i forget exactly when i started, but i’m pretty sure it was past midnight on friday (so technically saturday), and it took me, officially, until like three in the afternoon today. i said that it wouldn’t take longer than a week, and, although it didn’t, there were definitely a few moments where i thought it would.

one of the first things i did was download brackets, which is a coding software specialized for html and css. from what i heard i thought it would be pretty intuitive. i don’t know if i’m just in a cognitive decline or what, but i ran into so many issues just trying to start the project that i had to run it as an administrator, and then manually approve every subsequent change or addition i made to the files of the project. i still have to do that, but it works, so i don’t really care. also, the program has a “live preview” feature where you can see your website update in real time with your changes, and, because it’s intended for chrome (why?) it took me forever to get it running on firefox. the fix was extremely simple, but because of other unrelated issues (like me not properly opening my project’s folder), i didn’t think the fix actually worked, so i made it a lot harder than it had to be. whatever. i got everything working.

that wasn’t the end, though.

before my rewrite, i decided on a whim that the site needed to be in 4:3 aspect ratio. i wanted my entire homepage to be visible without scrolling, and it just so happened that 4:3 would be perfect for my content. i’m also just weird and like stuff like that. luckily, css has a property literally called “aspect-ratio”, and it does exactly what you expect. this means that this fundamental feature is, more or less, possible with a single, straightforward line of code. it’s also recognized by all modern browsers. not by brackets, though.

when i tried using aspect ratio, its stylesheet text was red, and i couldn’t see any changes in the live preview, OBVIOUSLY, because there wasn’t enough content or framework for aspect ratio to take effect. however, because the text was showing as red (not only in brackets, but in neocities’ editor as well), i assumed that the property just wasn’t working for me, and that everyone on the internet was insane, or that there must have been some kind of update to css. this led to me looking for every other possible solution. i didn’t actually commit to any of them though due to the amount of code they’d require, expecting fully that i’d do something wrong and that it wouldn’t work anyway. finally, i decided to try aspect ratio again and actually give it the parameters it needed to function in a last-ditch effort. even though my editor didn’t recognize it, my browser did, and it worked! yay! most people would be astonished that i’d go through all that stress just to have two massive pillarboxes on either side of my website. i don’t mind them at all, but i *do* plan on eventually changing them. i honestly might change the aspect ratio to something else and have smaller (not by much) margins on each side. when i dedicate large amounts of time to my site, i usually take breaks scrolling through random neocities sites for inspiration, and i’ve realized that a LOT of them use margins in a similar way. in fact, i came across many that had even larger margins than i did. it’s just not as noticeable because they implement it better within their aesthetic. solid black will suffice for now, though.

i wish aspect ratio was the only issue i ran into. it was really easy to fix, and it wasn’t even a flaw with my own coding. however, i encountered an even larger problem that is a more difficult fix. notice my use of present-tense. i did not fix this.

you can’t see it, but there’s a black bar beneath the star backdrop. this is the default background color of the website, and it should only be present in the pillarboxes. however, because the star background is only the background for the “site wrapper,” which is only as large as the grid framework (which organizes all of the content you see), it cannot account for space outside its own container. this shouldn’t be an issue, because the site wrapper stretches to the bottom of the screen… riiight? no! it doesn’t! the HEADING does. the HEADING stretches from the top of the screen all the way past the bottom. easy fix? no! well, maybe. first, it would require me switching from “magic numbers” to proper positioning, which is… fine. i can learn how to do that. there’s another issue, though. i make heavy use of images in my design—delicate images that MUST be fully contained to look right. giving the header enough space to look good requires making the entire grid framework smaller (thus wrapping the images slightly though noticeably), OR pushing the entire grid framework down. the grid framework has no background, so it results in the solid black bar that i hid by disabling vertical scrolling. i hope you don’t need to zoom in!

i could give the grid its own background. that would fix the black bar, but not the site’s homepage being ever-so-slightly scrollable, which would annoy me greatly. i could also move the heading inside the bulletin board, replacing its own “Bulletin” heading. i actually did that for a while in the editor, but i didn’t like it. i REALLY like the heading having its own space, and really helps with the overall composition (imo).

i understand that this is an issue for accessibility, so i plan on fixing this at some point. probably soon. however, my site probably averages 1 actual viewer a week, so i think it’s fine for now.

solving the black bar issue is up there in my priorities. i also need to add the “return to homepage” button that all of my bulletin and armageddon wake posts featured, that i forgot to add to the new html. in terms of new stuff, i want to finish the status update section, complete with summary tags and stuff like that. it’ll be a microblog in the corner. when i finish these things, i’ll think about other stuff like the custom cursor i’ve been talking about since day one.