my opinion, it should be a little bit darker to contrast just a bit better against the background. It's not overly difficult to read, just sort of annoying.

I like the header image, especially the way it gracefully ends so that the template still looks "complete" even when I expand my browser past the header image. I also like the font you used for the title.

The rollovers for the various elements that use them look good. Overall, I like it.

Here's a screenshot from my PowerBook using Safari 2.0.4:
http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/3720/picture3yi8.png

To address the colors for starters.

Is it the colors themselves, or the mono-tone colorscheme ? Would some accent colors help ? I've been pondering the idea of adding some green-ish & maybe some maroon-ish somewhere.


Not sure what the deal with that is at the moment. I thought it might be the Adobe Share thing in one of the posts, but I'm still seeing the sidebar way before that thing loads.
I'm going to be cleaning it up in the next few days, hopefully it will be one of those "fixes itself" deals.


I forgot about that, never did hear anything back on it. I should ask my neighbors if anyone got a package for me. The first time our mailman put it in my next door neighbors (appartments) box.


Cool beans.


I was wondering about that myself.
Went ahead & bumped it down a few notches. e.g. -- If it was #fff it's now #ddd.


Glad to hear that, it was one of those "this is perfect" moments while making the header.

Thanks for the Safari screenshot !
I've been using the "Opera is a decent indicator of how it looks in Safari" baseline, but you can never actually be 100% with that, you know ?

The darker text definitely looks a lot better.

True. Funny thing is, I've been doing the exact opposite lately: I've been using the "Safari is a decent indicator of how it will look in Opera" premise for the sites I'm working on. The two are close enough IMO that I can safely rely on Safari for testing until I get the chance to view it in Opera.

By the way, what is the name of that font you used for the header?

http://www.dafont.com/rough-draft.font

I'd really appreciate comments on the way the archive navigation works now.

What should happen is this.

• Click a month name, that portion slides open.
• Click on an title within that list, the whole page should slide to the top.
• A loading notice should slide open where posts are.
• AJAX loads that post.
• Loading notice slides back up.
• Selected post slides down in posts area.

It's using a "assume there's no JS support" system. If JS is disabled it should still work like a normal HTML page.

It appears to be working in IE6, OP9, & FF2 on Windows, that's all I know.

Great blog with alot of contents. *Thumbsup*!

I must be doing somthing right, search engine traffic outpaced all other sources of traffic combined yesterday & it's steadily increasing.

Definately starting to see some of the limitations of Blogger though. Some were easy to work around, some, not so easy.

One thing i can say bravo for this template.But the space on the right hand side after your advertisements makes it look incomplete. I guess you can add some small links over there and fill up the space.