News :: Tonic's laboratory

News

Homepage's third design18 May 2008

After I calmed down from delighting my previous design, I've thought it still needs more corrections. In addiction I've had news ideas and I wanted to use them.

I've bought a domain http://tonic-lab.com, which means Tonic's laboratory. I think it's a nice adress - shows a character of site, is short and has cool .com ending.
Together with domain, I've bought also a paid server from Prohost. As so far, it works fine - the help surprised me with its response time. I've checked what are differencies in lags between this server and previous, free one, and checked FTP browsing speed. The results are promising - free OVH account has average 50ms, new server has 25ms. Maneuvering FTP is very quick - click one folder and you're inside in less than second. In OVH, I've had to wait few seconds. There are two reasons why I've decided to buy this server. Primo, it has a lot bigger disk space, 950MB, which is a important factor because of webpage's character - there will be a lot of photos, PDF documents, and movies. And I'm going to place there my second site about art. Secundo, server has enabled mod_rewrite. I've set it to rewrite simplified adresses, so server would understand exactly which files have to load. For example, writing http://tonic-lab.com/newsy is equal to http://tonic-lab.com/index.php?id=newsy. There are no meaningless identifiers (okay, for us, not for server), characters or so - adresses are much more clear, intuitive and easier to remember.
PHP code for loading pages was changed. The major change is dynamic title displayed at top of web browser. Before it was only site's title, like as Google results. I hope this change will give higher positions in Google and make accessing to site informations easier. The code was written by Xnivera, for which I kindly thank.
Displaying news. Previous design was for my taste too heavy. Now it's lighter and much more elegant, at least in my feeling.
Navigating in pages - I've changed the design of navigation that can be found at end of each page. All elements are put in one line and won't break dependly of web browser. And it looks better- The idea is based on Perfection or Vanity.
The style and code used for displaying Flash movies was changed. Firstly, it's complaint with web standards (a code that you can get from YouTube causes W3 validator to vomit with error messages), secondly, it looks better.
Transparency of frame around content area. Before ther was a solid gray frame which was crappy for me, so I've decided to change it. And I've added a shadow, which gives the feeling of depth. However, transparency doesn't work on Internet Explorer, due to technical issues.
A image background - I think it gives a climax. Before it was only one solid color.
If link leads to PDF document, it will be signed by icon representing this filetype.
The displaying style of list of links has changed.
Inputting fixed (px) and resizable (em) font sizes. I tried best to get font size being the same in all web browsers. Tests were done on Opera 9.5, Firefox 2.0, Konqueror and Internet Explorer 6.0 and ended successfully. Also, you can resize the content font size in Internet Explorer 6, which was impossible with fixed-pixel font size.
I've made custom 404 and 500 error pages. I hope less people will discourage to my page ;)
I've worked on footer's style. In previous design it was taking a lot of space in content area and was drawing too much attention.
The next thing I've changed is title headerstyle
A new section has appeared - Czytelnia. As you can figure out from name, there are articles, which, depending on what you're interested, are worthy reading, or looking through. A few of them were written in polish language.

I would like to show, why it's a good idea to write semantic websites. For curiosity, I've checked how my page looks in text type web browser and shot a few screenshots:

Isn't it readable? ;) For comparing I've made a screenshot of polish onet.pl portal. What? Do you think surfing in text mode is a addiction? Nothing more wrong, there are situations where user can't use the graphic interface of OS system because of destroyed software or hardware. Once time it happened to me. This time I was a beginner Linux user and graphic server was broken down (I don't know which quilty is, his or my ;) and I hadn't any idea how to repair. Luckily, I had a internet conncetion and installet text web browser. After 10 minutes of browsing forums, I've found solution, solved problem and returned to world of colours and buttons :)

Next changes 28 November 2007

Again I've done changes on webpage. I've deleted about 80% tables from code and in their place I've put another code to sort things. Much less code and it looks more clearer for me. Also, I've changed the way the index elements are displayed, especially in watercolour section. Looks better, isn't? It's all. No any new projects this time.

Changes on webpage 25 November 2007

Finally I have made changes that I couldn't do sooner. These are, inter alia, a bit corrected english translations, cleaned webpage code (I was surprised how many errors there were) and a rollover effect for language flags. There are no any new projects, but at this moment I'm working with square wave driver. It's a versatile and very useful device, which can be used in many high voltage applications - nah, a own SSTC is coming with bigger steps ;-) The reason I've started to make driver is simple - I've bought lately a oscilloscope. Also I'm going to describe it and tell how to use it in Electronic section. Cute thing, so many knobs, switches, double variable reistors and it weights humble 12 kilograms, which I had to take with my bag when returning to my house from seller :)

Official webpage opening 17 November 2007

Well, hi to you all on my freshly opened homepage about my passions. As so far, there isn't much projects, but I will from time to time write next write next scribbles. In meantime, I invite you to read what there's in this moment ;-) Unfortunately, my actual underpages translations are horrible because I was in hurry. It's somehow readable, but I will improve them in short time. Also, be aware that there might be minor errors with webpage code - this is still in production, and now I'm correcting little code errors and some cleaning. I would be pleasant, if someone will notice any errors and tell me. Of course, I suggest to use another web browser than Internet Explorer 6, because it has horrible XHTML and CSS support, which aren't getting along with world standards. I recommend strongly Opera and Firefox