This page renders dreadfully in Explorer 5.x and up. For once, the problem isn't my code, it's the browser. Apparently, in the process of fixing numerous holes, Microsoft has broken strict CSS1 compatibility to some extent in Explorer Though they claim to be 100% compliant, the background-attachment: fixed tag only seems to work for the body, but not individual elements, which is actually in violation of the CSS specs.

So, long story short, this page doesn't look the way it should if you're using Explorer. To see it correctly, use Mozilla or one of its derivatives (Galeon, Thunderbird, Epiphany, or even Netscape). Heck, the html even looks respectable in Lynx, though the right div elements are moved to the bottom. I don't know how this looks in Camino, but since it's based on the Gecko engine, it should be fine. If anybody's using a Mac out there, let me know.

So, what exactly are you missing? Well, the backgrounds for the individual columns should scroll transparently with the rest of the page, and I have no idea where that black junk at the bottom of the div sections comes from. Font rendering is wildly inconsistent, and the layout is botched, with the title block being too far off to the left.

I suppose there's a lesson in here somewhere, that after all those years of groaning when being confronted with horrid-looking pages emblazoned with the "Best viewed in Internet Explorer 5.x or better," I've finally created something that reverses the trend. I suppose there's a workaround for this somewhere, but it's bound to be ugly and annoying, and the plain fact is, I'm in no big hurry to support Microsoft products or coddle them for churning out terrible proprietary and fundamentally bad code. The ironic fact is, this page works just fine on every open-source broswer out there, and that's good enough for me.

Well, it finally happened; my little sister went and got married. What's better is that she couldn't have picked a nicer guy. They were married in a Baha'i ceremony with myself, my mother, the groom's family and many friends present. .

The bride is my sister, Lori. Her husband is the tall dark stranger Vargha Dahna. You can see the pictures here

Finally, we get winter in Georgia. Over the course of six hours yesterday, it dropped from 71 to 33 degrees. My body finally feels like it's November. I'm sure my Danish friends would say it feels like August, but hey, at least it's tolerable.

Well, this is the new site layout. I've chosen to go the PHP route because it's just more efficient in the long run. All the older material is archived on the right. There are still a few bugs to work out, and I need to make the interface more consistent, but hey, it's Thanksgiving here in the States, so it'll probably be awhile. Until then...

NP:Dinosaur Act, Low.

I've included the backgrounds with the theme packages, hence the size of the files. Just extract them to ~/.themes (notice the leading dot), and they should work fine. All of them so far are simply hacks on the Xfce engine, as it seems to be the best balance of usability/aesthetic appeal. Click on a thumnail for a full-screen image, or on the theme name to download.

  Rakka:  Inspired by Haibane Renmei

  Sobel 

  Windspan 

  Regatta de Blanc: background courtesy of Propaganda.

The window manager in the screenshots is Xfce 4.1, which does a good job of combining features like right-click root menus and middle-click wiindow menus with full Gnome integration and a much improved desktop. The window theme is Operational.

NP:The Long Walk Home at Midnight, Xela

Been working on cobbling together some themes for Xfce, and by extension, GTK2. So far, so good, though the syntax is a real rat's nest. I may attempt to write a graphical editor ala wmakerconf for it once I get the internals all figured out. In the meantime, I've got a few posted on the main theme page. Below is my current desktop, running Setiview and GLmatrix.

NP:Wolf, Chris Clark

There. Now that I've said that, I'm sure I've missed a couple. Let me know.

As far as fonts go, it would appear that only the newer CVS versions of WindowMaker support anti-aliased fonts. I haven't been able to get any of the snapshots to compile, so I can't verify it. In any case, if they're not stable versions, I won't be writing for them, so I'll continue to write against the stable (0.80.x) tree. I did manage to find a workaround to get the fonts to show up, but they're ugly and not consistent. You can force the X Server to query the specific font directory at startup by adding "xset +fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/" to the "autostart" script in ~/GNUstep/Library/WindowMaker/. This should do the trick, although the fonts won't be anti-aliased.

NP: 2112 Crescent St., Yasume

I've corrected most of the .tif backgrounds. If you've got a theme with a defective image, check here for the .jpg version. You can edit the "style" file manually to reflect the new image, or you can use a low-rent script I've written to automate the process. Just copy it to /usr/bin/ or /usr/local/bin/ , cd into the directory of the theme and type "wdefang", and that should fix it. The script also removes pointers for the old fonts I was using and reverts them to the default helvetica.

NP: Numbers, L'usine

In the process of moving everything over, it's become apparent that the backgrounds for several themes are incompatible with certain versions of libtiff. I'm in the process of converting the offending images into standard jpegs, but it may be a bit before I can get all the themes reconfigured. Should you run across a problem with one of the theme backgrounds (besides "it bites!"), let me know, and I'll get you the corrected image. I'll also cobble together script to automate the conversion process within a few days.

NP: Surripere, Autechre