Warren Shea - World of Warren

Archive for the ‘worldofwarren.com’ Category

Site Updates – warrenshea.com VS Timeout…again.

Friday, May 20th, 2011 at 1:54 am

Trying to figure out how to not have my site load incredibly slowly.

A couple of things:
In my last site update, I made the Twitter feed on the right no longer load via JavaScript and tried to get it via PHP. Doing this meant that the entire page would load completely (w/ Twitter) all at once as opposed to having the page load but occasionally not having the Twitter load (because sometimes JavaScript hangs and doesn’t complete loading for a long time).

Anyways…I think what happened was the PHP wouldn’t load Twitter either, and thus, the whole site would load. EPIC FAIL.

I’ve changed it up now so the Twitter is retrieved client side again…but this time using AJAX. If the feed doesn’t load, you’ll just see that damn loading image…
On a plus note, it’s working. Also, the tweets are recent, and not cached (which they used to be when they were loaded via PHP and inside the JavaScript (because the JavaScript would cache).

I’m considering doing it for the Blog feeds, so I don’t have to use WordPress…but as I tried tonight, I ran into some execution problems (namely, multiple AJAX requests only seemed to load the most recently called…)

Anyways, will work more over the weekend, hopefully :)

~~Also, high considering moving all the content to worldofwarren.com, and warrenshea.com because my professional, one theme’d site.~~

Also highly considering moving all the content to worldofwarren.com, and have warrenshea.com become my professional, one theme’d site.

Might explore this over the weekend.

Posted in All Posts, Site Updates, worldofwarren.com | 2 Comments »

(Major) Site Updates

Sunday, April 24th, 2011 at 2:32 pm

About a week ago, I started some heavy dev on warrenshea.com.

Here are my fixes:

The ul/li spacing on bullets (for all 4 themes)
Added FourSquare and Flickr (signed up today!) to my Social Media Icons
Twitter feed is now taken via PHP as opposed to JavaScript
All JavaScripts have been combined into 2 JavaScripts: JavaScript libraries (which contains JQuery, jQueryUI, SWFObject, Konami Code, and JQuery prettyPhoto libraries) and the regular javascript file (containing various inline JavaScript, etc). Originally I wanted a single JavaScript file but I figure that the JavaScript Library file doesn’t change but gets loaded every time. This way, the 143kb file, which is of considerable size, can be loaded via cache while the 22kb file that changes dynamically with each theme and page will be loaded each and every time. Better to do it this way than to load a 165kb (143 +22) file every time.
All CSS has been combined into one as well, including media print and media screen
Megaman theme has combined 18 images into one sprite.
Blogger theme has combined 4 images into one sprite.
Naruto theme has been tweaked slightly, the kunai is now gone and it’s now a functional, usable site. I’d been meaning to do this for ages…but I was lazy
Gmail (and Megaman) themes used to use JavaScript to determine the width of the main content. It no longer uses JavaScript and the width is determined via CSS. This means that the page loads faster on both these themes (this is due to the width not longer loading during page load, as it was before via JavaScript). Now it loads “instantly”.
Due to the revision, all pages should be 1/5-1/3 smaller in file size, as well as have significantly fewer server calls. It’s quite a considerable improvement!
On a backend side, made it so that only 1 “sidebar.php” (the right navigation) file exists, all in one spot as opposed to the old way, in which every directory had it’s own sidebar.php…just another way of centralizing things

To Do:

Any (unseen) fixes due to the code changes
I’ve done .GIF sprite conversion but I still need to do .PNG sprites…and, not sure if it’s possible to do repeating background images with sprites but I found it not possible…so all my repeating images are still single, standalone images. Will need to research that more.
Professional Theme, Simple Theme (already sorta done…), and Mobile Theme
Fix Mega Man item preload image

While the changes are mostly unseen, it’s not to say they aren’t felt through the hopefully faster load times and less server processing…or is it more? Less client-side stuff at least, which is a good thing…it also makes it easier (for me) to create more themes. Anyways, glad it’s done. I worked pretty crazily on this the last 6 days….it honestly felt a lot like when I played Zelda. I’m a creature of….obsession. Once I start something that’s within my grasp and motivation to complete, I just spend all my time on it. The real question is…what’s next?

Posted in All Posts, Blogger, GMail, Megaman, Naruto, Site Updates, Web Development, worldofwarren.com | No Comments »

Radical Web Ideas

Tuesday, April 19th, 2011 at 9:03 pm

I have begun a revamp of my entire site (warrenshea.com). I started yesterday but I was finding warrenshea.com/megaman too hard to fix while maintaining the other themes.

I can change the stylesheet but I can’t change the name of divs in the HTML without changing global code, which means I would have to change the other styles. Anyways, big pain.

What I decided to do, temporarily, is make worldofwarren.com my warrenshea.com dev site, at least while I do these major updates. You could check it out but it might be down…I figure this will take some time to do. I’m excited though.

So anyways: Radical Web Ideas

Combining Stylesheets
Turning
-reset.css
-stylesheet.css
-stylesheet_blog.css (the wordpress css)
-print.css
-prettyPhoto.css (the image viewer)
into one css.

But the thing is, there are actually 4 stylesheet.css and 4 stylesheet_blog.css files, one for each theme. So instead of combining 5 stylesheets together, it’s actually combining 11 stylesheets together. That’s actually quite difficult.

So what I’m doing go to is load a .PHP with a CSS header (instead of a .CSS). I’ll put all my stylesheets for every theme in there, but only output the necessary CSS needed, keeping to stylesheet small, all in one place, and have it only do one call to the server.
Combining Javascripts
Same deal as above. Rather than call Google and the jsapi (making numerous calls – jquery, jquery-ui, swfobject), I will house all the scripts locally, in one file as well. Also, I call a bunch of scripts too…custom one. I’ll centralize that as well
Get Twitter feed via PHP and Twitter API and output via PHP, w/o JavaScript
Rather than need Twitter’s JavaScript to load to make the rest of my site load, it will all be PHP, reducing a JavaScript call.
Re-write HTML for many of the pages. A year ago, when I built the site in Apr, I thought my skills were great. Now, I feel my skills are just as good but I can see how bad I used to be. “You don’t know what you don’t know”.. Anyways, I plan to fix some terribly badly named divs, switch some ids to classes, etc.
Re-evaluate my wordpress changes and code/css for those items
Re-do the RSS feeds…currently they’re outputted with wordpress widgets…I want to change it to standalone code written by myself.

Overall, the point is optimization. Yes, my site loads slow (especially lately… :S) and it’s probably me.

Right now:
1 – HTML Request
5 – CSS Request
9 – JS Request

Ideally I want to make it
1 – HTML Request
1 – CSS Request
3 – JS Request (maybe less if I can…)

Anyways…yeah, working on worldofwarren.com as my dev site.

Posted in All Posts, Blogger, CSS, Development, GMail, Megaman, Naruto, PHP, Site Updates, Web Development, worldofwarren.com | No Comments »

Site Updates – no. freaking. wai.

Monday, February 21st, 2011 at 8:59 pm

Last time I did any site updates was Oct 28 apparently. It’s been 4 months (1/3 of a year) -_-;

Let me first explain why there were site updates:

I’m supposed on-call for work today. What this means is that if I get a call to do work, I have to be available to do it. Now, generally on a day like today, where I’m on call, I would wake up at 9am. Check my work email. If all’s good, go back to sleep for 30m or 45m (wake up via alarm) and check my work email again. After waking up at 9am, and then again at 9:30am, I woke up and checked my email and then…

*cold sweat* my home computer freezes (rare for my Windows 7 nowadays). I restart but the thing fails to bypass the boot screen upon restart. I can see the boot screen fine so my graphics card is okay (not like last time :/). Hard Drive failure? CPU overheat? I assume the latter, despite having 6 fans. I open the case and the inside is a dust ball. Usually I clean it before it gets to this state, I must have been lazy lately. Anyways, I turn off the computer, give it a good compressed air + vacuum + cool down rest….restart it and it’s okay. Whew! :D
It’s 10am now….but due to my *cold sweat*, I’m wide awake. Losing a computer is bad enough but since I’m on call, and today’s a holiday, if I couldn’t get my computer working, I might have to go in to work! And my comp would be broken for at least a day or two…anyways, luckily that didn’t happen :)

It’s 10 and I’m awake but still mentally sleepy…I was bored, going through my recently organized bookmarks, and I decided on a whim to update my site (too sleepy to study, must stay quiet as Z’s still asleep, my options for stuff to do were low).

*11 hours pass, more computer cleaning was done, naps, eatings, watching Edward Scissorhands, image resizing and stuff….leads us to now*

So, site updates:

Unsecured my Resume section. Partly because I couldn’t remember my own username/password and had to check my inline code every time I wanted to see it. Partly because I was originally worried that people were stealing the format but now I’m not worried so much about that…
Finally updated my Links section! It’s not perfect, I still want to write blurbs for every site…but…well, I accomplished a lot so far. Go check it out! :D

Posted in All Posts, Daily Randomness, My Life, Site Updates, worldofwarren.com | No Comments »

What to learn? HTML5 or ASP.NET?

Monday, January 10th, 2011 at 4:00 pm

The CSS book that I’m currently reading is 350 pages. I’m currently on 230, having gone through 100 on Saturday…and the other 130 in the 2 weeks before -_-; I can accomplish so much in one night if I focus! :S

As I close in on the final 120 pages, which I hope to finish very soon, I’m wondering what to study next?

I decided that for my EPIC SITE, I may as well do it in ASP.NET 3.5/4 AND HTML 5 (not XHTML 1.0).

While the ASP.NET code would compile and render to XHTML 1.0, would that be HTML5 valid? I mean, if I built my site in HTML5, I would like it…y’know, in all HTML5, not HTML5 + ASP.NET compiled XHTML1.0/HTML 4.01.

I really like the look of …. just looks wrong to me. It’s how I used to develop…but gave that up to be XHTML valid. Now, is valid again in HTML5 so why do ? is 2 characters smaller as well as just as easy to read as

I really (and I wouldn’t be surprised if you thought this too) have a bad habit of procrastinating my ASP.NET learning. Like, did I really need to read a CSS book before ASP.NET? Should I really be reading a HTML5 book before studying a multiple-year resolve of studying ASP.NET?

I’m trying to learn both for my EPIC SITE but I imagine that the learning curve for ASP.NET is much higher than HTML5, with the exception of the canvas tag, which seems very daunting. Like learning ActionScript….bleh.

There’s so much to learn! Not that I’m under a strict time limit, everything is self-imposed…but it seems like if you don’t study frequently, it’s so easy to fall behind in technology. I’m already behind with my current skills…but at least I’m attempting to catch up. That’s leaps and bounds better than the progress from my recent, WoW years.

Posted in All Posts, ASP.NET, CSS, Development, Epic Site (yet to be named), HTML5, New Technologies, Web Developer | 1 Comment »