After announcing my intention to redesign Perishable Press, I received some great feedback addressing everything from site architecture and navigation to appearance and usability. As the conversations continue, I want to spend some time thinking about usability, navigation, columns and sidebars. The current minimalist design features a single column layout with no sidebars. Content is located prominently front and center, with all navigational links appearing in either the oversized “footer” area or at the end of each individual post. As several people have pointed out, such navigational strategy (or lack thereof) discourages visitors from digging deeper into the site. Apparently, the pile of links at the bottom of each page — the menu, as I like to call it — requires far too much effort to decipher. I mean, really, just because it all makes perfect sense to me, doesn’t mean that everyone else will “get it” too.

Continue Reading

Here are a few sIFR Notes for Perishable Press. Just what are we looking at here? Well, first it is important to understand the sIFR variables and the order in which they should appear:

(sSelector, sFlashSrc, sColor, sLinkColor, sHoverColor, sBgColor, nPaddingTop, nPaddingRight, nPaddingBottom, nPaddingLeft, sFlashVars, sCase, sWmode)

The variable, sFlashVars consists of the following sub-variables (these should be seperated with an & sign:

# Align Flash text block
textalign=center
# Moves text any number of pixels to the right
offsetLeft=3
# Moves text any number of pixels down
offsetTop=3
# Adds underline links when hovered
underline=true

Then, inducing from the following code example, we should place a similar set of statements at the bottom of any pages requiring sIFR functionality:

<script type="text/javascript">
<!--//--><![CDATA[//><!--

if(typeof sIFR == "function") {
   sIFR.replaceElement("h1", "http://domain.com/path/to/fonts/font1.swf", "#E1E1E1", "#FFFF99", "#CC6633", "#333333", 0, 0, 0, 0, null, null, "opaque");

   sIFR.replaceElement("h2", "http://domain.com/path/to/fonts/font2.swf", "#CC6633", "#FFFF99", "#CC6633", "#333333", 0, 0, 0, 0, null, null, "opaque");

   sIFR.replaceElement("h3", "http://domain.com/path/to/fonts/font3.swf", "#E1E1E1", "#FFFF99", "#CC6633", "#333333", 0, 0, 0, 0, null, null, "opaque");
}

//--><!]]>
</script>

Arguments may also be stated by name rather than sequentially:

<script type="text/javascript">
<!--//--><![CDATA[//><!--

if(typeof sIFR == "function") {
   sIFR.replaceElement("h1", named({sFlashSrc: "../path/to/font.swf", sColor: "#777", sCase: "upper"}));
};

//--><!]]>
</script>

Here is another example using the named arguments method:

<script type="text/javascript">
<!--//--><![CDATA[//><!--

if(typeof sIFR == "function") {
   sIFR.replaceElement(named({nWidth:333,nHeight:33,sSelector:"h3.class-h3", sFlashSrc:"http://domain.com/fonts/font.swf", sColor:"#333", sLinkColor:"#777", sBgColor:"#FFF", sHoverColor:"#DDD", sWmode: "transparent", nPaddingTop:0, nPaddingBottom:0}));

//--><!]]>
</script>

Finally, here is the default CSS supplied with sIFR:

/* sIFR Print CSS | Hide Flash headlines from the browser */

.sIFR-flash, .sIFR-flash object, .sIFR-flash embed {
	display: none !important;
	position: absolute;
	overflow: hidden;
	height: 0px;
	width: 0px;
}
span.sIFR-alternate {
	visibility: visible !important;
	position: static !important;
	display: block !important;
	left: auto !important;
	top: auto !important;
}

/* sIFR Screen CSS | These are standard sIFR styles -- do not modify */

.sIFR-flash { 
	visibility: visible !important; 
	margin: 0px; 
}
.sIFR-replaced { 
	visibility: visible !important;
}
span.sIFR-alternate { 
	top: 0px;
	left: 0px; 
	width: 0px; 
	height: 0px; 
	display: block; 
	overflow: hidden;
	position: absolute;
}

/* Decoy styles used to hide the browser text before it is replaced */

.sIFR-hasFlash h1 { 
	letter-spacing: -2px;
	visibility: visible;
	font-size: 32px;
	height: 40px;
}
.sIFR-hasFlash h3 { 
	visibility: visible;
	font-size: 18px;
}

References

• sIFR Documentation at novemberborn