You Have Chosen.Us

Finally got around to updating some more layouts. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not much (only the numbered pages of the PC section), but it’s a start. Beyond that I’ve been busy brainstorming some ideas pertaining to the future development of the Track0 counter software, and I performed some work on the news script. Perhaps that work was in vain, as today I also spent a few hours researching blogging software. It shows a good deal of promise, and it’s quite possible I may use it for a varying array of applications including the site news. Of course, even considering that, work on the news script was still useful as I learned several things. Oh, and I also added all of the old news posts to this page. Granted, the news still isn’t formatted as nicely as it was before the site crashed, but it’s all there again.

Made a new logo, inspired by the old one. The width is now 308 pixels instead of 354, and the height is now 60 pixels instead of 79. It has some transparent pixels as a buffer on each side, which should conserve the image quality/transparency should you use the zoom function of your browser (such as IE7 and Opera, amongst others). While the dimension size is only slightly smaller, the file size is considerably smaller as the new logo is 27.8kb compared to 42.6kb for the old one. Finally I’ve also reduced the line space between the text (so the two lines are closer together vertically), and the earth should be a good deal more precise.

Made a new logo today, using ARGB PNG format. Basically this means it has both 24bit colors (like a jpeg, but without the loss of quality), as well as full transparency. Full transparency meaning a pixel can be fully transparent, fully visible or anything in between. Previously I was using a paletted (maximum 8 bits: 256 colors or less) image with transparency - but this transparency mode supported only fully transparent pixels. In simple terms, going from 8bit paletted to 32bit ARGB mode increases file size, but can drastically improve quality. Knowing the old logo was 5bit paletted at 6.73kb, it seems pretty natural that the new 32bit logo is 42.6kb. In the past I’ve steered away from using bigger logos (I believe I’ve always strived for less than 15kb, and less than 10kb if possible), but I’ve checked some websites and I believe broadband is sufficiently used at this moment. I couldn’t find worldwide information, but I did find that over 93% (of internet users) in the US personally has a broadband connection. Furthermore, all data indicated that the US was actually trailing in broadband access so it’s safe to assume that the worldwide percentage is even higher. If you are a smallband user, I’m sorry but you’ll just have to be patient for that one-time download.

In addition, Internet Explorer (before IE7) did not support any png transparency (save for 8bit paletted, for which I still preferred the popular gif format), but I’ve found and installed a fix for IE5.5 and IE6 using DirectX. Of course the fix I found was actually broken itself and so I had to fix the fix… but it’s all working now. Broadband statistics sources: websiteoptimization.com - oecd.org.

Update: *Sigh* It’s just never that simple, is it. I tested it locally and everything was fine, but when I upload it to the server it wouldn’t work. I suspect it to be either some security feature - which I can’t turn off and wouldn’t dare ask visitors to - or the server’s hotlink protection - which I won’t turn off. I’ll leave it be for now (at least it’s a new logo, even if IE5/6 displays the transparency in gray or so). I know there’s a whole lot of IE6 users still, so I may look into it further but for now those of you with IE7 (or FireFox, Opera, IE Mac edition, …), enjoy.<br />
Update2: I  have looked into it and tried about 5-6 different solutions. Some just plain don’t work at all, others work at first but display a fully transparent image (meaning empty space) seemingly at random. I’ve given up (at least for now). IE7 has better security anyway, so you should consider updating it. You can get it at the Windows Update site (in IE: Tools -> Windows Update). Or perhaps you’d prefer FireFox or Opera.

Did some pretty extensive work to the Track0 counter. Most of the work (and benefits) are for the log - which no longer returns <i>all</i> the data if you access it - but the tracker itself did get some minor optimization. It was pretty fun working on it, and discovering how to section up the counter log (into years and/or months) should definitely help me when I start working on the news archive. All this news work also reminds me I never quite got the html support to work properly (something about the MySQL database not liking html tags such as < and >).

All pages have been working for a while now (how’d I forget to update the news?). I’ve added a “page outdated” warning to the pages still using the older layout, which has so far been unable to shame me into updating them. I have recovered all the news, ‘current’ and archived, which really isn’t that impressive. Before I re-add all the news I want to update the archive script and make any changes to the database this update requires. In the meanwhile, feel free to enjoy our custom (and funny) 404 - Page not Found page. This page has been distributed to all four of the network sites.