Our Honor Defend

So if you’re reading this and aren’t completely new to OHD, you might be noticing some of the changes around here. Chiefly: it’s not as hideously ugly as it was before. In many ways, we have looked to the image to your right of Joe Laurinaitis and Brian Hartline as a shining light of what we should aspire for in terms of web design here at OHD. Granted, we don’t pretend that the new layout is anything as awesome as the unholy alliance of asskickery formed between the Animal and Brian Hartline after the Wisconsin game, nor does it kick as much ass as the mayhem that followed from their pact. However, we are taking steps in the right direction. At least we should hope.

Nevertheless, we think the new layout improves the reader’s experience. To recap what’s new and what has changed:

• Slicker layout: I personally think that college football blogs nowadays have too much information and too much features encapsulated in them to be adequately presented in just a two column layout. Stuff would otherwise fall below the fold, get lost and whatever else. We all think that things are easier to find with this layout. Hopefully you all agree. Everything here regarding the theme is original coding, with the exception of the Big Ten Bloggers feed. God bless 11W, otherwise I would have no way of knowing how Google managed its Reader feed stuff.
• Styleswitcher: I struggled with this one. Red, or any color approximate to it like Scarlet, is a very aggressive color, and my obsession with art history informs this. In terms of web design, if not done properly, red could assault the eyes and hence why I opted for a rather drab gray design the first time around. But that one was hideous. I think I pulled it off this time around, but I incorporated a lighter gray design as well. Choice is yours on which one you want to have. Just click either the scarlet or gray block in the navigation bar to pick your poison. The default is scarlet.
• Author bios: New and improved this time around. I decided to keep with the recruiting theme and design up a mock Rivals/Scout bio. It’s not particularly good and I might revisit it sometime later to streamline code. Should work for now. For an example, see Max Power’s bio¹. These bios are mostly an exercise in vanity, since you don’t need to know who we are. Nor would you care.
• Gravatars: Previously, we used some modified code just to give only us avatars. No point in withholding it to anyone else, though, so gravatars for everyone. For those unaware what it is, a gravatar is an icon that appears next to a comment you make on participating blogs that serves as your own little digital signature. Eleven Warriors has them. NittanyWhiteOut has them. Only fair to be jonesing, so now we have them. If you want your own, go sign up for one. The limit for a gravatar upload is 80×80, but in the interest of space, we resize down to 60×60.
• Content sharing: Share posts easier with the ShareThis option. Supports just about every social networking/content sharing website under the sun.
• Standards compliant: I’m rather anal about XHTML/CSS, and — at least with the dummyblog I designed this under — this layout should be 100% standards compliant. I think that’s a first, but I’m not sure². Either way, it should get the NCAA off our backs.
• Requirements: I put together this design well aware of the diagnostics of our readership here. I tested this layout against Firefox, SeaMonkey 1.1.3, Opera 9.27 and 9.50b2 as well as Internet Explorers 6 and 7. These account for 95% of all visitors according to Google Analytics and all render the site just fine. I do not, however, have a Mac and could not check this layout in Safari, which accounts for the remaining 5 percent of visits. It should look just fine. One of the benefits of the last layout was its complete fluidity, and thus did not discriminate against people using an 800×600 resolution. However, now I’m being mean to the 800×600 crowd, as they account for only 2 percent of the traffic. The minimum resolution is for 1024×768 viewers. Get a better monitor.
• 

  Why are you using IE again?
  Internet Explorer: I hate Internet Explorer, especially 6 and below. IE 7 is not as bad, but it still is curious to me why anyone uses IE unless they absolutely have to. Even then, why would you have to? Didn’t you bolt from IE after the feelgood viruses of the summer in 2003 and 2004? Hell, I not only left IE, I left Windows altogether³. More to the point, though, this layout is optimal for Firefox and Opera. There are several discrepancies in the new layout because of IE’s silliness, such as the ‘Our Honor Defend’ graphic (limitation in IE, doesn’t understand the :before qualifier) as well miscellaneous odd spaces in the sidebar (IE’s odd preset padding rules). The layout still renders just fine, but it is suboptimal. But then again, you should know better. When you surf the net with Internet Explorer, you surf the net with MICHIGAN. Please think of the children.

It’s still not as good, but we think it’s an improvement. To summarize:

All things considered, we like the new layout and we think it substantially increased OHD’s killing power. While not explicitly one of the goals of our website, we think implicit in our goals is violence or anything that can result in the destruction of life and property. We have a long way to go before this site can claim its first fatality, but expressed in terms of Beanies — a scientific measurement whose standard is the force and fury of a single Beanie stiffarm — we can document the improvement in OHD’s killing power with the new layout.

• 0.0001: OHD vers 1.0. The old layout.
• 0.00016: OHD vers 2.0. The new layout. Hoo-ray! Improvement!
• 0.1: Force exerted from the little finger of a Beanie stiffarm; sufficient to split a rail.
• 0.3: Force sufficient to be deemed unsafe for airline travel according to the Department of Homeland Security. Accordingly, Beanie must drive to every road game.
• 0.5: Force considered a capital crime in the United Kingdom and her outlying territories and Crown Dependencies. Accordingly, Beanie is not welcome in the United Kingdom.
• 0.7: Beanies required to induce estrus in the average adult male.
• 0.8: Beanies sufficient to induce perspiration from Chuck Norris.
• 1.0: The force and fury of a single Beanie stiffarm.
• 1.0: Beanies sufficient to completely negate a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick.
• 1.05: Force sufficient to collapse the chest cavity of the average adult male, who just milliseconds prior was induced into estrus at 0.7 Beanies.
• 1.1: Approximate force required to uproot/level a Hedge Maple tree or any tree with average topend height and spread of 25 feet.
• 1.9: The approximate force exerted by Mike Adams to pancake the Walls of Jericho.
• 2.0: The force and fury of a double Beanie stiffarm. A lethal dosage of Beanie.
• 2.8: Level of Beanies exerted by Mike Adams to pancake the Red Sea for God’s chosen people.
• ~3.0: Force likely to break the Hoover Dam. Scientists here can only estimate for the safety of millions who would be affected.
• ~5.0: Believed to be capable of altering the axis of the Earth.
• ~6.0: Theoretically, able to rip apart the time-space continuum.

Indeed, after two Beanies, there’s a lot of variability in measurements and much of it resorts to theory. However, there is good reason to believe that all that is, ever was, and ever will be, can be expressed as the sum of approximately 6 Beanie stiffarms. Scary prospect for the rest of the world.

By all means, if something’s awry or if you have a suggestion for improvement, let me know.

1. we still don’t know what a “dual-threat blogger” is, but we all agreed that if anyone’s a dual-threat blogger (whatever that would be), it should be Max. Whatever is good to embarass him on a blog that I know his old man reads. [↩]
2. web standards are only really important for obsessive-compulsive weirdos like me, so it’s not that big of a deal. [↩]
3. Linux, baby. And I haven’t looked back. [↩]