Happy Day! Today marks the overhaul of the blogfolio. It's something that I've been wanting to do for a while now, but once it gets down to it, I'd rather create new work than tweak the presentation of work that I've already done. My aim was to integrate everything that I post, while at the same time maintaining a "portfolio" or at least catalog feel.

A Couple Remarks on The Execution

With the initial version of this site, my emphasis was on creating a whole packaging using some of the CSS tricks that I had up my sleeve, in addition to pushing WordPress a bit past its usual limits. Part of that was to use no images—beyond the content images—and to not use javascript. I especially didn't want to use sIFR or create images for custom headline type.

I decided this time around to use a few new-ish technologies on the web front (not extremely new or particularly untested, but developed in the past couple years). Beyond using a few supplemental images, I've integrate a javascript library, specifically jQuery, as an aid to presentation and functionality. Some of the plug-ins that I use on the site utilize it anyway, so that wasn't a hug decision. The second major change is saying "F.U." to IE6, and to some extent IE7 and 8. I'm using some CSS3 rules that haven't passed final review, but are well supported in Firefox, Safari and Chrome (as well as Opera for the most part). If you're not using one of those browsers anyway, I would suggest that you do so. I'm also using a method to render searchable type for some of my headers, called cufón. It can be a little funky, but the reality is that I'm quite bored with the web's typical font options. I'm using a face called Junction that is an open source typeface. It's a nice modern sans serif with a little bit of style. There is only one weight, unfortunately, but hopefully that will be expanded in the future.

Lastly is something that I'm doing on a trial basis: I'm using Disqus for my comment system. The main reason for doing this is that it really centralizes a lot of discussion and feedback with the posts. If somebody retweets a post on Twitter or likes it on Facebook, then it all shows up here. I really like that idea. Plus, it allows people to log in with a bunch of different credentials, so that you don't actually have to sign up for a user name.

The Wrap-up

So what does everybody think? Please leave a comment and let me know. I'm sort of fishing…but I also I want to make sure that the new comment system works, so help me put it through its paces.