wonko.com gets a facelift (and liposuction)

Wednesday September 14, 2005 @ 06:52 PM (PDT)

Finally, after years of writing and rewriting code and then throwing it away because it wasn’t good enough, I’ve somehow managed to trick myself into forgetting to throw away my latest work. As a result, wonko.com has received a much-needed facelift and a complete rewrite behind the scenes.

This isn’t Poseidon 1.0 (and no, I haven’t started working on Poseidon again); it’s a completely new and altogether simpler beast based on the same PHP/XML/XSLT concept. At the moment, it’s slightly less functional than the old wonko.com, but a lot prettier and vastly more elegant. For the moment I’m calling it Pants. I don’t plan to release it publicly, because if I do that I’ll stop working on it because I’ll feel obligated, and I don’t want to stop working on it. So there.

Anyway, it’s not quite finished yet, but the only way to keep myself working on it is to start using it. If you run into any problems with the new stuff, please let me know.

Oh, and the first person to tell me the site looks bad in Internet Explorer will win a kick in the head. On your mark, get set, go.

Comments

I like how you sidestep the issue of updating your age in the 'About' by saying 'early twenties'. Excellent slack technique.

Also, I like your peekshoors.

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Wednesday September 14, 2005 @ 06:55 PM (PDT)

Oh wonko, I opened up my news reader and thought I actually did have some 15 new items to read. My bubble of excitement was quickly popped by the realization that they were almost all the same old entries from wonko.com, reappearing simply because you decided to update your website.

I shall have my revenge, you fiend!

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Wednesday September 14, 2005 @ 08:19 PM (PDT)

Nice Pants.

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Brett
Thursday September 15, 2005 @ 06:05 AM (PDT)
Good job overall! I appreciate the cleaner style for the main page. Without mouseover the comment display feels a tad unorganized--maybe there could be some subtle line or box to delineate comments like on the old wonko.com. With mouseover it's very clear--nice effect.

Also, the width of the title image looks about 20px too small in Firefox 1.0.6 Linux (I'm pretty sure it's not font related), but perhaps that is intentional.

Again, nice redesign, keep up the good work! ?
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Thursday September 15, 2005 @ 01:12 PM (PDT)

Thanks. I agree about the comments...I'll see what I can do. The image width problem under Linux is weird, though. There's no reason why that should be happening. Could you maybe send me a screenshot?

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Thursday September 15, 2005 @ 02:59 PM (PDT)
Nice design, I thought I had mistyped the URL for a second!

Pants seems quite nice too, how do you plan on combating blog spam since anonymous users can post comments now?
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Steven
Thursday September 15, 2005 @ 03:33 PM (PDT)

...pants. Teehee.

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Thursday September 15, 2005 @ 03:45 PM (PDT)

Comment spam has already been a problem (I had three spammers shortly after the site launched), but I threw in a quick cookie-based authentication scheme this morning that should keep most comment spammers at bay (it seems to have worked so far). I plan to add some more advanced spam prevention features when I have time.

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Thursday September 15, 2005 @ 03:58 PM (PDT)
That thin grey line is all I needed--looks more organized now. The blue color is also an improvement, in my opinion.

Here's a screenshot of the offset I'm seeing (my build is weird though, so mileage may vary): http://www.aphyr.com/media/screenshots/pants_offset.jpg.
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Thursday September 15, 2005 @ 04:46 PM (PDT)

Oh, I see what you're talking about. The right edge of the header image isn't supposed to be aligned with the right edge of the sidebox section titles, so that gap is normal. You're seeing it as it's intended to be seen.

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Thursday September 15, 2005 @ 05:07 PM (PDT)

Scattergories!

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Saturday September 17, 2005 @ 01:18 PM (PDT)

The menu is white in white, and... well you look ya'self if you wanna fix it ;-)

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Sunday September 18, 2005 @ 01:55 PM (PDT)

I don't have an iPaq. Sorry.

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Sunday September 18, 2005 @ 02:28 PM (PDT)
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