eric.setiawan.weblog

Hey, that’s one big change you got there, guys. I’ve been scouring for its content on the oldALA for some time, which I just found out it was version 3.0 and also meaning that they have had 2 other version before that. With the big names in Web Standards teaming up (Meyer and Zeldman), I am expecting to see something extraordinary. Am I asking too much? Well, the designing job went to Jason Santa Maria and I think it’s quite good. It got its clean and minimalist look. But forgive me, I can’t stop but comparing this new ALA with Stylegala. Frankly speaking, I like Stylegala better. Maybe that’s because I got used to 3.0 version and think of it as THE ALA style. Or maybe because of their new concept as Zeldman said “the design has a classic, almost scholarly feeling, although there is a hint of teasing play behind elements like the laurel wreath”. So, I guess it was only my subjective opinion. CSSing went to Eric Meyer (who else?) who I still see as (one of) the CSS master. I, as some of the commenters on Meyer’s article, was asking about the flexibility of the design. Try using 800x600 resolution and you’ll get yourself a nice sideway scroll. I’m assuming that there still no 360 degree scrolling mouse on sale except the Apple’s Mighty Mouse. The good thing is I don’t have to mentioned that they’re HTML and CSS valid, do I? Oh, and have I mentioned that this new ALA using Ruby on Rails for their publishing system? Cool. And I can’t wait to see these

Each issue will have its own color scheme. Imagine: Red and green for Christmas; blue underlined links for when Jakob Nielsen finally writes for us.

So can I start expecting those whites to turn into reds and greens or else?

You might have guessed it right and you find it silly. Yes, this has connection with my previous entry. As silly as this might be, I am sure this will be helpful for the beginner bloggers like me. Have you ever wonder what type of font should we use on our blog? I’ve tried some of on-the-list fonts such as Trebuchet, Arial, Georgia. But now I’m settle with the Lucida Grande. If you don’t have this font on your computer I guess you’re working on a non-Mac. And if you do have, then you’re a Mac-lover or you install it on your PC. Then the PC-users (that including me, the authors himself who still use a PC) should have another good font to look at. My choice went to either Tahoma or Verdana. And I chose not to blow its size on the monitor. Instead I use 11px size and the magic is within the next clue. Use 15-17px line-height. That should do it. At least for me, I now see my blog’s entry easy and nice to read. Combine with my previous hint, you get yourself a good look for your blog. Enough talking (that’s me) and reading (that’s you), now you can try it yourself. If you have other hints and tips, you can just share it here.

Maybe I was so ignorant or just plain dumb. I just realized there is something different about my blog than others. I never thought about font-color until today. My friend Budi asked me to check some other blogs. Upon seeing all those blogs and seeing the CSSes (not that I steal something, it’s just for learning purposes only) I realize that they don’t use the color: #000 anymore. Though they looked the same at first glance, but they are different as the color are greyish. The one that I now applied on my blog is #333 (do you see the difference?). This not so black font color is softer than the pure black one and proven to be useful when reading a long entry of a blog. Care for your eyes and for the readers’. Call me silly but now I know it.

Jason Kottke wrote So Long, Technorati, about what he thoughts about it and later, why he chose to leave it out of his blog. I didn’t use much of Technorati but I do use the automated ping to tell it if I’ve updated my blog. Of course sometimes I also let the narcissistic-side of me to take control and use it to check who has linked back to me (Oh look, there are more people linking back to me, yippee!). One thing I agree with Kottke is that Technorati takes way too long time to track all those blog, including my little one, they claimed to (supposedly) track. Sometimes I know that someone has put a link to my post before Technorati does. And if so, what do I need Technorati for? Or maybe I just have to be more patient and learn all the features it has and start using it, whatever it might be.

UPDATE: It seems that Molly wrote a related article. Not that she complaining or something. She somehow got a tour inside of Technorati. So I guess you all can take a look at her article to answer my article above. And if you’re still unhappy with that even if the source come from inside Technorati, well you are welcome to write about it on your own page then. Is this article been Technorati-ed?

If you use GMail, despite all the rumor out there about them reading our mails, you will find some funny message. Try deleting all the spams you got and there come the response “Hooray, no spam here!” Maybe it a small thing but I find it fun and nice to see. Imagine you got all the automatic response such as “No spam detected” it will be plain ordinary. It’s all about personal touch. The writer of that message has made me smile a bit upon reading it. And to add the list here is a message I got a while back from Flickr.

The Flickr team has up and moved this week to Californ-i-a and has been singing Beach Boys songs non-stop since arrival. And you’re moving too!

We’re moving each and every pixel, bit, and byte, all your data, lock, stock, and barrel, from our humble server shack in Canada to our new server palace in the U.S. of A!

This process will begin during the week of June 28 and will result in speediness, stableness, and happiness. For more information, please visit the FAQ about the data center move.

Thank you, Flickreebies, for making Flickr such a wonderful place to share, connect, and befriend. We love you! (In an entirely non-creepy way.)

- The Flickroobies

Such messages are fun folks. If you own a company you should try this instead of the usually boring memo or announcement. So like what the Flickroobies said, I love all of you who read my blog here. Also in an entirely non-creepy way.

Today is a good day. For me, this is the day when that little hope and dream from the old days come true. Me and two friends who share the same interest, blogging, has come with the decision to start Indihiang Web(log) Solutions. Not a commercial webdesigner. At least, not yet. We are not there yet. We still have a lot to learn and a lot to catch up. But we are more optimistic than before, that this blogosphere is going bigger and bigger every day. And when it do become bigger, we want to be sure that we are part of it. Not just as a daily-for-fun-blogger but also as a designer. Okay, I admit that I just learn HTML, XHTML that is, and CSS only for 3 months or less. But with the right friends and connections, you can go anywhere you want. There are many stories about my experience in blogging. And there are certainly those of my friend’s. Later. For now, August 8th, 2005, the day that we purchase the domain indihiang(dot)com I believe will be also known as the starting day of Indihiang Web(log) Solutions. Thanks to my two great co-founders, Budi and Hanin. Let’s do our best and God will do the rest.

Since I first got my hand on XHTML and CSS, I have been dreaming that someday I can get a job as a freelance web(log) designer. Yesterday, I got it. My friend Budi asked me to design his weblog. He gave me a quick layout drawing from Adobe Photoshop to show me what he wants. A minimalist look it is. It seems that he has an enlightment after seeing Notable Words and Garrett Dimon’s weblog. Indeed he has had the minimalist taste a couple of years back. But to implement it on a weblog today is a brave decision since not many people are ready to throw away all the blog’s accessory and just stick with the content. Notable Words and Garrett Dimon did that. And now my friend, Budi, do that too. It’s my first time ever to handcode a complete HTML and CSS of a page. And it’s valid XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS. Not bad for a first timer, eh? Well, it’s not finished yet, though. You may expect more development in the next couple of days.

Ah yes, I made some changes in this blog. No, make it lots of changes. What changes did you notice at first? Ah! It’s the header! Right. Here’s the story. First, I made a switch from Minima Plus to Kubrick. There are something good in Kubrick that make me switched. One of them is the font Lucida Grande. I never thought of using this font before. Usually I choose Helvetica, which ironically I myself cannot see on my PC. I cannot see Lucida Grande as well, but I chose it anyway. For those Apple-user, please enjoy it. The only trace of Kubrick theme is , I guess, the font and the sidebar, if I don’t change them in the future. To tell you the truth, I get my inspiration to make this changes from the weblog of Barry Price and Avianto. And let’s not forget my friend, Budi Sukmana who has kindly enough to give me the image for the header. He said that he took the picture somewhere in Indihiang, a place in Tasikmalaya, West Java, Indonesia. The scene is typical of West Java. A very nice picture he got there. There will be another changes in this blog, but nothing more to the visual appearance (I hope so). My next job will be the back of the blog, which is the HTML and CSS, to make it more customizable to my preference. But I must admit that the header-changing was the one that take me away further from Kubrick. Please leave comments if you have anything in mind about my blog here.

Upon reading my daily Bloglines, I stumbled on an interesting article from Joi Ito. The title is Khalid Jarrar: Iraqi blogger detained. A journalist detained, we heard it a couple of times. A blogger detained? Well, that is unusual. Was it something that he wrote? And even so, are bloggers considered as journalists? Then, I guess blogs and bloggers are getting more and more important. I recalled once Benny Chandra wrote “Jangan anggap enteng blogger!” or literally “Never underestimate blogger”. When I need to read something, let’s say news about London bombing, I got more update by reading blogs than the newspaper (obviously) or television. One more lesson I got from this happening is that blogger everywhere tend to stand for each other. When something bad happen to one blogger, the other will react, support him/her. I don’t know if that is true or it’s only in my dream. And if blogs and bloggers are about to take part in some new-media-movement-sort-of-thing out there, then I guess I am stand right in the middle of it. From Khalid Jarrar’s case I found out that there are in fact a Committee to Protect Bloggers. Even the family had their own blog. As stated in the blog’s description:

A Family in Baghdad; mother: Faiza, sons: Raed, Khalid, and Majid writing down their diaries. Father: Azzam is not interested.

Amazing. I wish my mother and my sister write a blog.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that according to the mother’s blog, Khalid Jarrar has been released.

For those of you who make a weblog only for fun, or only concern about the result, may not make this validation a great deal. Or they don’t even have a clue of what this is. I could end up the same as all those people, but luckily I have the right “friends” on the blogosphere. You might have notice that this blog have two small badge/icon stating XHTML valid or CSS valid. That is the sign of a blog that has been built upon a correct or standard tags of (X)HTML and CSS. If you want to see other valid blogs, what they’re look like, you can visit Budi’s, Avianto’s and Priyadi’s blog. Well, some of you might ask about the differences between valid and non-valid blog? On the visual appearence, there may have no difference. From my experience, there are some reasons that made a blog not HTML-valid. Building a WYSIWYG-base blog is one of them (don’t trust your eyes, just follow the standard HTML coding and eventually you’ll get there anyway). Blogger’s blog like mine has lots of errors when validated. (UPDATE: Last time I check the errors had gone down to less than 10) Copy-pasting from other website/blog can also bring errors (mostly about Ampersands). For more spesific things, you might have to ask the pros. But you may want to ask why should we make a valid blog? Then I must answer, why not? If you have the chance and the knowledge to make it right, then why do you still making a not-valid one? Or for the perfectionist-type of person like myself, just think of it as a challenge or a test of your skill. After you satisfied with the visual, why don’t you learn a little bit more and make your blog a valid one.

So, how valid is your website/blog? You can check it at W3C Validator.