Three years back I created a blog with the idea to post my Delphi snippets on that blog for future reference. But the problem as usual, so many ideas, so little time. It also didn't help that I switched to C# about 1 and a half year ago. I still use Delphi sometimes, but not for my regular work.

In my work I've learned a lot about C# and web development (ASP.NET) and it gave me a few ideas to publish about, but the problem was, my blog was called Delphi Snippets. So I came up with the *very* original name "Landman Code".

Design

Big difference from the first time was that now I understand html and css enough to make a nice website myself (instead of using a blogspot template). Naturally Because I'm Dutch I wanted a free hosting solution, so I stayed with the nice Google Service called Blogger (or Blogspot?).

I started my first design for my blog in Paint.NET. After I got a general idea of what I wanted I started with a basic HTML frame. Being a programmer I like the idea of the separation of content (HTML) and layout (CSS) and I created in my opinion a very clean html template. I always aim to support IE6+ and FF2+ when creating a new website, and off course IE6 got most of my attention. The aim was to have a fluid layout (but with a max width) and also have the layout shape according to the text size instead of a fixed pixel size (apparently called an elastic layout).

Blogspot Template

After I finished my HTML template I started searching for an explanation about the XML templates from blogspot. The furthest I got was the help from blogger itself.  So "developing" my XML template got a little bit of a drag, and without even an XSD to validate the XML the project had a rest period of about a month.

My new method was to find a reasonably clean template and "learn & copy" from that template to create my own template. I found that in the Nyoba 780 template. It was clean enough to understand how it worked and after a few evenings I finished my first blogspot template, so thanks for the inspiration Isnaini Dot Com .

Special features

I'm always proud of my work, and I try to learn every time a do a project. For this project I really wanted to dive deep into css and html. Here is a list of the thing's I'm particularly proud of.

• Using only 1 CSS hack (max-width IE6).
• Using valid HTML (the Blogspot navbar breaks everything).
• Round corner's using just a little bit extra html markup, I preferred the extra markup to the javascript solutions.
• Using png images with an alpha channel in an css background property and getting them to not be ugly in IE6 without using any hacks or filters. (TweakPNG to the rescue)
• Using my own basil plantage for the header image.
• The semi transparant box behind the title.
• Good usage of html tags (see the structure in FireBug)

Old Blog

I transferred the posts from my old blog to this blog at first for testing my template but also because I still like the idea of the old blog and want to keep my snippets in this blog.

 

So I hope you'll like the content (and design) of the blog.

Kind regards,
Davy Landman

ps. I recommend using ClearType (or Font Smoothing) for reading this blog, normally I wouldn't choose fonts which assume ClearTyping enabled, but because the intended audience are developers I assume you're using the features your Operating System offers you.

Tags: css, html