About
Dogtanian.net is obviously about the excellent 'kids' cartoon Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds. I started the site for a couple of reasons, the first is simple, Dogtanian's cool, great shoes, great hat and he carries a sword. The second was to play around with the design, being a Web nerd I actually enjoy playing with css, and having my own content-heavy site lets me do what I want.
The site is (well should be) valid html 4.01 and css. It's hand-coded on my Mac using
- TextMate for the code
- Transmit for FTP
- Photoshop for the images
- Xyle scope for css nerdery
- Automator for resizing and creating thumbnails for the 400 odd screenshots, along with
- iMagine Photo and
- this action, which covers Apple not putting in jpg compression in Create Thumbnails
The site's been redesigned this year (2007). It's a more Web 2.0
style, which like the previous Wicked worn look is probably a year out of date. Obviously the header is a tribute to Dogtanian's dapper headgear.
The site comes in 2 sizes, one that fits browser windows under 960 pixels, one for 960+ pixels. It uses a small javascript to switch the styles depending on the window size.
Stylesheet Switcher
The stylesheet switcher changes to or from a high contrast layout for people with poor vision (ie me when I lose my glasses). It uses a cookie to remember which stylesheet you want, paranoid über nerds will be happy to know it only contains the filename of the chosen css file. (They'll also notice I use Mint which adds cookies if you have javascript enabled).
RSS
The RSS feed will tell you about the latest updates without having to check the site every day. Find out more about RSS on the BBC. If you're on a Mac I recommend NetNewsWire which is about $24.95 (about £15).
