Michael wrote an entry about his new blog design. I wondered if it's the same man who snapped at me, when all I did was to ask him to choose some visual improvements for his blog at 12.30 at night (like if he has another time when he is available!) But then I figured, that he was still under impression of his encounter with FUDonks personage. Now I understand. On such background my design looks only like a minor offence.

If you are reading this, and you don't have access to JavaRanch's "Moderators Only" forum, here is the hidden part of the story.

Some time ago, Ernest Friedman-Hill said in MO that to do a book proper justice, he needs at least two copies: one that he would read, and another that he would not read, to compare impressions. All the publishers know that, so he always gets books for review in twos. Now, when he is done with "Ajax in Action", he can send the copy that he didn't read to "the first person to post" here, in MO, "a picture of themselves holding a can or bottle of their favorite household cleaning product."

As always with this kind of contests, Michael was the first.

Going even deeper into history...

When JavaRanch started to host blogs, I got an idea to do something to Michael's blog. Such a person as Mike can never fit Pebble's standard skin (not that there is anything wrong with the standard skin). I interviewed him (actually several times) about what theme he wants to see, what color he would prefer etc. The theme he wanted resonated with precisely nothing in my tortured soul, and I happened to have particular aversion to the color he chose. I agonized over the design, wondering for myself how is it that professional designers can work with whatever a client wants from them, and on schedule? Are they like professional prostitutes, ready to implement every your wish, while your loved one, I mean somebody who really, genuinely loves you, can do it in one favorite position and only when she feels like it?

I love Michael, so a year or two later we still were nowhere. Ernest's idea was a salvation. It promptly occurred to me that the picture of Michael snaking on Comet would produce an interesting effect, in juxtaposition to his "I've been wondering if all the things I've seen were ever real" blogtitle. The night when I played with new additions to my font collection was the night when the head picture was done. Later, Michael asked to paint his eye green, and even though I didn't understand the significance of this act, I obliged.

When I attempted to put the pic on his blog, the whole publishing system halted, and Michael lost the text he was typing on the other side of the connection (that's distributed collaboration for you!) He didn't talk to me for two months after that.

When I finally recovered, and gathered enough Internet-induced courage to ask Michael if he would mind me to try again, he said that Jess already works on his blog, and he wouldn't mind if she put the picture. (Ok, Ok, I made the last part up.) The truth is Jess did put the picture, and she also painted all the links -- it would take me several more months to make a decision what color the links should be...

The rest was mostly reorganizing entries (moving pieces of metadata from bottom to top, from right to left and vice versa) and their appearance. Speaking about appearance, I want to point out two things. First, I changed font to display dates from default Verdana to Georgia. It is generally not recommended to proliferate fonts without reason, the fewer you can live with the better, but in this case I had a reason. There is such thing in typography as non-lining figures (aka "old-style" figures.) Unlike the figures we are used to see in about any computer font, non-lining figures don't fit the same size and grid:

They are recommended to use for numbers inside the text, and indeed if you start to pay attention, figures in books are set in non-lining figures. If you start to pay attention to the sites that aspire to demonstrate professional design (or typography, to be precise), you'll notice that they use non-lining figures too. If you go further, and dig out of their cascades of styling sheets the name of the font they use to display these figures, you'll learn that it is invariantly Georgia. Up to now I don't know any other free and widely used computer font that would support non-lining figures. So I used Georgia to display dates.

The last thing was to display entry titles in "small caps" - "small capitals". Small capitals are specially designed letters that resemble capitals in shape, but are smaller, LIKE THESE, so they don't stand out of the normal flow of text. I repeat, they are specially designed, and not every font has them, only the fonts that are designed for professional publishing (consequently, they are more expensive). Unlike with non-lining figures, I don't know any free and widely used computer font that supports them. And if the font doesn't, the rendering software simply takes capitals and reduces their size. This distorts letters proportions, and no professional typographer can see this atrocity without temporary losing consciousness. So it wasn't a good thing for me to do (even though some authoritative publishing sources aren't shy to use them), and I am thinking on replacing it with something more civil.