Progress Bars

One of my blogs is about my knitting projects. Here is how to create the progress bars I used on craftygal7388.blogspot.com

It is a great explanation that I will not bother to duplicate here. To update them, change the number in the template.

Special Characters

For the copyright symbol (©), just type "&" followed immediately by "#169" in your post. If we put the ampersand and #169 next to each other in an example, it will display the © not the code. If you want it to appear really correctly, you can also make this a superscript with a bit of HTML coding:

^{& followed by #169}
1969^©

Another common symbol is the trademark symbol: ® which is & followed immediately by #174.

Complete list of ASCII codes for Special Characters
http://webdesign.about.com/od/charactersets/l/bl_htmlcodes.htm

This is the TicTac template.


This is the Harbor template.

Notice the difference between these two templates. With display settings at 1024x768, Harbor covers the entire screen while TicTac has dead space on the sides. I think Harbor presents a more pleasant experience for the reader.

Blogger Help

Here is where we can go to get information about Blogger.com I find that even though I have already read all of it, that I don't remember all of it. Now I use the search feature a lot. Also, I like to expand the "Most Popular" section by clicking on "More..." That gives the complete list like an Index.

2 vs. 3 column (discussion 1)

The 2 column blog causes the reader to 800x600 visitor to scroll in order to see all of the posts and buttons, etc. I was thinking how nice it would be to have more information in the first screen. I could make the font smaller. However, that would make it very difficult for the visitor with a 1024x768 monitor setting.

Another way to do that would be to change the format to 3 column. However, I know that would also mean that the font would have to be smaller. So I would be trading visually pleasing 800x600 for possibly making it harder for those with 1024x768 screens.

First step is to understand how to make a 3-column template. I found a good tutorial at http://www.thurbroeders.nl/tutorials/3-columns-layout/3cl_1.htm

The next step was to read the blogger forum at www.bloggerforum.com (I'm still reading to clean information and get emails of those in the know)

What I keep thinking is that a 3 column format designed for 800x600 would be great. I would want to make it so that it would enlarge for the 1024x768 visitor. Hmm, but how to do that is the question. Let's post it to blogger forum and see what happens. I will keep you informed.

If you have an answer, please post.

800x600 vs. 1024x768

Using my own blog craftygal's knitting place, I can see that many of the users have display settings of 800x600. Therefore I must set the blog to make it accessible to them as well as the larger displays of 1024x768. I want to make it accessible for everyone.

The old standard screen size was 800x600 for the 15" monitor. With so many people using laptops and 17" digital monitors, more people are using monitors with sizes of 1024x768. Some people may wonder why anyone would want to have the information on the screen look so small. I was one of those people until I started reading about it online. To get more information you can Google "1024x768 screen size" and read through some of the documents.

The main points that I learned (and there are many more) is that what we think of as a bigger or smaller screen size is actually the image dpi resolution. Image size is actually inversely proportional to dpi count. The higher the resolution (dpi count) -- the smaller the image on the screen. Also, the larger the monitor (example 17 vs. 15) then the higher resolution needed to get a clean crisp image. Therefore, with a 17" monitor you need a 1024x768 dpi setting. With a 15" monitor, 800x600 works fine.

Many folks still have a 15". With that in mind, the blogger/webmaster needs to still consider them when planning the page layout. The page will work on a 1024x768 screen, just look smaller. Don't be surprised when you see the blank space around the page with the higher resolution monitor.

I'm sure there is a way to make the page (and fonts) fill the screen (making it appear larger.) Blogger did it for the "create post" section. I'll have to try to find out how they did it.

For now, I will work on the 800x600 standard. If anyone wants to provide more information, please do so.

I'm studying the different ways that I can create a template that so I can have a really cool blog. I love sharing this with you and hope that you might find some of the information useful.

First things first. Let's get the source code for the different templates. By having this test blog, I can go into Template and choose pick new and choose each one. then using notepad I can copy the code to an ASCII file. By comparing the codes I can see what the differences are.