If you're reading this I'm either dead, or I finally released my new homepage. I really hope it's the latter! This is the first complete redesign of oksavik.net ever, and it was really needed. I hope you like what you see, and that I can take a little of your time. This post is meant as an introduction to the new page, and the process of creating it.

When I started to make my first homepage 5 years ago I did not know that I would keep at it today. Like most of the first year students I could easily do the mandatory exercises, and forget all about HTML and scripts. But I was hooked, and it was fun. The page got bigger and bigger, and to me: uglier and uglier. It's been on my to-do list for ever, but stuff always came up. But no more excuses, because it is finally here, and you are reading this post, which I hope will shed some light on this new homepage of mine.

Language

One of the questions I think my visitors might ask is: Why is it in English? This is a good question, but the answer is very simple: I would like to reach a wider audience and I prefer writing in English. This might seem strange, but everything I read, watch, listen to and mostly write is in English. There might be some stuff in Norwegian, and you can of course write comments in whatever language you prefer, but this blog will be in English.

Blog

The blog concept is so familiar today that it does not need an introduction, but I would like to talk about my choices regarding design. The look I've gone for is a newspaper-like article, and the font is Times New Roman. I wanted to keep it very simple, and easy to read. Some might think the font-size large, and the background color odd, but I find it gives a relaxing read. I appreciate the thoughtful comments from my girlfriend, who has a better eye for colors than me. Instead of large photographs I use small thumbnails and a smart image-gallery script for handling full screen viewing. Give it a go, just click the image to your right! Did you notice the quote? I hope you did, because that is the point of it. Also, I have footnotes, that I can use as sources, etc..

Layout

The layout would have to be simple too, with a minimal amount of stuff. So I designed the show / hide menu to keep it cleaner. With javascript enabled, and I strongly encourage you to enable JavaScript, it will work fluently. If you are not sure about JavaScript you probably have it enabled. Websites today will be shown on many different browsers. This is not a big problem, except for Internet Explorer (IE). IE likes to do things it's own way, and I'm not sure how good the page looks in IE version 7 and below. Firefox3+, Opera10+ and IE8+ all views the page ok.

Comments and avatars

One of my favorite new features is the comments. Today we take it for granted, but it really is a great way to communicate. You will notice that there is no guestbook or Forum on this page, and I don't think there ever will be. Don't be afraid to post comments. You might ask: Why do you need my email address?, and I will tell you why. First of all, it will not show anywhere, and will not be passed to anyone. My goal is to make this a good experience for my visitors, so that would be stupid. I use it to validate your future comments. The first comment will be manually validated, and from then on your comments will be auto-validated. Secondly, if you have registered an avatarAn avatar is a small image representing your user on Gravatar.com (which I hope you will do, it's very easy), yours will show up next to your comment automatically. This works on many sites already, and it's increasing fast!

Photos

Photography is one of my hobbies, so of course I will have a small image gallery here, but you will find that my deviantArt account is more detailedOksavik @ deviantART. So the gallery on this page will mostly include the images that I use in the blog. You can reach it from the menu to your left, so stop by afterwards. You will find it is quite simple, with a quick sort by year and month. There is also a slide-show option that is quite neat.

News and RSS

I'm guessing you have heard about RSSReally Simple Syndication wiki before. It is a way for users to keep updated on their favorite pages, so they will not have to visit all of them to see if there is news. This page has a RSS feed, and you can bookmark it or follow it in whatever software or application you use, I prefer Google ReaderGoogle Reader is a good RSS reader . The feed is located right here. In the left menu you will notice the News page. This page collects many of mine RSS feeds, and shows them to you. That way you can easily keep updated on things I would like you to know about, such as new videos on YouTube, or a bookmark on Delicious.

Further work

The page is far from finished, but I will focus on my master thesis for a while, and updates will probably be rare at first. I just had to release it now to get it out of my system. I find it's hard to focus on school when I could be working on this. The blog is the most important element, and has received the most work. The other sections need some time to mature, and I will make changes to them later. While what you see now is the final layout and design, there will be small changes and then.

Release

It is always scary to finally release something. What if no one cares, what if it fails suddenly? I have tested everything (I hope) thoroughly, and think most people should experience the site like it should be.

With that, I thank you for your time. Hope you like what you see, and will visit again later. Please, leave comments, telling me what you think. Take care!