h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm fairly new here, and I'd just completed my home page ( http://www.h2g2.com/U130692 if you're curious).

However, the new 'skin' break the images quite nicely as they have a dark blue border- Is it possible to select different images based on the user's selected 'skin'?

It'd be useful to know before I go off writing any articles involving pictures.. If that's even possible?

i've been having the problem of the new skin totally deleting everything i wrote on my home page and saying i hadn't gotten round to writing anything yet. i hade to try and login 3 times before i got the old skin back! what gives, h2g2?

use .gifs, and use a *transparency* border, rather than a dark blue border. All the major packages should be able to do this, and it'll make it background independant.

Luke Rhinehart - and that consultation will cost you a virtual doughnut, and your two cents.

Sorry, no virtual donuts as you didn't actually answer the question.

I know about transparent Gifs, but the page describing the changes to h2g2v2 mentions something about using a < PICTURE > tag rather than < IMG > when trying to display an image based upon which skin was in use- I just wondered if anyone knew anything about it, or more specifically how to use it...

The use of different PICTURE files depending on the skin selected is limited to h2g2 resident Blobs (the B99999 files).

The GuideML will pick a different version depending on the skin.

It doesn't work for non h2g2 resident images

;^)#

I do rather feature-rich images and had taken pains to fade the edges into the background blue, so some of my stuff looks quite manky in alabaster. I have been using mainly jpg format up to now in order to preserve color depth and range, so I'm not sure the GIF route is going to work for me.

The most face-saving thing I can suggest is to make a statement somewhere on your page, to say that it was designed to be seen using classic goo.

Thanks people!

One virtual donut to Bruce.. Looks like I'm stuffed!
Another to Asteroid Lil for letting me know I'm not the only one...

If you need a 'best viewed in goo' graphic, I've got a couple on my home page.

Thanks RedBeard, I'll do that...

Who's idea was this new skin, anyway?

Just because using XML means that you *can* change the interface at will doesn't necessarily mean that you *should*- If it isn't broken, don't fix it...

There is a quick way of previewing in another system - if you linked back to your page using the preview you could fix it... what's the code? Yey... add ?skin=classic to the end of your link. So visit http://www.h2g2.com/u96596?skin=classic to see my homepage in the goo.

Actually, while I much prefer Classic Goo, I think I understand the need for the new skin. It's much less graphic-heavy and loads faster for some people.

I also have the feeling that it will be used by people who do h2g2 while they're supposed to be working (Nobody does that, do they? ) so it will look like a 'regular' internet site, limiting the chance that people will look over their shoulder and go: 'Hey, that looks cool! What is it you're working on?'

Don't forget you can include a "view this page in Classic Goo" link.
To do this - somewhere on your page put
Click here to see this page in the Classic skin

The A99999 number is the page/entry number, change the link text to suit yourself.

hope it helps
;^)#

heh.. I already have graphics/fonts/colours etc all disabled within Internet Explorer for that purpose (allegedly) so to me every page looks like a sensible page while I'm at work...

For some people, light text on a dark background is very hard to read. That's why you very rarely see magazines use it and why, at the first opportunity, most PC users moved from using a DOS character display to a graphical one, they got black on white.

Personally I like the new skin, but I fully appreciate others may not and understand the situation re: existing graphics and stuff. A major change like this was always guaranteed to cause a few problems.

Neil.

Actually I find light text on a dark background much easier on my eyes and have Windows configured to use this setup for all applications- But I'm strange like that.

I can see how dark text/light background is *supposed* to be better, but comparing computer screens to magazines isn't very useful- Computer monitors typically refresh between 70 and 100 times per second, which causes the display to flicker slightly. Some people are more sensitive to this flickering than others, but using a bright background will always make this effect more noticeable...

This used to be more of a problem when screen refreshed slower: eg below 50Hz, as the eye I think can see at about 20/30 Hz normally, flicker could become a problem.

That's why a *minimum* refresh rate of 50Hz is usually recommended for 1st person shootemups - otherwise the eye detects jerkiness.

Of course, this all comes down to no two people being the same, save except identical twins maybe.

At least now people have a choice and those who found the old site hard to read may be prepared to spend more time here. That means more 'eyeball' time, which is good for the advertisers. Not that they're our main concern of course

Neil.

Of course, it also instantly splits the h2g2 'community' into two: I suspect that the majority of 'old' users will prefer what they're used to, and that most of the 'new' users will stick with what they're given... So in time, pages optimised for one skin or another could become a major pain in the a**...

So what do you use? Alabaster or Goo?

Goo forever! (Until a shiny new skin comes along that looks better than the current two...)