RE parsed

About

If I had to describe this site I’d say It’s mostly about computer and web tech, but I’m not above breaking format for something that grabs my attention.

Contact

e-mail: david@reparsed.net
AIM: REparsed

The Feeds

The default RSS feed and the Atom feed both link to full posts. There are also links in the individual posts to the RSS feed for the comments.

Blogging Engine

I’m currently using Wordpress to power my blog. I’ve used Wordpress in the past and also tried other blogging software. Before switching back to Wordpress this last time I used Blosxom.

The Old Blogging Engine

Blosxom is a very lightweight perl script that uses plain text files for content and directory structure for categorization. Posts inherit their date & time from the time stamp of the text file. The Blosxom I used was modified and stripped to the bones.

Here are the all the source files for the old Blosxom powered site:

• Blosxom 3+5i (my stripped version)
  
• XHTML templates (flavours)
• CSS
• .htaccess

The template file needs to be broken into three parts (.head, .story & .foot), just follow the comments.

Design

The layout and style are done with CSS; no tables. I use XHTML to do my part for advancing web standards and to be ready when the old standards are depreciated.

My Design philosophy can be summed up in two words: functional simplicity. The simplicity should start with the raw code and continue on through the user experience.

• Pages should be simple and easy to read; no distractions.
• Pages should use valid code.
• Graphics should be content, not structure.
• Tables should not used as page structure or layout.
• Sites should be easy and intuitive to navigate.

Valid Code

I try to make sure the CSS and the XHTML are valid according to W3C.

Inspiration

I always found the classic web 1.0 plain web pages (white page, black text) the easiest to read and have come to appreciate their simplicity. With just a little CSS that same flat simplicity can becomes even easier on the eyes.

I first learned about using CSS for layout from Glish and BlueRobot. More recently I’ve taken design and layout inspiration from A List Apart, specifically the article: Creating Liquid Layouts with Negative Margins and more recently Faux Absolute Positioning, also from ALA.