New Theme for WUWT

Don’t worry readers, I’m trying an experiment. WUWT has looked the same for about 3 years, so I’m giving it a makeover. I’ve activated a newly designed theme for WUWT. This one has advantages over the old one in that it does a better job of supporting newer hi-res monitors such as the 20-24″ LCD/HDTV models that are becoming popular.

It also provides for larger text and images, better visibility of links, plus a few other features including a custom background which I’ll get to later.

In the meantime, let me know what you think in the poll below.

Sadly, no I still can’t offer an edit feature. wordpress.com hosting doesn’t support it.

UPDATE: Some readers say they can’t see links on the right side. They are there, try the horizontal scrollbar or set your monitor to a higher resolution. Also, wordpress during the upgrade nuked all my widgets on the right hand side, working to restore them -A

UPDATE: all the sidebar widgets are now restored. -A

UPDATE from CTM: Firefox users should  install the CA assistant and greasemonkey.

http://climateaudit.org/ca-assistant/

This gives you full previews and some preview and formatting buttons.

Make sure to set your installation settings to not hide old comments or much will disappear.

Comment Tab:

  • “Old” and “New” comments are defined by age in hours.
  • You can hide all old comments (default: 48 hours). Hiding older comments is a great way to simplify your view of more intense discussions. (On Lucia and RomanM’s sites, the content of old contents disappears, but Author/Date remain. Nice!)
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kadaka (KD Knoebel)
April 29, 2010 5:15 am

anna v, did you try deleting the old cookies yet per my previous post to you?

Editor
April 29, 2010 5:22 am

GeeJam says:
April 28, 2010 at 1:11 am

8/10. As a graphic designer, retain the nice 1.5 paragraph line spacing – but replace the serif typeface with an easier to read font. I’m sure that well over 50% of all those posted comments from our ‘science’ audience will appreciate the text change.
Suggest Futura, Myriad, Optane or Phinster – all cleaner, crisper and very easy to read. I can e.mail you the font files if you need them.

I don’t know how special fonts work in HTML/CSS. If Anthony starts producing pages with a font that isn’t part of brower/system distributions, how will my browser get access to it? Is there a CSS option that specifies where to find the font? Will browsers cache it by URL/fontname so that other sites that use it get from the local cache?

Bob Layson
April 29, 2010 5:26 am

To an old hand the new look seems too smooth and corporate. Too much white space where there could be fact and argument. Newcomers will not feel the same I’m sure and will value the content as much as I still do.

Quantum
April 29, 2010 5:28 am

This is a disaster. WUWT is now totally hosed on my Acer Aspire Linux-based netbook running Firefox. Nothing displays except the banner and the rest is all white.
On my iMac there is way too much whitespace.
Simplicity works. Save the reader’s time.

Editor
April 29, 2010 5:42 am

anna v says:
April 29, 2010 at 4:02 am

name and e-mail are not retained, even if preview and greasemonkey are disabled.
“waiting for moderating ” is not available, either. Post disappears and may appear after monitoring.

That’s very odd – I have those problems with Konqueror. My last comment was through Konqueror. (Version 3.5.1 which has got to be ancient, I have no idea what the current rev is.)
I looked at the HTML source and saw the value=xxx pieces that should pre-fill those fields in the comment form.
I reloaded this page in my ancient Firefox, and not only are those fields prefilled, but I see my pending comment! Reload on Konqueror – no pending comment. My guess is that there’s something funky with cookies going on, but I’m not going to look any further until tonight.
What browser were you using where you don’t see the prefilled fields?
FWIW, I have greasemonkey installed but disabled. It loses text if you read another page and then go back, so I’m using “It’s All Text” that lets me use my preferred editor outside of the browser.

Robert Layson
April 29, 2010 5:44 am

A further test with variation.

anna v
April 29, 2010 6:14 am

kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
April 29, 2010 at 5:15 am
anna v, did you try deleting the old cookies yet per my previous post to you?
Yes, faithfully.

anna v
April 29, 2010 6:21 am

Ric Werme says:
April 29, 2010 at 5:42 am
I am using Foxfire.
Explorer also does not give the “waiting for moderation” signal or retain the name and e-mail.

john ratcliffe
April 29, 2010 10:14 am

Just deleted cookies, testing to see if name and email fields remain after posting a comment.
john

April 29, 2010 10:15 am

For a home button, create a page with the title as given below. The content area should be blank.
Home
REPLY: But won’t that simply direct users to a blank page?

john ratcliffe
April 29, 2010 10:22 am

Fields still cleared after posting, so clearing out old cookies did not work.
Autofill feature on Google toolbar did the trick though, lazy me!!!
john

April 29, 2010 10:28 am

oh it turned into a link, the page title should be as given below. just replace # with Home#/a>
REPLY: OK I’ll give it a try in just a minute or two. Watch this space. -Anthony
REPLY2: WP doesn’t allow this # in the page permalink, it just directs to a page called “home”. The Twenty Ten theme really need a home button given their drop down menu system. I’ve sent several requests off to support on this and other issues, but not a peep. Thanks for the effort though. – Anthony

April 29, 2010 10:34 am

No it works. i am not able to post the actual code. it shows up wrong due to the HTML.
#a href=”http://wattsupwiththat.com/”$Code Jotter#/a$
Replace $ with > and # with <

REPLY:
Check your email, thanks – A

April 29, 2010 10:44 am

The code for Home page
[sourcecode language=”text” gutter=”false”]<a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/">Home</a>%5B/sourcecode%5D
This will work, i tried commenting on my blog first 🙂
You can delete the mess i created in your comment section.
REPLY: I hardly consider your gracious help a mess. OK I’ll try this again as the page permalink right? -A
REPLY: Tried your “Home” link on your page, does the same as mine, points to a blank page called home. Might be browser sensitive? -A

April 29, 2010 10:46 am

Smokey says: April 28, 2010 at 11:53 am
(re: Mike M says @April 28, 2010 at 11:34 am:)
I had the same issue with Breitbart coming up blank. The [temporary] fix that works for me is to click Command + to increase the screen size [Control +, I believe, on a PC]. Changing the screen size makes the page appear, don’t know why.

Thanks for the promising suggestion but alas, it doesn’t work.

REPLY: …. Double Ditto for Win98 SE. Sorry, not always possible to support the computing era of 12 years ago and move forward at the same time.

I’d submit to that notion if there was something here that looked like it couldn’t have have been done 12 years ago, (though I suspect it has more to do with the ease of authoring a page which is something we do not see..). But, as I already pointed out, Michelle Malkin’s site is WordPress and I can see it/use it just fine with Netscape 7.1 on my lone Win98 machine.

April 29, 2010 11:38 am

I’ve got it working 🙂
You’ll be amazed what we were missing. I’ve posted this trick on my post about the Twenty Ten theme, just scroll down for the tip.
http://codejotter.wordpress.com/2010/04/25/twenty-ten-new-default-theme-for-wordpress/

anna v
April 29, 2010 12:04 pm

once more, testing name and e-mail retention

anna vv
April 29, 2010 12:15 pm

john ratcliffe says:
April 29, 2010 at 10:22 am
Fields still cleared after posting, so clearing out old cookies did not work.
Autofill feature on Google toolbar did the trick though, lazy me!!!
john

How to I get a Google toolbar in Firefox?

john ratcliffe
April 29, 2010 12:48 pm

@anna v
click “tools>addons”, new page opens, type “google toolbar” in search box, Click “add to firefox ” button.
That should do it.
best of luck
john

Anne Gaides
April 29, 2010 6:16 pm

Hi Anthony,
You forgot that some of us are unable to get high-speed broadband! The loading has slowed down terribly – I think it is mainly the pictures.
Keep up the good work.
Cheers,
Anne

anna v
April 29, 2010 9:19 pm

john ratcliffe says:
April 29, 2010 at 12:48 pm
Thanks. But for my version (higher) of Firefox it is called a googlebar and it does not have an “autofill” option. 🙁 .

anna v
April 29, 2010 9:24 pm

one more test

kadaka (KD Knoebel)
April 29, 2010 11:40 pm

anna v, I know about that auto-fill setting. Now, I’m using Iceweasel which is the Debian version of Firefox (and there’s an interesting story behind that worth Googling) so my menu selections for accessing it won’t be the same as yours.
So I found this piece that says where it is by Googling for “firefox autofill setting”. That should help you find it.
I can’t see how a theme change here could have flipped that setting on your browser, although strange things do happen… Eh, it’s worth a shot to check if it is set on or not. Note also that setting will be found in the “History” section. For such a strange quirk affecting only some people… Maybe deleting your browsing history will help?

Keith Minto
April 30, 2010 12:38 am

I complained earlier that the script lacked contrast.
In Firefox, go to Tools-Options-Content-Colours, text should be the blackest black and background, white. Uncheck “Allow pages to choose their own colour……”
This increases the contrast and, to me, makes reading less fatiguing.