Naruto theme launched! (it’s ironic that if you’re on the Naruto theme, you can’t click this link…more on that later)
I’ve launched a new theme (finally). It took about 3-4 days/nights of work and about 6 months of procrastination. Now THAT’S being proactive :D
Let’s see…how did this theme come about?
I knew when I developed the website, which launched April 4, that Naruto would be my third theme. I’ve had this idea in my head for a whole half a year but had been busy with other stuff that I couldn’t get to designing/developing this theme until recently. I’d started to see the usefulness of PNGs and I wanted to work with that. I had a desk theme in my head with a kunai stabbing it; its shadow cast over the content. That’s how the idea started…
Awesomeness of this theme:
1) The scroll (which I gotta say I LOVE). I absolutely LOVE the effect it has when you scroll up and down on the page. It’s not apparent on a long page like the homepage/blog but if you go to any other page and scroll to the end, you see it’s interestingness.
2) The photos/shuriken (ninja stars). Basically, I had to figure out WHERE this desk was…originally I didn’t want to show any Naruto characters on the site, I didn’t want one of those “image of person on the screen for no reason other than design” themes. But the photos work itself out so that you can still see characters, without being taken out of the scene. Originally, I had the idea to just have the kunai as a prominent, constant image, as well as some shuriken. Giving it some more thought, I decided to randomly organize the desktop. It literally changes on every screen/refresh. 3 possible combinations/rotating items, around 12 or so different images for each (w/o repeating 2 on the same page). What’s the math for that? 12x11x10 (trying to figure out how to write that in permutations/combinations…but it’s been a long time) 12!/9! ?? <insert cry for help>
Problems with the theme:
1) Glaring problem which I’m well aware of: The kunai.png is on the “top layer”, over the content. What this means is that if you click on a link in the content, there’s a chance you could be clicking on the kunai.png which basically renders the click ineffective. NO WAY AROUND THIS given the effect I want. To be honest, I don’t care. This theme is done for the visual aspect, not the usability.
2) The width of the content is really tiny. I’ve been resizing all my images for a 450 width…that would be my smallest content size. Unfortunately, not all my content fits that, despite trying…sometimes it goes out of the scroll.
3) There’s less content on the right than there used to be for the Naruto theme. The reason is that I didn’t want that content to scroll, on a desk, it didn’t make sense so I cut out a lot of the content but made it static on the page.
4) On a smaller resolution, like 1200×800, the scroll height at the top is far too large. Minimizing the height requires a LOT of work….and not something I’m interested in doing right now. So my apologies on that, I had done the scroll before testing a resolution of that height and well, it was too late to change! >_< Things I've learned: 1) You can do so much (more) with PNGs compared to everything else. Well, I'm still an old school animated gif maker...but I LOVE PNGs. It's like a Photoshop layer...on the web. 2) My site, even 6 months ago, was coded VERY WELL. The framework for CSS possibilities was totally done well, the need for editing the actual code on this page was minor. CSS DOES IT ALL. The difference between my megaman, blogger and naruto themes: all CSS/JavaScript. I'm a bit embarrassed to say that I used quite a bit of JavaScript on this page http://www.warrenshea.com/common/naruto/scripts.js
(At least I commented it :D I -almost never- do that!)
Originally, much of the image placement relied on the size of the user screen, something I need to determine with JavaScript. That actually changed today….so hmmm, maybe I can eliminate some JavaScript. I’ll give that some thought, the load time of this page is a bit much….
One note: I’m an awesome cross browser developer !
I had been developing this site in Chrome and Firefox…and actually launched it without testing IE8 or Safari…but once I launched it, I tested those 2 (had to download Safari
FireFox 3.6.9
Google Chrome 6.0.472.55
Safari 5.0.2
Internet Explorer 8.0
Naruto Part 1:
Oh yeah….I chose Naruto Part 1 (pre-time jump) over Part 2 because…well, frankly I like Part 1 better. The characters are developed, interesting, everything is new and the ideas they introduce are awesome. Almost a decade later and Naruto’s got some nice fights, some interesting backstories…but overall I don’t have the same excitement from it that I did when Part 1 was going on. I’m excited to see new manga but not as excited as I see the fans of One Piece, which I believe has gone on longer than Naruto. I gotta start that, everyone just raves about it….Bleach also is kinda meh for me lately too…despite it looking like it’ll be over in the next few weeks/months. We’re at the final battle but it’s still meh.
Anyways, that’s it for now, take a look at the theme and provide feedback.