At last, after months of wishing, whining, planning, trial and error, typing and retyping code dozens of times, Freedom of Thought & Script now has a fresh new look with a brand new theme. Praise be to Allah, the Giving, the Forgiving.
It was by no means an easy task, much less an easy decision. The Dots template that had decorated my blog ever since its inception in 1426 (2006) had become so familiar and soothing to my eyes that it was not easy to part with. Equally nostalgic was the change of font and font colour. From the time it came packed with Office 97, I have consistently used Verdana in all my writings, and olive as my font colour. In fact, there have been several times over the past few months when I abandoned the whole idea of refashioning the site at the time of choosing a new background picture, font and font colour. But the new must come, and the old must make way, as Jean-René Fourtou said in his farewell message when leaving Aventis, “Let the present embrace the past with its memories and the future with hope”.
I have of late been dazzled by the black text on white background on some sites, and began to like Georgia as a font. The stimulus to change was furthered by Google’s introduction of a new form of template designer that allows immense flexibility and provides endless options to choose from. I toyed with some of its features, and the never satisfied attraction to glamour and glaze got the better of me – the decision to switch over from layout templates to this new template designer was made.
Then came the phase of implementation. This, by far, was the toughest and most challenging, and took months altogether. None of the templates in Google’s new Designer are any less attractive than the other, and choosing one of them was a tough take. At last, I decided to use all of them, one by one (so you may very well see a new template the next time you come around).
You may be thinking, what’s so tough in choosing a new template? Click on the new template, then click on apply – gooooal! The problem is, I prefer to complicate my own things, and always have to have my way in doing things. I have to get rid of the Blog Title and Blog Description at the top and replace them with my own anecdotes, I need three sidebars to accommodate all the fancy stuff that are “integral and inseparable” parts of my site – Google’s programmers never thought any free blogger would demand so much flexibility and command. The result, I had to hunt into the template’s code, decipher their meaning (not that I am a great scholar of computer code), and by repeated experimentation, trial and error, figure out which code serves what purpose and then change it according to my whims and wishes. More often than not, this is followed by a disappointment at the results – the foreground colour does not contrast with the background, the font size is too big or too small, the alignment looks sloppy and unprofessional – so go back through another series of trial and error to fix it.
But at the end, it’s all worth it. Now I can sit back and look at the product of my own imagination and design. It tells me that it is what I wanted it to be. The new look of the site reignites the passion to keep it tiptop, with high-class content and lucid and interesting writing that would hold the attention of the audience just as its looks hold mine.
It was by no means an easy task, much less an easy decision. The Dots template that had decorated my blog ever since its inception in 1426 (2006) had become so familiar and soothing to my eyes that it was not easy to part with. Equally nostalgic was the change of font and font colour. From the time it came packed with Office 97, I have consistently used Verdana in all my writings, and olive as my font colour. In fact, there have been several times over the past few months when I abandoned the whole idea of refashioning the site at the time of choosing a new background picture, font and font colour. But the new must come, and the old must make way, as Jean-René Fourtou said in his farewell message when leaving Aventis, “Let the present embrace the past with its memories and the future with hope”.
I have of late been dazzled by the black text on white background on some sites, and began to like Georgia as a font. The stimulus to change was furthered by Google’s introduction of a new form of template designer that allows immense flexibility and provides endless options to choose from. I toyed with some of its features, and the never satisfied attraction to glamour and glaze got the better of me – the decision to switch over from layout templates to this new template designer was made.
Then came the phase of implementation. This, by far, was the toughest and most challenging, and took months altogether. None of the templates in Google’s new Designer are any less attractive than the other, and choosing one of them was a tough take. At last, I decided to use all of them, one by one (so you may very well see a new template the next time you come around).
You may be thinking, what’s so tough in choosing a new template? Click on the new template, then click on apply – gooooal! The problem is, I prefer to complicate my own things, and always have to have my way in doing things. I have to get rid of the Blog Title and Blog Description at the top and replace them with my own anecdotes, I need three sidebars to accommodate all the fancy stuff that are “integral and inseparable” parts of my site – Google’s programmers never thought any free blogger would demand so much flexibility and command. The result, I had to hunt into the template’s code, decipher their meaning (not that I am a great scholar of computer code), and by repeated experimentation, trial and error, figure out which code serves what purpose and then change it according to my whims and wishes. More often than not, this is followed by a disappointment at the results – the foreground colour does not contrast with the background, the font size is too big or too small, the alignment looks sloppy and unprofessional – so go back through another series of trial and error to fix it.
But at the end, it’s all worth it. Now I can sit back and look at the product of my own imagination and design. It tells me that it is what I wanted it to be. The new look of the site reignites the passion to keep it tiptop, with high-class content and lucid and interesting writing that would hold the attention of the audience just as its looks hold mine.
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