Re: website draft 4, help wanted

[Patrick McCarty]

On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 8:33 AM, Francisco Vila<address@hidden> wrote:
> 2009/7/6 Valentin Villenave <address@hidden>:
>> 2009/7/6 Jan Nieuwenhuizen <address@hidden>:
>>> Just by accident I looked upon Valentin's page, if only we would
>>> be able to steel the header images/gradient and possibly put nicely
>>> rounded tabs into the bottom of that header gradient
>>> [CSS stealing suggestion: http://tinto-taal.nl ] and also steal
>>> other rounded stuff?
>>
>> Interesting. Does that kind of accidents happen to you a lot? :)
>>
>>> Also, Valentin's page uses two nice basic colours, light blue-ish
>>> and dark-greenish.
>>
>> I don't know if you're referring to my personal website or the
>> news.lilynet.net website. Much less rounded stuff on that last one,
>> though.
>>
>> As for me, I still haven't managed to get over the
>> http://meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/complexspiral/glassy.html that has
>> been posted here some days ago. Actually, this has made me want to
>> redo my whole website. No, actually, this has made me want to close my
>> website and never ever pretend I know a thing or two about CSS again
>> :)
>>
>>> A lot of [very important] work on content and structure has been
>>> done and discussed about, I'd really like to see some work/proposals/
>>> discussions on how the site could look/feel, looking through your
>>> eyelashes.
>>
>> The rounded thingy I used is actually a JavaScript hack from
>> http://www.html.it/articoli/niftycube/index.html
>>
>> Firefox has native support for rounded corners, but it's not
>> compatible with other browsers, and the rounded parts are not
>> anti-aliased (and therefore look a bit rough).
>>
>> JavaScript hacks are ugly, and should be avoided whenever possible.
>> Other than that, it is possible to make frames rounded by simply using
>> background images; however this cannot be used together with a
>> background radient. (And, hell, there still are 25% people out there
>> who can even display alpha-enabled PNG images correctly).
>>
>> Yeah, life sucks -- maybe I could use some of your Avatar thing right now :)
>>
>
> I'd like to suggest intermediate solutions like mozilla.com , it has
> rounded corners and gradients, but the background is mostly white.
> Background gradients can be nightmarish for designers, but
> partially-filled backgrounds with a limited-size image look beautiful
> and they are less problematic. Also, not everything is inside boxes,
> which obviously tend to be rectangular. That gives a general feeling
> of openess and freedom.

I would *love* to have the site looking like mozilla.com; it's too bad
they are using a fixed-width layout though.

I agree my layouts tend to be kind of boxy and that background
image/gradients can help replace this technique.  The problem I have
is adapting these techniques to the liquid layout we are using.

If anyone knows how to code rounded corners for the tabs on the top
navigation bar, please speak up!  I don't have that much experience
with these matters.

Thanks,
Patrick