Storybook
Being rained in for a week has a way of making a person long for anything bright and cheerful. So I started fiddling around with a black and white graphic I found. It begged for color and then I kind of chopped it up and, well, the next thing I knew, there was a new blog skin. It’s called Storybook and it is cheerful, kind of whimsical. And it was a pain in the behind to make.
I saw a new feature that I wanted to try and it went smashingly well until I opened it in Internet Explorer. Heh. Pieces and parts scattered in all directions. That meant hunting down the reason why and then figuring out how to trick IE into doing what I wanted it to do and what it should do. The stupid browser is not standards compliant and it doesn’t speak the same language as the other browsers. But I learned a bunch of stuff and made a separate skin for IE. It’s not exactly the same, but pretty close and, at least in IE6, it does what I wanted it to do.
The IE edition works on IE6—on my machine at least. Not really sure about IE5. The other Storybook skin works nicely with Firefox and Opera. I would assume it works on Netscape, but haven’t tested it. I’d like to know if it works with Mac browsers, too.
Anyway, if you want to try it, here’s the IE version. Here is the Firefox,Opera, etc. version. And you can go back to the default Foxes skin here. Feedback welcome as this was a real seat of the pants effort.
PS. It’s still raining....!!
I used to have a sail boat smiley icon. I should go find it again. 
Pouring out right now. I guess this is the heavy rain part of the morning. The weather report I heard a few minutes ago didn’t sound very promising. There was maybe some sunshine in the distance...say about Monday-ish. Sigh.
My neighbor had a long face this morning. Incredible as it may be, she decided to go to Mohegan Sun on Sunday and was caught in a flash flood. Her car was swept over a raised median strip and it tore the underside of her car out. She’s not sure it can be fixed. I’m glad we stayed home. It was not a good day to be out and about, evidently.
I’m glad the skin worked for you, Cyn. What browser were you using?
hrm… working in IE 6, not working (no trees, floating menu over text) in Firefox, and I’ll let you know what the Mac sez tonight
No trees? Is the background missing or the blue logo part? So it works in my Firefox, but not yours. That’s a head scratcher. I think I’m going to be really stumped with this. Thanks, Steph.
Oh...okay. The trees should be back now. Typo in the CSS. Maybe I should clear my cache. :\
Works fine for me in both Firefox and IE. A little whimsy is always good for the soul - lovely!
Sorry to hear about the rotten weather in your part of the world. Hope the sun comes out again soon.
Hm, I think that Cyn might be onto something with the Nancy Kerrigan reference. My word is club!! 
Posted by
Thanks Cassie and Eleanor. Looks like IE is doing fine. And maybe that typo really was the problem in Firefox. If it also works on Mac browsers, I shall be pleased to no end.
The rain stopped! For about two minutes the sun came out with just a couple of patches of blue sky. Then the sun went under again, but it’s not raining. We need to dry out for a few days. My front door is so swollen that I have to hurl myself at it to make it close. It didn’t even get rained on because it’s protected from the weather. But everything is so so so so so damp. Yech!
My word is ‘close’ which kind of reminded me.
the firefox version looks fine in Safari 1.3.2 (old). looks fine in firefox on the mac now, so I bet it was a css typo. ie 5.2 on the mac is trees and only trees!
Posted by steph on 05/16/06 at 03:10 PM
Well, I guess that doesn’t surprise me, Steph. The workaround is geared for IE6, but *may* work in IE5 if other variables like browser settings don’t interfere. I had to trick IE into thinking upper layer fixed elements were fixed with relative positioning while the true relative positioning was coded as fixed because IE doesn’t recognize fixed positioning in upper layers...totally bass ackwards. Somehow that exploits a bug in IE to achieve the differently fixed layers. Even so, I had to chop out some javascript functions because they broke the fixed positioning. (I hate IE.) And I can’t remember if IE5 even recognized some of the attributes used. I hope IE7 is up to speed.
Thanks for checking. If an older Safari makes it look good, then the newer version(s) should, too, I hope.
Works fine in my version of Firefox. It’s very E.B. White-ish (a good thing!), innit?
Yeah, a little bit of that and a little bit of Wind in the Willows and maybe some Beatrix Potter tossed in, too. I really like that style of illustration and the washed colors.
IE 6 and then whatever browser AOL uses (I think perhaps the same) and they both worked.... Saw the sunset, fingers crossed again, it sure would be nice to have more sun than gloom tomorrow.......
Posted by cyn on 05/16/06 at 09:37 PM
Next entry: Sunset
Previous entry: Mothers Day Floods
worked just fine for me--I like it, and you are right, this is the only bright spot I’ve seen so far this morning. It is coming down hard again right now--I was just telling someone that I am generally pretty upbeat, pretty happy (if you ignore my begging, pleading, whining about wanting to live on Oahu), but generally speaking I am a pretty optimistic person. 9 days of no sun, all rain has made me bitchy and grouchy so I cannot even begin to imagine what it does to someone who is more apt to be that way anyway. Hopefully I don’t run into anyone like that today!! Oh well, have to get out of here and go to work, neither the spirit nor the flesh are particularly willing this morning....... Happy Tuesday--the radio station I listen to in the morning swears we might see a glimpse of the sun late this afternoon!! Row, row, row your boat............
HA! My word is the universal cry of the infamous Nancy Kerrigan..WHYYYYYYY