ANDYLAMB.net

Twitter Twaddle

About This Site

Scary-monster.com is primarily a URL I use to try things out. At the moment I'm mainly playing with Joomla and jQuery.

This site currently uses:

The template is my own. The one I wrote as I was learning the CMS used the excellent Blueprint CSS framework, but when I decided to go for a blog-style format I threw out grids and went for my own styling. The reset CSS stylesheet I've used is by Richard Clark via html5doctor.com. I've styled html5 elements in places which still isn't widely supported, but thanks to the html5 enabling script by Remy Sharp this shouldn't be a problem. The rounded elements will be squared-off in IE<9, but I can live with that, especially as IE9 is now included as an automatic Windows Update. Cross-browser compatibility is still an issue in 2011, but the final demise of IE6 was a huge relief to many.

I've used Sigplus as an image gallery, FlowPlayer Reloaded for streaming video and FlexiTweet for my twitter feed.

Tried a shedload of editors to find a quick way of embedding an swf, but to no avail. Even with code filtering turned off, conditional statements were being trashed so I went with my tried and tested method.

Design-wise, I went back to the drawing board a few times on this one. I originally wanted CSS shadows, but as soon as the jQuery was dropped-in the site became frustratingly slow. I guess that with every frame of animation, the browser was recalculating and redrawing the shadows on each element. I recently discovered the jRumble plugin which I liked so much I threw out the bouncy animation I'd written myself. I might still stick it in somewhere, but these animations need to be used sparingly, or it gets a bit blinky.

SEO-wise, as Google continues to develop its algorythms, so clear code and relevant content seem the best way to achieve a decent ranking, along with the usual helpful meta tagging and a meaningful title/page header. Joomla 1.6 uses SEO-friendly URLs, so that will help.