If less is more, I just dd’ed a shedload

You may have noticed a few changes here at Chip’s Quips, as well as at my other blogs. I’ve changed the theme on all three to do less:

  • Less overriding of colors and text styling
  • Less padding and margins
  • Fewer images

My goals in so doing were simple:

  • Load faster
  • Fit more content into less space
  • Conflict less with user preferences

That last point was triggered by my own. In keeping with my darker GTk theme, I changed my Firefox default text colors to green on black. You’d be surprised how many web sites override text color without specifying background color, or vice versa — and they almost always assume that the default will be black on white. A lesson there for web designers: if you specify either text color or background color, please specify both. In any case, I can now read my own sites in green on black without imposing that preference on my three other readers, by leaving both foreground and background unspecified.

You’ll notice that links also use the default colors specified in your browser preferences, nor have I made any effort to remove their “text decoration” (normally underline).

I’ve even implemented my very own theme music which plays automatically on each page load. In keeping with my minimalist site design, it is composed of an infinite number of rests having a duration of zero milliseconds each.

Tags: css, styling, themes, wordpress

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