I always ctrl-"+" once to read your comments, then ctrl-"-" when I write comments because otherwise there's a display bug with the input box (although once you hit preview the bug goes away). I can't say it bothers me to do these things, it's basically automatic for me to make adjustments like that in any online environment (I bet you're the same way); actually there are quite a few blogs that I only view via a reader because of color/contrast problems I have with their web designs. Whereas your design is a freakin masterpiece.

the only things i have trouble reading in the comment section are people's names ("so and so dijo:") when they are in red.

I can't see the green on gray, so expect I'm missing a few things. That's the "problem" with artists... you're gifted with color sensitivity that some of us start to lose as we age.

Have pity on us!

(thanks both of you so far,

erizzle that is a bug, you are right. that is unreadable to me, too. i have yet to track down the class that is signifying that color behind the "border" img. that black bar should not be there. i'll hit that eventually, thanks.) UPDATE: fixed.

green on gray? richard, do you mean the arial olive comment font on the yellowish/tan paper background? the comment font? thanks for the feedback.

I don't really have trouble reading it, but sometimes the posts are sooo loooooong...and the print is soooo smaaaaallll...

The olive on tan is fine. The problem I see is that the whole site looks brown (unreadably so) for the first few seconds - the tan paper takes a while to load.
This is OK if you have a fast connection and know it's coming up. But on dialup it could be one of those slow or non-loading sites. ? Don't know though, haven't tested that.

heraclitus jeff, correct me if i'm wrong, but for now i'l interpret that as you being an, um, joker. :)

--

cero, maybe i could get the filesize for the paper gifs a little smaller. it is pretty optimized. actually, i could change the bg color! so that while the gifs are loading, the contrast between the font and the bg color is enough that you can read it without the paper.

thanks for the feedback.

I am joking, but given the length and heft of most of your posts, it might make sense to make the print just a little bigger. It might make the posts read more easily. But, I don't know, it might not make any difference at all.

I love everything and it works fine for me; never change it ever. :-p

(If I did suggest something, it'd likely be the bit about the "person dijo" area, 'cause the design makes the words hard to read even when it's yellow. But that's it. No changing the pretty website, por favor.)

I like your site design, but the comments are illegible without heavy layout breaking magnification. I have very poor bordering on legally blind eyesight so i have to magnify everything anyhow but the combo of size and color make the comments very difficult. More contrast, perhaps a bolded font and larger size would all help, but the first two may be the most important in my case.

2 Years ago my eye doc said I need bifocals but I didn't get them yet. So my eyesight isn't the best. Funny thing, Sunrunner said she doesn't have a problem reading books, but does with websites. Mine is the opposite. I don't have a problem reading websites but most books I have to take my glasses off and read it really close to my face, not fun. I can read the small print here fine and the colors are fine too.

Would it be really difficult to make a plain vanilla style sheet, larger black print, white background without an image? It would load fast for dial up and be easy to read for anyone. I'm not talking about changing the site for most people, but one of those like Bitch|Lab/Queer Dewd has where the reader has the option of changing the style sheet. I think Sadly, No! has it too since people complained about the black background with white text at one time.

hi donna!

"Would it be really difficult to make a plain vanilla style sheet, larger black print, white background without an image?"

jeje! well...make one up and tell me how to implement it and i'll think it over. that's all i can say. i don't know, really. but i sure can tell you it's a lot easier to suggest than it is to do anything like that.

i'm not positive, but i'm pretty sure that giving people the option within my own software to change style sheets would not be a small amount of work. then again, it may be. if i google for Movable Type and find it is not too difficult an option, I will work on it.

but i've changed things as tiny as you can believe and it has been days-long effort to do so. sometimes months. to research and figure out how to do it on Movable Type is not the same as, for example, the WordPress gadgetry that is flying around. everyone can use those hacks and plugins, but they don't apply to me. so i have to find my own solutions. ones that apply to MT. and not many people are using MT. Wampum, Billmon used to, i don't know. i'm also current on my software, so any hacks that only apply to say, version. 2.x arenot going to work for me. and a lot of times the most hacks you find online are not for the current release. sometimes they work anyway.

i don't read Sadly, No, i have no idea, don't know the URL. people are not very helpful either, i've found. when you ask "how did you change the xxxx." even on forum boards or developer's pages it's hit and miss with questions like that. sadly. that's part of why it takes so much time to investigate things. i've built this blog on the cumulative knowledge that i've gained from building and designing MT blogs since 2003 or so. i've done about ten of them by hand, no support. (MT support costs money.)

i've done everything you can imagine to take this from a 2-column default design to a 3-col one that shows gravatars, shows tags, has threaded comments (Reply To function), bigger comment field, fixed the cookie problem (so it remembers you), added Digg, Delicious and Stumble Upon buttons, changed category and date listing pages so they are only summary and not full, and tweaked about every single element that can be tweaked as well as designed every single graphic myself.

each change has taken days, usually. sometimes weeks to nail down. sometimes months. no exaggeration. and often, stretches of hours at a time. for the dumbest, smallest things sometimes.

Sunrunner said she solved the problem by finding her reading glasses. so would someone really suggest i spend hours and hours of work so they don't have to wear reading glasses or hit "ctrl +"?

i promise that i will keep it in mind, the variable style-sheet thing. i will do some looking. i'd love to help make it easier for people to read if they cannot read now. but after all that, i will say that i really do like my design. i designed it, after all. i chose each color and element. i hate the idea of someone reading this like a big generic cereal box, big white blank and gawky black text. it wouldn't even say the same things once you did that! :) i'm wondering if i made the green comment font a bit darker if that wouldn't help people like Sunrunner.

however, i am glad that even with a need for bifocals, you can read the small print "fine." and thanks for the rest of the feedback from everyone.

(comment edited before any reply appeared)

ps, on the "so and so dijo" part, that is unreadable, i agree. as i said above, i've yet to track down that class that signifies that black bar behind that text. in fact, i may have to create a new method, as it may be a Gamma class, which also controls the sidebars on the index page which NEED to stay black. so i've yet to fix that, but that's why its redundant (under each comment it does the same thing, says who wrote it with a link and that IS readable).

UPDATE: fixed.

okay, donna. i sound a bit too strong in my response to you. i'm not sure. i feel like the Speech Rules post and the comment thread on your post (now linked by sunrunner's metaphor of my site excluding access to the handicapped) is somehow getting blurred into the topic of my site design and i can hardly separate things anymore! and...i know these many site changes (that i listed in the last comment) are each causes for champagne, each time i've made one, so yes, they usually are really that difficult! but i didn't mean to jump at you.

anyway, i looked for the last 1.5 hours for a solution. i haven't found one yet. found everything related, but haven't found that gem yet. SO—

if you or if anyone knows a way to implement a reader-controlled reskin of an MT 3.x blog, i will put it into action. i will create a new stylesheet for low-bandwidth, as well as one for visually-impaired (due to eyes or reading environment) readers, as well as a third, combining both. so all essence of my design is completely nullified and gutted and husked to a— oh sorry. here i go again! :)

in the meantime, i will keep looking for a fix. and i will darken the comment font a bit.

page paper imgs should load quicker now.

i do find it a bit difficult to read the initial post text on the main page. i usually ctrl+ to make it bigger, or more generally just click on the comment or read more link to read the entire thing. the font is bigger that way, and i have no difficulty reading the post or the comments.

the front page of the blog has smaller font to you than the (courier new) font on this page???? oh man. that's totally backward from what i see! ai yi yi

yup. i'll send you two screen shots. it's much easier for me to read this page.

whoa. that's not right.

this needs a round of testing. i wonder if i have conficting figures in my stylesheet. that's just plain WACKY man. i tried to get those fonts smaller on that page, and nothing worked. or at least....i didn't see it working. that's TINY!

[here's how i see it]

okay thanks.

(web design!!! ¡%#@%^%!)

yeah, it is tiny. and my resolution is much higher than yours.

well i'm nowhere on the font issue for the main page. i dont know why it looks so tiny. that will be a few more hours work later on.

and i've changed the look of the "so and so dijo" [note for self, ".comments-header" class, ss], but now all the comments seem to run together, so i will probably tweak that later on. i've been swimming in code since seven am and....well maybe i'll fix that now.

i think the break on comments is fine, the way i see it.

okay, i've made the aztec glyph divider broader, which breaks up the comments a bit better. its the same sscreenshot i linked in my last comment (taken after the change). and people should be able to read the "so and so dijo" part fine. but i'm afraid i've fixed the most trivial thing and left the rest! well...i did compress further the paper imgs on this page, and they really ought to load quicker.

i promise to get to the font issues in a few. and i may bump up the font size on the comments. i just wish there were finer controls for it. it's a big jump between "x-small" and "small." maybe i can figger out how to make the page do different increments of size.

thanks for all the feedback!

Clem, thanks for your feedback. From your description, I think i am going to have to wait until i can offer the reader a switched up stylesheet to accommodate both a larger font and a boldface in the comments. I feel bad about making you do any extra work to read it. But if I make the comments so big and contrasty that everyone on every computer can read it, there will be no design left (nor would everyone agree) and then, faced with arguing commenters and huge, ugly comment font, i would grow severely depressed and stop writing, probably hurl myself from a tall building or rock ledge, and then, there would be no point in visiting this site anyway.

So I promise to keep looking into a way to let my readers reskin the blog. I am, ahora, going to ask a few sites who I know offer this, spurred on Donna's and your comments. Thanks for the effort in reading, sorry about that.

I didn't think you jumped on me, Nezua. I was wondering if you thought that I somehow knew that making changeable style sheets was easy, but no. I don't. I actually wasn't suggesting you do this unless YOU knew it was. I was hoping you'd say, oh yeah! that can be done! If it's a pain, then the keyboard shortcuts should be good enough. As you can tell from my site, I only do very very basic html. CSS and all that, no way.

Well...now that it's out there, I've been thinking about it. Haven't found the code yet...tho I said I'd stop looking, I have not. In the anticipation of finding it, I'm designing an alternate stylesheet now. I want to make us all happy. Or get as close as possible. I'll do it if I can. If not, it won't be from lack of effort!

I'm glad I didn't come across as testy as i heard myself. but reading back, i was hearing your comment wrong. you had said "is it really difficult to..." and i was hearing "is it really *that* difficult to..."

YES. not quite four pm and i've finally figured it out. now it will take some more building of stylesheets, now that i know how to implement it.

you blind people will HAVE your desire! MUAJAJAJAJA!!!!

It was fine by me, and now a bit better...it's not the age of the eyes, it's the miles on the eyes...the things I have seen....

I'm late wishing you a happy birthday because I have been racking my brain for a good Monkey King story. But I can't think of one! I know there have been times when my pride goeth before a fall, but I'm blanking them out. But I have been lauging about something my son said this week. Tuesday he asked me to tell him some words in Spanish. Now there isn't many that I know but I rattled off 3 or 4 and asked him why. He said, "I want to speak beautiful, like a Mexican." I had been laughing about this every time I thought of it for a couple days and yesterday I asked him what exactly he meant by "beautiful, like a Mexican." He said words in English, but said them with the rolling R, and said to me, "See, that's sexy." Now when I read Spanish on your site I think, "Oooooh sexy!" Happy Belated Birthday!

O, your road-weary ojos, vato! Damn, that cat is stylish. send me a full foto of him, and i'll try to make you a few icons of different sizes maybe you can see him better if you want, we can try.

soon yo'll see the new choices, jerry

-
donna thanks! jeje. i love that story. better than a monkey king story. :)

I was a little bummed out that he just meant the language. I thought for sure he had met a beautiful Mexican at school and wanted to impress her. LOL

Give it a few days, Donna...a few days, tops. :-p

hey, the front page font is bigger now!

yes. i found the bug! boy was he cozy. also, if you check your "View" menu in Firefox now, you should see, under "Page style" numerous stylesheets to choose from.

Next is the .js switcher that will appear on the front page and on the individual pages so people can choose right from the blog instead of their browser. i have to create an HTML table and some grafix and floaty title explanations and work it into the design of the page so it doesn't look ugly and huge. that will be the tough part.

done.

i am really late to this conversation--or maybe not so late as I spy a "marzo 10" in the comment above--but I find your comments section incredibly difficult to figure out and to see-and I only tell you this because you have some idea of how to fix it. (lol, as opposed to me, who hasn't the foggiest damn clue how to fix anything). I have no idea how to work it so that it says "Posted, in reply to X's comment, by bfp" and for me it's not so much the color but the font size--

I am assuming, however, that a large part of the problem here is actually me, as I, after a year and a half of blogging, remain a computer dunce that can't figure out how to change font size on her computer.

anyway, there it is.

by now you have found the solution, bfp! i hope it helps solve this for you.