All ye Ficathoners...

[icarus]

And speaking of Percy Ficathon websites... look what lizardspots made for us.

Pure Percyness.

Every time I look at it, I like it more and more. *g* The sweater... (yeah, I share switchknife's love of schoolboy uiforms). Also thank you to singtoangels for offering to do a much better splash page than I can manage *blushes* (er, if she forgives my Molly-like handwringing and worry, I'm in over my head), and switchknife for helping with the Google search code, idiotparade and hp_femme for their expertise on eFiction and PHP, as well as iteag, florahart, stiletto, sevter, and misspince for cheerfully offering to help code.

Now I have a question. I would like to house all the Ficathon stories on the site, but it wasn't a condition of the original challenge. Is there anyone who objects to having their story on the site?

Comments

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Thank you. God, I'm getting my bearing on the level of talent in this Ficathon, JayKay, Mad Maudlin. Wow.

My Icarus email is at 102% (and climbing), but if you could send it to: sengdongma@yahoo.com, that would be great.

Icarus

[mad_maudlin]

Any particular style/format you want? CSS code, font, something like that? Or just plain black and white Times New Roman?

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Er... I understand Times New Roman, so let's go with that.

Icarus

[mad_maudlin]

You mean you don't know what CSS is? ::goggles::

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Of course I know what CSS is, it's... it's, uh... what is it?

Icarus

[mad_maudlin]

Silly Ickus. Thanks for making me feel smart. :)

CSS stands for "cascading style sheets." You can use them to define specific attributes for HTML tags--for instance, what color links should be, the font and size of paragraph text, et cetera. It provides a finer layer of control over how a Web site displays, which means you can do pretty things. You just have to connect your style sheet to your page, usually by inserting a link.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Ooo! I like! So with CSS you can make universal changes to, say, the font of your stories?

Icarus

[mad_maudlin]

Yup--you can put a line in your style sheet that defines the tag <p> as "Verdana, 10 pt, bold, 1.5 line spacing" or something like that. Then just embed the sheet in your page and everything within a <p> tag will appear in the preset style, unless you override it some other way. You can also define a series of fonts, so if a user's system doesn't have a specific one (like Chiller or Lumos) the text will display as an acceptable alternate.

My ficpage and the sadly DOA Huffleclaw FQF use CSS, tho' I haven't done anything really complicated with it so far. I find it nice for doing font colors, so I don't have to keep retyping the hex code, and also for defining <em> and <strong> tags so they're actually, you know, useful.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I see the link to the stylesheet, but I don't see where everything is defined. Do you not have to define each and every tag? Where is the stylesheet info?

Does this question make sense?

Icarus

[mad_maudlin]

The stylesheet with all the defintions is a seperate file from the pages; it's here for the FQF and here for my fic page. You can alternately include the style information in the header of the document, but that's a bit of a pain in the ass, especially when you suddenly discover you need to change something.

You don't have to define every tag; if you don't specify anything, the brower will display it as normal for HTML. If you look at the sheets above, I don't define <i> in the sheet, so the brower defaults to italics. If I added a line

i { font-weight: bold; font-style: normal; }

and I typed

<i>Italics</i>

It would display as

Italics

not

Italics.

Trippy, n'est-ce pas?

[lizardspots.livejournal.com]

On a quick note, I used CSS for my site (http://lizard.brandim.net). See the pretty text and fancy headers? The customised scroll bars? All with CSS.

CSS is your friend.... :)

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Nice, and nice and simple. I like the fact that I don't have to have that font you used for your title installed.

I just asked Mad Maudlin above how the CSS worked, because I expected to see a pile of code at the top defining the stylesheets but... where do you define the fonts et al for each tag?

*Puzzled Icarus*

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Okay, I get it. I haven't used stylesheets yet, but I do have a new working version of the site (http://www.percyfest.muse-wanted.com) up.

Icarus

[mad_maudlin]

Wait a minute. I have to finish this now. Damn it! ::grumbles::

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Ha! Sneaky of me, wasn't it?

heh, heh, heh...

Icarus

[mad_maudlin]

Seeing as three chapters I've already written now demand to be re-written as four, with extra angst, and Ronbits, and did I mention I have homework...?

Bah. Who cares. I can make a living selling pervy fanfic on street corners. I graduated high school, right?