With respect to the new banner prototype above. I was in a procrastinative mood. We may end up reverting, and will tweak otherwise. Thoughts welcome.
Either way, I wish I knew how to eliminate all the white space at the top for people who aren’t logged into WordPress.com when they are reading our blog.
As for the idea of Scatterplot t-shirts for the ASA annual meetings, Tina and I had a different idea, one which is so good that even despite my recent thinking that I should be a little more judicious in my use of jumps in posts, it does not seem right to reveal an idea so good to just any blogbusybody who happens to glance at our blog. I mean, it’s so brilliant, it’s only right to keep it behind a jump so a passerby has to click for it. And so, instead of t-shirts, our idea is:
Scatterplot name tag ribbons. You know, like the one’s people collect and wear to show that they are an ASA hoo-ha. Only ours would be much more hoo-harrific.
44 Comments
FANTASTIC!
love. it.
One concern: will this make us look really cliquey?
:-)
RE: new banner
I realize this is kind of silly, but just about every blog I read has a clickable banner, and clicking on it takes you back to the main blog. I’m so much in the habit of doing that that I keep clicking on the Scatter banner and wondering why nothing happens. Have you thought of making the banner a link?
tamsynx: I would VERY MUCH like this, but I can’t figure out how given our template. I would be grateful to anybody who knows or who can figure out how. Since I can’t figure this out, we do have a “front” link at the top of our sidebar that takes you to the front page.
t-shirt or ribbon, cliquey-ness is probably unavoidable, but not necessarily bad. i would be more concerned about offending the people who take their hoo-ha-ness seriously :)
JF: the new top is nice! i like the dots. the color of the word does make one think it should be a link, though. i just looked at the basic form of sandbox 10, and the title is a link. let me see if i can figure it out.
The problem with the Sandbox-10 is that the title is a link, but we display a banner with the name of the title instead of the title as text. Instead, I’ve configured the blog title and tagline to print in 0 point font, as otherwise you just have the word “Scatterplot” sitting above our banner.
i cannot immediately figure it out, nor can i use this as an excuse not to do my work (as i almost just did!). sorry! it does seem, though, that it should be entirely possible to use CSS to make a link out of the header image. particularly if the base template has a link up there.
Um, there was no jump! I read the whole post via RSS. So…thanks!
Can anonymous bloggers who happen to be sociologists wear the ribbon?
i loved the t-shirt idea, but scatterplot ribbons are indeed much more original and cooler!
maybe you should offer a free ribbon (or two) to whoever can solve your clickable banner or white space problem.
I took a look at your css and figured it out, I think: The trick is to make the banner image the background to the the blog-title h1 instead of the access div. Do the following:
1. Remove the “height=1em;” from #header
2. Add these four lines to your “#blog-title a” entry:
background:url(’files/2008/02/scatterplot-banner_14y.jpg’) no-repeat;
height: 90px;
width: 1000px;
display: block;
3. Now just comment out or delete everything you have for #access.
In case you’re wondering, I’m a long-time lurker, but first time commenter. So no I don’t just go to random blogs and give CSS advice. :)
not sure if this is ribbon-worthy, but the banner is used as “background image” in this template (and seemly in other wordpress templates), which is why it’s not clickable. (if you right-click on a linked image, you should get options like “view image,” “copy image location” etc.) i don’t have solution to offer though. except, you could make “scatterplot” the title text and not part of the banner image.
Oh, one more change: even though you’ve set font-size to 0, you’ll still get a weird underline effect at the top of the image. Just add this to “#blog-title a” as well:
text-indent: -2000px;
Love the ribbon idea. I’ve never had a ribbon. The few years I was eligible, they somehow left me off the list. A boo hoo hoo.
“…even despite my recent thinking that I should be a little more judicious in my use of jumps in posts, it does not seem right to reveal an idea so good to just any blogbusybody who happens to glance at our blog. I mean, it’s so brilliant, it’s only right to keep it behind a jump so a passerby has to click for it.”
You’re not taking the piss, are you?
Ah, who am I fooling?
You bad person!
@17: No, at least if I understand “taking the piss” correctly. I was being honest. I took your post to heart, but, come on, by a liberal reading of your own Rule #2 this is jumpworthy!
@13/15: Hmm, when I do what I think you are saying, what I get at the top is no banner at all. Although if I click on the area where a banner should be, there is indeed a front page link. I’m not sure what the problem is.
I don’t use style sheets (CSS) much but in a regular HTML page you could do the following:
BANNER
where BANNER = all the picture code. I’m not sure if that will work or not in a blog.
Let’s try this again ;) I forgot that it would turn the HTML I wrote into HTML.
[a href="http://scatter.wordpress.com"]BANNER[/a]
But instead of [ and ] it should be
Argh!!! You need a preview.
The brackets should be the “less than” and “greater than” symbols.
@19: Did you copy and paste straight from this page? WordPress turns the two single quotes around ’files/2008/02/scatterplot-banner_14y.jpg’ into special fancy quotes instead of two single quote marks like they should be. If I’m right, then just typing over the fancy quote marks with single quote marks should work.
Re: the clique, I was assuming that readers would get ribbons, too. Right, Jeremy?
Jeremy,
this is getting complicated.
Assuming your post (no. 18) is in seriousness, let me say that a) “taking the piss” is British English for “making fun of so./sth.”, as you seem to have guessed, and b) my post was in jest.
You are correct that rule no. 2 applies in this case, adapted to the post’s humorous context.
No offense!
@24: Ribbons for everyone! There will be no sociologists crying in the Boston streets for want of a Scatterplot ribbon!
@23: Hmm, I thought Eureka! when I read this comment, but, alas, still not working.
@26: How odd. One last thing to try: download my modified version of your stylesheet. See if that works. If not, I’m puzzled b/c it’s working on a local copy of this page.
important ribbon question - what color are they going to be?
@27 - Wonderful! Thank you so much! If you are at ASA, I owe you both a ribbon and a drink.
@28 - The official colors of Scatterplot are 3366FF blue and white.
I will indeed be at ASA and look forward to a ribbon. May I suggest the following design: 3366FF blue background, white “scatterplot” text and then, in that rainbow, alternating colors thing you do sometimes, have “sociology celebrity.” (Here, let’s see if it’ll work in a comment: Sociology celebrities )
@7 - “i would be more concerned about offending the people who take their hoo-ha-ness seriously”
See, for me, this is exactly why I love the ribbon idea!
whose boots does a lurker and lowly graduate student have to lick to get a ribbon?
@25 and 26: I was assuming readers got them as well - so, yeah a BIG clique. Actually, if the stats Shakha quoted the other day carry through to ribbon sales, then it might well be the entire conference.
@31: hoo-ha-ness is no laughing matter! for some… :)
wait, i just mindlessly clicked the top banner to go to the main page and lo, it took me there! hooray!
@30: I don’t know if we will be able to do exactly that, but it is a fabulous idea!
@32: There is no bootlicking on Scatterplot. If we do in fact have our act together and have ribbons, you can have a ribbon.
@33: Yes, thanks to Jon, the banner now links to the front! Now, if only I can figure out how to reduce the amount of white space between the bottom of the banner and the top of the posts…
jeremy, if not bootlicking then perhaps i can lend my ribbon-cutting skilz.
Yeah, we’re getting them.
I just couldn’t resist the white space challenge:
To remove the space at the top for non-logged in readers:
a. Add this :
.loggedin #blog-title a {
margin-top: 27px;
}
b. Remove the “margin-top: 27px;” from “#blog-title a”
And to remove the space b/w the banner and the content, add these somewhere:
div#container,div.sidebar{margin-top:1em;}
div#header{margin-bottom:0em;}
I found both of these by looking at the default Sandbox-10 stylesheets (not the one you can modify) for this theme. They were each set to 2em there, so I just lowered both.
I put the full stylesheet with these mods at the same link.
Thanks!!! (I think this worked. This worked, right?)
Yep, looks right to me.
@39: yes! and now more dots! sweet.
@37: A few years ago at SXSWi - a geeky web conference in Austin, TX - my friend David (who makes robots!) was handing out these tiny smiley face stickers of a particular size and color for people’s badges. The message he was spreading by rumor was that people with the sticker were approachable. As with all things, I suppose, there is a certain amount of posturing among “elite” geeks. I guess the smiley was meant to send the message that the bearer did not consider themselves above it all. I really enjoyed that and this ribbon thing is starting to remind me of it :)
When I was an art teacher, all of us took great pains to decorate our badges with ribbons, buttons, and assorted bling. I’ve always felt that sociology badges were too darn plain.
I want a ribbon that says “hoo-ha.” But I’d settle for a scatterbrain ribbon ;).
“Scatterbrain Hoo-Ha”?
I like the bit of space between the dots and the title.
If the ribbon idea doesn’t work out for whatever reason then we can always get blue dot stickers to add to our name tags.
If we want to be really cool (or really geeky) then I recommend we get these stickers for ASA.
I’ll take one that says .dta, one with Yoda and of course this one.
Jeremy will probably want this one.