Header Update
I made a small change to the header on Noscope. Do a rollover, it’ll say “Show all images in this series (installment)?”. A click will take you directly to the full installment from where the header image is taken from. I think this’ll increase transparency as to what that header is actually doing there. By the way, alternatives to the link text are welcome.
Very neat. I don’t know what text would be better, it pretty much says what it does.
Incidentally I’m also working on an overlay for my header images.
I don’t like the border color that fades in, but I like the effect. Perhaps fade in a dark overlay on top of the image? Just an idea anyway.
I think it might benefit from a small descriptive text which tells you what exactly an Installment is and why you should click it.
Jonas,
Thanks.
Michael,
Great minds think alike :)
I see what you mean. I actually don’t like it either… it adds a level of complexity to something that’s supposed to be simple.
A dark overlay is actually a really good idea. It’ll also solve the problem with the text readability / the text drop shadow. Thanks for the tip.
A good idea also.
Michael,
Done and done.
I personally think it works much better. Thanks for the tip.
And, of course, it fails with aplomb when I look at it. I swear to god my Mac must be cursed or something.
Chris,
As we discussed in Trillian, it was a “old style” vs. the new style of Flash cookie I’m using for the header, that was causing the problem.
If anyone else is having problems with the header, go to your Spotlight and search for “noscope”. It should reveal a folder or two, containing a cryptically titled Flash SharedObject cookie. If you delete it, all should be fine.
Option 2 would be to wait for december to arrive, where all cookies will be updated anyway (due to the header mechanism).
Very cool addition to one of the best features on the site anyway. Just when you THINK you can’t make it any better, you go and do…
I couldn’t agree more, it looks very nice. The only problem is that Mac OS X generally anti-aliases text (and it looks so good), however, flash does not. The result is that the text in the header looks more bland (and ‘spinkel’) than the rest of the text.
Anyway, nice work.
Thanks you guys.
Well. That’s strange.
The thing is, Flash does anti-alias, but it has several different options. In order to look the most like the rest of the text here, I chose to not include font outlines for Verdana, (and let Flash use the system font). This usually (read: on Windows) means that Windows will also apply it’s own anti-aliasing. I though the same accounted for the Mac.
Other options would be to include font outlines, and choose to either have it be aliased or anti-aliased. Flash 8 provides even more control.
Question: does it look the same in both Firefox and Safari? (I.e. the Flash Text) ?
Firefox Text in OS X
Safari Text in OS X
Links to screenshots showing variance in text rendering under Firefox 1.5 and Safari 2.0.2 on OS X 10.4.3
Wow Chris, thanks a lot.
Seems like Firefox does it right…
Weird, I thought they did it pretty much the same way, after all they use the same flash plugin…
Joen,
I guess you’re probably working on this, but on my mac in Safari and Firefox, the images aren’t loading…
http://www.noscope.com/journal/header/0.jpg
http://www.noscope.com/journal/header/001.jpg
http://www.noscope.com/journal/header/002.jpg
[not found]
Nik,
That’s the problem… On macs, for some reason my “check for old cookies” is not working. But I’m not going to work on it because the cookie will automatically be replaced when november becomes december.
If you can’t wait, however, try clicking “newer image”, like 50 times… It should work.
Phew! Just finished… hey you’re right! :)
I love it that that worked…
Anyway, a short explanation of what happened is this:
The old cookie had numbered headers… that is, 1-55 (for 55 headers). The new system is datebased, that is, 0511 for November 05.
So if you had an old cookie for November 05, it would be number 55, which in the new date based system would mean “Year 00 Month 55″. But due to the way it works. flipping to newer would give you “0001″ and then “0101″ until at some point it would be “0205″ which would show an image.
Very neat!
It works better with the dark overlay I think.
Also, might I suggest a link to the installment archives? And of course, now that we’re at it, links to the previous couple of installments as well, perhaps with a small relevant icon or something.
Just thinking out loud anyway.
Most definitely. Thanks for the suggestion.
I need you to elaborate on this… Are you talking in the actual header area? I have a link to the installments archives in the topmost menu. As for the previous installments, it’s a matter of clicking “older image”. The link will update. Maybe I should indicate this by adding a date for the installment on rollover…
Very much appreciated. Please keep doing so.
Yep, right in there. So people have a few options to choose from.
I’m going to try it.
I’m reluctant to add another archive link, because if there are several different links to the same, then “which is the right link”… but I see why it could work.
I added the date.
I tried adding an archives link, but a) making HTML in Flash is harder than it seems, and b) I’m tired :)
I would personally prefer it if the date was more verbose. November, 2005 instead of 2005/11.
I know exactly what you mean, and you’re right of course.
I’ll see what I can do (which is my short answer for this is technically a huge challenge but not impossible).
The problem is that I only have 0511 available as information. But it’s doable, and I honestly think it’s worth it.