By: Tim Nash

With the immanent arrival of some new bits on timnash.co.uk if you need a hint look to your right!
I needed to get the house in order and make it that little more welcoming and friendly. The design while I think quite stylish was in part inspired by the Apple site and they do it just so much better so I have been slowly making some minor changes to lay the ground work for some bigger ones.

What's new or changed at timnash.co.uk

• Typography
• Print stylesheet
• Failed experiment
• Accessibility
• Brian's thread comments fixed

Typography

I would say this is at a partial stage, without going into details I tried to port an experimental typography design by my good friend Dan Sanders of Venice Etchings and Cambridge Assessments. Problem being my current design was already a bit of a hack, for this reason I really do suggest you don't visit my css! However while in its current state it is only half way there it is a good deal better then before. Yes I will even allow paragraphs in comments! for those interested in Dan's technique well you will have to wait until I can pester him to do a post on it! But its based on the idea of "vertical rhythm" (inspired by sites such as 24ways, Mark Boulton and alistapart).

Print stylesheet

I have been intending to write a print style sheet for a while and never got round to it so this weekend I put up a crude version. Go try it click print preview and you will see it in action, sidebars are gone as is the header fold. Its scary how many blogs don't include print style sheets particularly tutorial based sites, currently the print style sheet is restricted to blog posts only but will be rolled out to the examples section later in the week.

Failed experiment

It hasn't all been success though I set up a modified version of CSS Guy "pushing a shopping trolley with css" to hold my accessibility bar. It worked fine but was so annoying I modified it to include a close button that would not only stop the bar following you round the page but also hide the accessibility options. However it was still to annoying for me to unleash on visitors. It also dawned on me in my quest to create a useful accessibility tool I was using more javascript then the rest of the site put together.

Still some one may find the need for a div tag that can be positioned anywhere and then be pushed down the screen, if so I moved the code to the example section along with a demo and added some notes of explanation the code works its just annoying!

Accessibility

Given the slight changes that are going on and the fact the blog will have a tiny commercial element (don't worry the sarcastic knowledge filled posts will still be here for free!) I felt it was time to really start taking this site seriously in terms of legal and moral obligation (that and Shaun might come and out me! I mean show my great results). One of the things that drove this home to me was an article written by Darren at MunkyOnline covering how search engine optimisation and web accessibility are not at odds. He is of course right and so I have added a couple of new features. Name Anchors are now strategically located around the site making navigation easier. Access Keys have been added to menus and a new accessibility help page will be up soon. One of the areas that Darren highlights is the need to allow people to have some control over the sites looks, as a dyslexic I use a filter when viewing most sites as the contrast of black and white causes me problems. The next step will be to offer a slightly off white background via the accessibility block to help alleviate the problem. Beat that Apple!

Brians threaded comments

Was a bit of a mess, and so I was quite relieved when Andy Beard let me pinch his comments.php file to look at how he had separated trackbacks from normal comments, interestingly as he is moving away from My avatar plugin I have adopted it. It was a coin tossing exercise between that and Sezwho but in the end I decided all I wanted was the ability to add faces to comments. I do not feel the need for visitors to rate each other ala social media style. I have however made some small adjustments to the myavatar plugin, to turn off pictures if more then 35 human comments are made just to be on the safe side.

If you want to Separate trackbacks in Brian's threaded comments then this is the code you are after:

<?php if ( $comments ) : 
  foreach($comments as $c)


  { 

 $GLOBALS['threaded_comments'][$c->comment_parent][] = $c;
  }


 $GLOBALS['__writeCommentDepth'] = 0;

 foreach($GLOBALS['threaded_comments'][0] as $comment) {
  if ( get_comment_type() == "comment" ) {
  $GLOBALS['comment'] = &$comment;
  write_comment($GLOBALS['comment']);
  }
  }
  ?>

That will separate the human comments from trackback and pings, to then insert the trackbacks I used

<h3>Responses to this post:</h3>
  <ul>
  <?php foreach ($comments as $comment) : ?>
  <?php $comment_type = get_comment_type(); ?>
  <?php if($comment_type != 'comment') { ?>
  <li><?php comment_author_link() ?></li>
  <?php } ?>
  <?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>

Hope this helps any wayward souls trying to do this for themselves.

These are just the edited highlights I will be over the next week adding a range of new bits and pieces please let me know what you think, be aware for the next few days certain parts of the site may have different features but hopefully by the end of the week it will be consistent.