I've found my purpose

[davidn]

It was last year that yemminie made me appreciate the satisfying chunkiness of pound coins. Come to think of it, I appreciate that we have them at all - American dollar coins are so rare that people tend to hang on to them rather than spend them and get a pile of unmanageable notes. With the exception of quarters, change seems to be largely useless in America. I only mention this because I found Jamie's pencil case yesterday and it had no less than 24 pound coins in it, making it look like a miniature treasure chest.

I have finally found the purpose of my existence for the summer - after numerous false starts at MMF projects I've decided to put together the site about my songs that people have been requesting. Already I've been teaching myself about frames and stylesheets all over again, because I was taught about them in first year and never actually touched them again. I've now come up with something that I think is passable as a pretty decent site style, although I'm not sure how the green on black colour scheme will look to anyone who isn't colourblind.

It's true that I feel slightly self-important and pretentious doing it, but two separate people suggested the idea, and I think that that shows at least some interest. Releasing anything on the Internet is like talking to a brick wall because the majority of people don't give feedback on things (something I've been guilty of myself because I feel that I can never find the right words). At my estimation I have around a thousand regular downloaders, and only five or six of them at a maximum leave comments.

There is something that I'm not sure of, and it might be difficult to imagine without seeing it, but still: I have a vertical navigation menu on the left hand side of the screen, and when some sections are opened up I open a sub-menu for navigating that section. I can either put the sub-menu on the right side of the screen (as I had it originally - I felt that the scrollbar on the central main frame looked out of place this way) or just on the right of the menu, as an extension to it, leaving the main frame on the right. Which is more agreeable?

While I'm on the subject, Whitney said that I should change my livejournal style. Apparently, a selection of light blues isn't heavy metal enough.

Comments

[pookatimes.livejournal.com]

After actually bothering to navigate three pages to find your LJ, wasting ten precious seconds, I've come to the conclusion that your LJ style isn't really a selection of light blues. It's more a selection of light blues plus lilac, which is a shade of purple.

[davidn]

Is it? That's news to me. My eyes can only see in something resembling default Win 3.1 16 colours.

[e-to-the-ipi.livejournal.com]

To be fair, it just looks like a load of shades of blue to me too.

[raphx.livejournal.com]

Maybe you could make a transition to black, with dripping blood-red letters.

[davidn]

It's a possibility, but it'll have to wait because I'm behind on my virgin-slaughtering quota.

[plette.livejournal.com]

although I'm not sure how the green on black colour scheme will look to anyone who isn't colourblind.

Reminds me of my days doing data entry on the IBM AS400 system.

[e-to-the-ipi.livejournal.com]

While pound coins always feel good, for the last seven years, I've prefered the larger diameter of a two pound coin, I always thought it felt a punch of them are so much more pirate-esque.

[stefan-lindner.livejournal.com]

well if those are the only two options i'd go for the submenu directly to the right of the mainmenu, so all the navigation is in one area.
what i have done in a similar situation once is to have all my main links in the navigation bar, and as soon as one is clicked that'd have sub-entries, a new navigation page is opened in the navigation frame to replace the original, looking just like the old one but with the link selected before as bold text (or anything that'll make it look different) and the sub-entries as links below it.
a java menu in the style of the folders you see in the explorer would also be possible, but it requires finding such a thing somewhere as i doubt you'd wanna program it all by yourself, and the person viewing your page having java enabled.
or a main navigation on the top and a subnavigation on the left? then you'd still have the navigation in one area, and the info in another, but not the info -between- the navigation elements.

i hope i made some sense and expressed it in an understandable way.

[davidn]

All good suggestions, thanks - I decided, as you did, that having the navigation all in one area (in this case the left) looked the best. I was planning to highlight/embolden the selected section on the main menu, but I was looking for a way to do it without having a separate page for each possibility.

[stefan-lindner.livejournal.com]

i doubt it would be possible without java, or maybe flash. that's the problem with simple html. it's... simple.