teddY-risatioN™

I can’t believe it that it too my less than 3 days to get this theme done but if you’re a regular visitor you would have realised that the general template and colour scheme did not vary a lot, besides the header and the footer, that is.

The reason why this theme is named teddY-risatioN™ Gamma is because I strongly believe in continuous improvement in my wordpress themes, there’s no way of stopping at Beta only fyi the previous theme s named teddY-risatioN™ Beta and the one before it, Alpha. Thus, the next one (if there’s any), will be Delta.

Here is a list of changes from the previous theme, teddY-risatioN™ Beta.

Wider Container

This also means forgoing 800*600 compatibility, but enables the main post area to display images up to 600px in width perhaps it’s a feature to suit this blog’s greater slant towards photoblogging instead of normal writing. For visitors who continue to use 800*600 resolution, I’m sorry for the inconveniences but there’s pretty much nothing I can do about it. Best viewed at resolution of 1024*768 and above. I would like to thank Ivy and Michelle on their advice they’ve given me about issues regarding screen resolution.

[Edit] - I was notified of a background image error when this theme is viewed in resolutions wider than 1024px. I’ve corrected the bug since, and tweaked the background image a little so there are stripes at both sides of the container. The stripes are made using an amazingly user-friendly and idiot-proof ajax generator called Stripe Generator.

Brand New Header Design

[Edit] - After giving it much thought I’ve decided to add a “Links” section to the top right corner of the header section. After reading on several online CSS tutorials regarding image rollerovers (the best and simplest one is probably by WellStyled.com), as well as referring to N.Design Studio’s Phoenix Theme top navigation bar rollerover code (you’ll need to read through the css stylesheet carefully though), I’ve come out with a rollover effect for the link images too. From the link bar you can access my RSS feed, Technorati profile, Facebook profile, DeviantArt profile and my flickr page.

Now this theme comes with a rotating header image - i.e. every time when you load the page, most probably a different header image will appear. They’re chosen from a set of my favourite photographs, and I have plans to extending the current 10 rotating headers to a size of 25 in the future. Let’s stick to 10 for the moment. If you happen to stumble upon a header image you hated badly, refresh the page to get another one here’s the currently 10 images in rotation:

[Edit] - I’ve added another 7 header images into rotation. Have fun

Cleaner Searchbox

I wasn’t very happy with the previous theme’s search box, where it’s bulky and doesn’t really fit into the header well. So this time a little photoshop trick worked (used to create the curved edges of the curve box) and a short nifty javascript code to display the instructions in the input field when it is not focus (it disappear when you focus on it, though). The script could be found at Expert Exchange - Onfocus and Onblur article.

Design & Icon Acknowledgement

Without wonderful designers and authors sharing their css styles and icons, this theme wouldn’t even have existed.

Header navigation bar - the raw source code and styling comes from Laila’s Butterfly Theme. I just changed the colours, increased the height to suit the theme.

6 random flickr images - Instead of the previous 4, the wider sidebar is now able to accomodate up to 6 random flickr images (3 per row, that is). Click on them to access my flickr photos. The coding and styling is proudly shared by Veerle, in her Flickr Badge W3C Valid post.

Post information icons - The date, category and miscellaneous information are accompanied with small little icons by FamFamFam’s Mini Icons package.

Other icons - Majority of the icons are provided by the Dropline Neu! v0.10 package.

Revamped Footer

With Wordpress 2.3 inclusion of tags and tag cloud, I’ve inserted a tag cloud into the footer section (scroll down and you’ll see it), but looks like further css styling is needed. Although the general footer design did not vary much from the previous theme, the floating and alignment coding has been constructed ground up to solve compatibility issues.

That’s all for this theme! Anyway I’m sorry that I didn’t post a Happy Valentine’s Day message! Wishing everyone a belated happy valentine’s day love is all around!