Posted by Troy on July 23, 2009 14:34
I spend a lot of time on the web...a lot of time. So, you can imagine how many times a day I stare at iGoogle, my default homepage. I've loved the fact that Google has given us the ability to skin this page, but today they truly have outdone themselves...iGoogle comic book themes.
I picked the Hellboy theme, because hey...you just can't beat Mike Mignola when it comes to pretty pictures, but there are a ton of beautiful themes out there.
Perhaps best of all, the themes include at least one or two that I've never heard of before and that I can't wait to check out...the art of Lark Pien looks wonderful (I love the header with all the peanut butter & jelly sandwiches!) and the Children of the Sea art blows my socks off. So yeah. It's been a good day. =)
Posted by Troy on April 19, 2009 23:23
As you may have noticed, things are slowly coming together around here. I think I may have finally settled on a look for popmatic.com. It seems like I've been playing around with looks for months!
The look is based (loosely, obviously) upon a page from the Doves Press Bible that I found in a book on design. That "I" running the length of the page just struck me as simple and beautiful. It wasn't hard to see how it could be used to delineate the borders of a webpage, and voila!
Overall, I've been really pleased with how simple it has been to create themes with BlogEngine.net (which is the platform that runs this blog). For anyone who has worked with ASP.NET Master Pages, the process should be fairly simple and intuitive. A master page contains the basic structure of the page, and two web user controls (.ascx files) hold the interfaces for posts and comments. Best of all, this means that I still have access to code behind pages, so I can do all kinds of fun C# programming as the need arises...not that it has yet. So far, the basic functionality of BE.Net has been enough. It's true that the documentation is still a bit sparse, but I've seen it improve already in the two months since I've first started playing with it, so I'm sure it will continue to improve.
It may not have the maturity or the breadth of plug-ins and widgets that Wordpress has, but so far, BlogEngine.net has been a lot of fun.