Web Design and Meditation

Ecc 9:10 Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.

I have been on a deeper exploration of web design lately, and the deeper I get in my learning, the more deficiencies I see in the website. After three consecutive all-nighters, I have cured a number of these deficiencies. It has been a meditative experience. Here are some of the latest changes (there were many; I will probably forget to mention a few).

The Changes

Most obviously, I learned to write a new wordpress theme from scratch and now the blog looks like the rest of the website instead of the default theme which made it look like 100,000 other blogs. Now the website is apparently seamless. Among other things, I redesigned the sidebar to hopefully only include navigation links that are truly useful. I may still do some minor navigation tweaks, but they will likely be so minor that I won’t announce them. They will simply be.

I  kept the subtitle “Eternal Guidelines for Living” and created my own header that still clicks to the front page. I wrote a new article for the front page to replace the list of latest archived articles which was perhaps a bit tedious and didn’t really alert anyone to the nature of the website. Hopefully the new static article will be more helpful to newcomers wondering what the site is about. It will probably be a work in progress for a while.

I  changed the color of all hyperlinks to make them a little bit brighter to show up better on the black background. The colors have been pretty much unchanged for seven years, and I won’t change them from what they are now without a great amount of consideration. Perhaps in six months I will re-evaluate the background color, but all the colors will probably stay as they are for at least that long.

Less obviously, I modified all the files along with the style sheets to make the website more printer-friendly. On the file menu in your browser, click “Print Preview” from any page and you’ll see what I mean. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

…

Wasn’t that fun? It won’t print the navigation sidebars or anything else extraneous. Also, a print button has been added in the left panel of the frames Bible that will print the contents of the right frame. It is a useful workaround to a basic and age-old browser problem.

I also changed the scrolling because I felt it was distracting having the content panel and the advertisement panel, each with their own scroll bars, each scrolling separately. Now they scroll together with a single scroll bar. I tripled the size of the ad panel as well. Now it shows twelve Google ads instead of four (of which only three were ever visible without scrolling) so if there is any value at all to having Google ads, that value is now quadrupled.

I simplified the navigation on the Bible pages so that clicking between different Bible chapters is more obvious and intuitive. The frames Bible is still a little buggy; anyone silly enough to click on links in the right frame (other than previous and next Bible chapter) will see what I mean. One of the drawbacks of using frames is that it is possible to click inside a frame and bring up another frame inside the frame. Click on “Frames Bible” inside the right frame a few times and you’ll see your browser chopped up into smaller and smaller pieces. Go ahead: try it! It’s fun for a kick. But not very useful. So caveat: don’t click inside the right frame in the frames Bible. Use the navigation links in the left frame instead.

One of the challenges of web design is making a page that looks the same (or at least looks good) in all browsers that anyone may be using to view the site. If you go to http://browsershots.org, you can enter any url (such as www.commandmentsofyhwh.org) and see how it displays in a variety of web browsers and operating systems. It isn’t precise, but it gives a close approximation. If pages look great in most browsers but not in yours, try upgrading to one of the latest web browsers.

I may make some minor tweaks here and there, but these fixes should be the last major changes for a while. At least from what I can tell on my own computer, everything on the website seems to just work. I have accomplished all of my major goals for the technical development of the site. The links work, the pages work, the elements on the pages work. It does what it is supposed to do. Hopefully it will be a pleasure to read and navigate.

Meditation

Just as importantly, I have learned (and am still learning) a new and valuable skill in web design. Ultimately, with more experience, I may market that skill. Web design is a very meditative preoccupation. It is a bit like the monks of old who would sit for hours copying the texts of the Scriptures. Alone with one’s thoughts and YHWH’s words, the mind relaxes and is at peace. It is a welcome reprieve from the hustle-bustle of life. In fact, I dare say that I enjoy working through the peace of the night more than I used to enjoy sleep.  And that is saying a lot.

I have probably said this before, but I now think that the website is technically functional enough that I can work on more content with the knowledge that what I put up will be easy to find and read without odd visual distractions or browser anomalies (e-mail me if I am wrong). For the first time, as I sit and reflect on the state of the website, I don’t see anything glaring at me that is so wrong it must be corrected immediately. If I still feel that way in six days, I will take it as a sign that it is time to call it “good.”

Gen 1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

(Of course, YHWH did not completely retire after the Creation!)