LastSong.net

And…back?

Yui — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 07:01:38 +0000

So I’m a seasonal creature– I’ll admit it. I update vigorously during the summer, but, despite all my well-intentioned promises to stay online during the school year, I inevitably fall off the face of the Earth. I go to a university known for its academic rigor– “Where the only thing that goes down on you is your GPA,” as they say. It doesn’t mean that webdesign isn’t important to me. But really, I’m no designer– I’m not a computer science major, and I’m definitely not an art student. Making pretty designs isn’t going to put food on my plate, and it isn’t going to be my highest priority when, between schoolwork and resume building, I get an average of 5 hours of sleep a night. I understand that when most sites stop updating for months on end, it generally means that they’re dead. But I’ve gone through the same cycle of hiatus and revival for the past 4-5 years now and yet every time, I lose a few affiliates because of it. I can’t fault them, I guess– the internet has a short memory span. I’ve been around longer than most, though I’m sure no one recognizes me from my early days. Oh well… another summer.

How big is too big?

Yui — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 03:54:12 +0000

Being a perfectionist, I’m constantly worrying about whether or not my designs are up to par and, even worse, about exactly what “being up to par” should entail. That’s probably why I’ve revamped and recoded every layout on Neogrotesque about 50 times. My latest worry is this: how big can header images get before they’re too big for most visitors to view comfortably? Obviously, if a page loads and I can’t even see the first line of text on my 1280×800 laptop resolution, there’s a problem… but really, how many lines should I be able to see? Having just switched to using Firefox from IE7 as my primary browser, I’ve been noticing that, with all the extra tool bars at the top of the browser window, many of my layout headers are now taking up over half of my viewport, and, while none of my headers are so large that you have to scroll to see the first line of text, I’ve been wondering if I should be going back and cropping my headers more. Any opinions?

Why is it so hard to credit?

Yui — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 18:40:25 +0000

I’ve recently introduced a LiveJournal layout at Crazed System, called Red Sunset, featuring Tero of Vidoll. It’s my first S2 layout, and I’m actually quite proud of it. The flaw of releasing S2 layouts for other people to use, however, is that I can’t precode a credit link into the layout before sending the layout off to the people that want to use it, since I can only edit the CSS. As a result, users have to add the credit link themselves. Now, despite the fact that I’ve included instructions on how to credit on both the Readme file that comes with each of my layouts and the layout entry itself, only one user has posted proper credits so far. These people never bothered to credit at all. This person at least had the decency to credit me in his/her userinfo. This is the only person that actually put the credits in his/her sidebar, as I instructed. Why is it so hard to follow directions? In fact, even if they didn’t bother read through everything (which is understandable), what would make anyone think that it was okay not to credit someone for making their layouts?

It’s a good thing that I watermarked my layout footer before distributing it. This is seriously making me question whether or not I should post more S2 layouts. They’re much more flexible, powerful, and intuitive than S1 layouts, but… what’s the point if no one’s going to acknowledge that I made them?

Protected: Ruki, Stolen

Yui — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 04:48:58 +0000

Quick and Easy Div Layouts

Yui — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 01:42:36 +0000

My sense is that, for some reason, most people have a tedency to code div layers layouts by using an tag at the begining of the body of the document for the header image, and then using absolute positioning to place the main content area and sidebar(s) in their appropriate locations. This method is flawed in that, in the absence of a stylesheet (as may be the case when viewing the website on an older browser), the header image still shows up, causing the page to look quite ugly (example). This is especially annoying if your header image has a large height. A better solution is to use a div image replacement, as I have done in ain’t afraid to die, featuring Dir en grey. I will use this layout as an example.

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Contact Form Problems

Yui — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 00:08:03 +0000

I’ve been having some problems with my contact form recently. I think I’ve fixed the problem now. If you’ve used it to try to send me anything recently and haven’t gotten a reply, please try again.

New Tenten layout?

Yui — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 01:27:00 +0000

I’ve been trying to make a new layout for my Tenten fanlisting, Leopard Print, but I’m not sure I like how it’s turning out. Here are two versions of what I’ve got so far:

Which one should I go with? The pink/grey version looks surprisingly good, despite the fact that I don’t think it matches Tenten’s personality so well. I should probably actually find some pictures of him wearing leopard print, considering the name of the fanlisting, but I really love this shoot ^^;I wonder if I’m losing my touch… I really adore the current layout on Leopard Print, and I feel like this one that I’m working on doesn’t quite match up to the same standard. I find myself running out of ideas about what to do next. I usually like to use a lot of Color Burn and Color Dodge, but I’ve somehow constructed a layout where they don’t quite seem to fit. I do like the black rectangles running along the bottom of the layout, though xD

Update: 7/12/2007, 11:42PM

I added a bit of a header. I wanted to include another image instead of just having the bar, but I can’t seem to find any good scans of this photoshoot >.< I managed to clean up that one lying down image decently well with a few blending mode tricks, and the other two were taken from his blog– it’s kind of sad when webcam/phone pictures are better quality than magazine scans; people need to realize that low quality grainy scans are basically useless.

I’m not sure how I feel about the diagonal lines on the content section– I feel like it needs SOMETHING to keep it from being too bland, though. I’ll keep playing with it.

Update: 7/15/2007, 8:51PM

I’ve finished the layout and coded it. You can see it here. I changed the header a bit because it looked too even before, though the diagonal lines on the content area were the best thing I could come up with, so I decided to keep them. I also added some burn layers to the top and bottom left corners because I just couldn’t resist.

100% Height CSS Layout w/ Footer

Yui — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 09:03:13 +0000

I have a tendency to make designs that are meant to stretch from the very top of the bowser window to the very bottom. The problem is that, especially in very large browser resolutions, sometimes there isn’t enough content to force the layout to either completely fill all of the vertical space in the viewport, or to scroll vertically, leaving a margin between the bottom of the layout and the bottom of the browser window. I’ve finally, I believe, solved the problem, and since I haven’t seen anyone else using this method, I decided to make a tutorial. The method is an extension of this example layout and relies on the principles of min-height, absolute/relative positioning, and z-index. This is the method I’ve used to code the current LastSong.net layout (Waste, featuring UnsraW).

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The first post!

Yui — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 19:16:48 +0000

I think I’ve finally put everything together for this new blog. I felt like having LastSong.net as a one-pager with the only purpose of listing the… 4 or so websites I owned really wasn’t an effective way to use this domain. At first, I was reluctant to turn it into a blog, since I can barely even think of anything to write on my LiveJournal, but I realized that if I use it to talk about webdesign and the online community, I may actually have something to say once in a while. You can expect blurbs about the progress of my sites, ranting, showcases of works in progress, mini webdesign tutorials, and other such posts to come.

As you may also have noticed, I’ve opened up hosting to any interested applicants. I’m not sure yet about how many I’m planning to take. Please apply if you’re looking for a host.

Due to the massive content change, I would understand if any of my previous affiliates would no longer like to remain affiliated. If you do decide to remove me, I’d appreciate it if you let me know via the contact form.