User Comments

Overall, nice design… I’m just curious as to why you felt the need to implement sIFR at all? The font looks like Times (New Roman) or a slight variation thereof. As for the logo, why not just use an image? What advantage does sIFR have over an image?

You can recolorize the header image. This way, you can get other colors for links and so on. I’d also rotate several images of the same size and color pallette, if I were you.

Regarding sIFR, I’m not sure I’d use it unless I had a very special font. You seem to use a generic serif. As for the header text, you could replace the sIFR with a regular PNG for those Linux browsers.

Jonathan:

The font looks like Times (New Roman) … What advantage does sIFR have over an image?

You’re right, the font is regular “times new roman”.

As I wrote, I have opted for sIFR rather than an image as I’d like to change the background image a lot more often, but I don’t want to have to keep generating new transparent GIFs of the “Urban Mainframe” to accommodate them. Therefore, the advantage for me is merely one of labour saving.

Gabriel:

You can recolorize the header image. This way, you can get other colors for links and so on.

I could, if I had any idea how to do that or, indeed, if I had the necessary software. But I don’t.

I’d also rotate several images of the same size and color pallette

That’s exactly what I want to do. Hence the sIFR!

You seem to use a generic serif.

That’s right. But, having used it for the “logo”, there’s no extra overhead in using it to achieve anti-aliasing for the page titles.

you could replace the sIFR with a regular PNG

As far as I know, PNG support (particularly with transparency) is not guaranteed across browsers either. Or is it?

How’s this for an option: move the search box, login and register buttons out of the banner and then make the whole top bar a flash movie. Then, you no longer have to worry about transparency issues AND you could dynamically load in new images whenever you wanted.

On a quick and minor side note, the sIFR on the main header covers the right nav if the window is resized smaller (in Firefox).

move the search box, login and register buttons out of the banner

But to where? I’ve done this before, but just ended up with an overly cluttered sidebar

make the whole top bar a flash movie

I’d love to do that. That’s what Rui Carmo did over on the Tao of Mac. I’ve written before about how much I love this.

There are two problems though:

• As far as I can see, this would only really work with a fixed-width design,
• I don’t know Flash either!

the sIFR on the main header covers the right nav if the window is resized smaller

Yes it does. But it sorts itself out if you refresh.