The Best Of The Rest: Minor Makeover Edition
One day I'm going to get a real We Fly Spitfires badge and use it to impress people I meet in the street.
Continuing with my quest to deliver the most sexy and stylish blog possible (yes, even inanimate electronic objects can be sexy), I’ve put some more minor updates to the site live today. Probably the biggest change (for me anyway) is the use of Typekit to render the main title font and sidebar headers. Utilising fonts on the web is a real pain currently due to distribution issues and what not and previously I was using some code to generate my title fonts as images using PHP. Not only was that becoming a burden on my server due to increased traffic (and spam… lots and lots of spam) but it also makes the site slower to download for the user. Now everything should be a bit quicker and slicker.
Other changes include a more attractive nav and new social media links beneath the header. Not a massive change but a welcome one nonetheless. Oh and all of the adverts are now gone too.
Feel free to let me know your thoughts, likes or dislikes or if you encounter any bugs (I’d be really grateful if anyone got the chance to check the site on an iPad – not sure how the fonts will render on it).
Anyway, that’s enough of my rambling. We all know why you’re here! Let the link loveth commencify:
- Petter is in search of a true WoW clone.
- The Ancient Gaming Noob shares some news about a poor unfortunate chap who happened to lose a little bit of money in EVE.
- Andrew is not a fan of hype.
- Ysharros doesn’t think anything can live up to the hype.
- Syp defends the right to love the hype.
- Spinks shares some rules for enjoying the hype.
- Stabs reflects on the concept of hype.
- Ixobelle dispares over Warriors in PvP.
- Klepsacovic wants to want to die (I want to not want to die).
- Tesh looks at immersion.
- The Pugnacious Priest declares her passion for writing.
-Gordon
P.S. Thanks again for your wonderful design skills, Espen!
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So I read that you were going to pick up STO – is that true?
Also – really dig the header!
Also: if you haven’t yet set-up your account, let me invite you to the game! It shouldn’t make a difference to you, but it would net me a Holographic Bridge Officer!
Yep! I was actually looking around the shops to find a boxed copy on the weekend but couldn’t find any. Don’t really want to download it all and would rather have the disc
I prefer the Google Font API myself, but of course it’s limited to the selection of open source fonts that Google provides. I’m not sure how Google determines which version of the font format to embed, but it just works cleanly with only a stylesheet link (no javascript).
I guess the benefit with Typekit is the access to all those pricey non-distributable fonts that you couldn’t normally (legally) use with @font-face.
You might want to choose a better fallback font though. With the Typekit font turned off, the text in your header (We Fly Spitfires – MMORPG Blog) overlaps the center image. Just a small annoyance, but I noticed it browsing with my phone.
Yeah Google Fonts is really great but the selection is very limited
I couldn’t find any font in there that fitted my theme.
Typekit is cool and easy to use although not quite as slick as Google Fonts. Still better than using image replacement though.
And yes, definitely need to work on the fallback font. The problem I’m having is the size and spacing. Need to figure out a way of applying a new set of styles if Typekit is disabled.
Pity your site now crashes the Safari iPad browser
Works on Snow Leopard Safari (haven’t tried Win32 version)
Well done Gord! Worked around in 30mins … That’s service
I disabled the Typekit iPad rendering as it’s still a bit buggy. Apparently they have a workaround to stop the crashing – will check it out on the weekend.
Hey, I like the new look, it’s definitely a lot cleaner. I also noticed you added my link to your blog roll (or was it there before and I just didn’t notice? In any case, thanks
And I hope to see you in STO soon!
Hmm, though your site seems a bit slower than normal. Anything to do with the changes you think or maybe it’s just me? Anyway, I’ll follow up with you if I notice it again.
Thanks! I think the slowdown is just due to my server being crap. Hopefully it won’t happen a lot and the new design will improve things.
Got a trial key for STO so will be on soon! Not sure I can play on American servers though