Published by marco on 19. Mar 2014 22:31:38 (GMT-5)
Updated by marco on 14. Sep 2014 11:51:49 (GMT-5)
Since almost the beginning, earthli has supported themes that let the user choose the basic color scheme for the site. In the early days of the web, it was a cool way of playing with CSS. It also kept your coding honest because you had to stick to a style guide instead of just throwing in styles all over the place.
In recent years, the themes started to look a bit dated. With the introduction of a completely new base layout, most of the themes looked bad and skewed instead of simply dated.
A few screenshots are shown below, but you should check out the settings page (available in the footer of every page on this site) to see more and choose your own theme.
Some themes have been renamed:
Some themes have been removed:
The default theme is still “Ice”.
For those interested in the technical details, all earthli stylesheets are now constructed with “Less CSS” and themes are absolutely dead-simple to create by just setting a few base colors. For example, the “ice” stylesheet is created with this less file, which uses theme-base, which in turn uses core-values and core-mixins. All the other themes use these base files as well and tend to override even fewer variables than the ice theme does (e.g. Mocha, Midnight or Shamrock) For those still working with plain CSS, Less is definitely worth a look.
The manual for the earthli text formatter has been updated to include all of the latest tags and attributes. All of the non-trivial tags now have examples, including <pullquote>, <abstract>, footnotes (<fn> and <ft>), <clear>, <anchor> and <hr>.
There are a couple of... [More]
]]>Published by marco on 9. Feb 2014 22:15:41 (GMT-5)
Updated by marco on 14. Sep 2014 11:51:49 (GMT-5)
Text-formatting manual updated!
The manual for the earthli text formatter has been updated to include all of the latest tags and attributes. All of the non-trivial tags now have examples, including <pullquote>, <abstract>, footnotes (<fn> and <ft>), <clear>, <anchor> and <hr>.
There are a couple of new tags for showing messages, <info>, <warning> and <error>, examples of which are shown below.
Published by marco on 2. Jun 2013 16:41:44 (GMT-5)
Updated by marco on 14. Sep 2014 11:51:49 (GMT-5)
Web browsing has come a long way since earthli’s default style was originally created. It was high time to clean out the decade-old default style and apply some modern design ideas to it. Nothing radical, but any design of a certain age will end up being more appropriate for older browsers than more modern ones.
On the one hand, the style accumulates cruft engendered by browser limitations that no longer apply and, on the other, the basic layout no longer works well on the most common device-display sizes.
As with any UX overhaul, I followed a set of guidelines to help me make decisions.
I also had the help of a design consultant (thanks Kath!) who helped me cut several Gordian knots with aplomb. She’s not to be blamed for any remaining shortcomings, but can be lauded for letting me know when I wasn’t quite finished with a particular element yet. Oh, and she knew all along that we would end up using this font (Raleway).
Since the site content hasn’t changed at all, the home page hasn’t changed too drastically.
Application index pages no longer use a left column to display associated information. Instead, associated information is confined to a header block that stretches across the whole page, leaving room for the content to use the width of the page. The header area has a maximum height so that the beginning of the content should remain visible in almost any window.
Some more specific changes are,
The improvements listed for the news index above are equally valid for the albums index. In addition,
The article page is representative of all detail views (e.g. for pictures, articles, journals, jobs, recipes, etc.).
The picture-page update is similar to that for the article. In addition, the whole picture is no longer center-aligned, nor is the date right-aligned.
And, finally, for those who care about valid, clean, semantically useful HTML, the following screenshots shows some improvements in that regard.
The style you see on earthli right now is only the first cut. I’m quite happy with it and don’t feel a lot of pressure to fix anything immediately, but the redesign was consciously limited to adjusting style without changing functionality or how that functionality is presented to the user. A more dynamic design that uses more JavaScript and Ajax was not considered for this phase. It was enough work just getting this phase completed.
All in good time, of course. Until then, I hope you enjoy the new style!
Exceptions were made in a couple of places:
For the last couple of months, it has been impossible to search earthli in any of the applications (news, albums, recipes). This bug has been fixed as of today and searching should work as expected.
The default theme on earthli no... [More]
]]>Published by marco on 14. May 2010 13:47:54 (GMT-5)
Updated by marco on 14. Sep 2014 11:51:49 (GMT-5)
For the last couple of months, it has been impossible to search earthli in any of the applications (news, albums, recipes). This bug has been fixed as of today and searching should work as expected.
The default theme on earthli no longer uses a dark red color to indicate that a particular piece of text is a citation. Long time readers have doubtless become quite accustomed to picking out citations by color, and it is hoped that they will adjust to the new styling. Currently, the old theme has not been preserved in any way, though one could be made available if enough people complain about it.
Inline citations are still indicated with double-quotes as well as an italic font, but are now dark gray instead of dark red, as in the following example: “[t]his is an inline citation.” Block citations are also still enclosed in double-quotes, but are indicated with a gray left margin and no change in text color. An example follows:
“This is a block citation. Note that the indentation and left margin are sufficient to indicate that this is a citation rather than original text.”
That is all.
Your earthli.com Development Team
A... [More]
]]>Published by marco on 1. Apr 2009 21:12:38 (GMT-5)
Older versions of the earthli WebCore were more clearly delineated release packages and were hosted at SourceForge and offered for download on this site. Much time has passed and there have always been incremental upgrades made for the maintenance of earthli.com, but no more official releases.
A little while ago, the earthli WebCore’s source was moved from a private, firewalled Perforce server to an externally available Mercurial server. The structure has changed somewhat since the 2.7.0 release and documentation updates are still pending. Many of the principles still apply, though.
PHP4.x support has been deprecated and will no longer be supported. earthli.com itself is still currently using it, but will migrate to PHP5 within the month. The last, stable PHP4-only build is available from the source server, of course, as the snappily named changeset “0b644125e4a7”. Again, once all changes have settled down, this version will be made available in a more convenient manner.
Once PHP5-development has delivered a stable version, the WebCore documentation and instructions will be updated accordingly. One thing at a time. The sources for the earthli web-site itself are currently hidden, but select pieces will be made available as configuration samples at some point, as well.
A good eight months since the last service pack, 2.6.1, comes a new release of the earthli WebCore, 2.7.0.
The minor version bump is, in the end, an understatement. Though WebCore applications include much of the same funtionality, there are significant under-the-hood... [More]
Published by marco on 13. Dec 2005 00:04:58 (GMT-5)
Updated by marco on 13. Dec 2005 00:05:56 (GMT-5)
A good eight months since the last service pack, 2.6.1, comes a new release of the earthli WebCore, 2.7.0.
The minor version bump is, in the end, an understatement. Though WebCore applications include much of the same funtionality, there are significant under-the-hood and cosmetic changes:
For the user:
For the developer:
See the release notes for all the gory details.
Published by marco on 1. Dec 2005 23:52:01 (GMT-5)
Updated by marco on 1. Dec 2005 23:52:51 (GMT-5)
Though still not officially available, earthli.com has migrated to the latest and greatest version of the earthli WebCore. Look for a downloadable release within the next week or so. In the meantime, you can cruise around earthli and see some of the improvements for yourself. As with most WebCore releases, the differences are mainly non-cosmetic and of benefit to developers working with the library. However, there are noticeable improvements to the toolbars, menus and other UI elements.
The earthli applications have also been updated and have their own change logs: Albums, News, Projects... [More]
]]>Published by marco on 14. Mar 2005 22:34:31 (GMT-5)
Updated by marco on 14. Mar 2005 22:37:24 (GMT-5)
The first service pack is available at the WebCore home page. This release includes some smaller bug fixes and some usability improvements. There are also release notes and a change log to read.
The earthli applications have also been updated and have their own change logs: Albums, News, Projects and Recipes.
You should probably Download it now.
New features in 2.6.0 (since 2.4.0) are:
Published by marco on 5. Dec 2004 13:16:30 (GMT-5)
Updated by marco on 5. Dec 2004 13:44:03 (GMT-5)
After over a year in development and a skipped internal release (2.5.0), the latest and greatest in PHP web site development technology is once again available to a clamoring public.
You should probably Download it now.
New features in 2.6.0 (since 2.4.0) are:
The application have also improved, inheriting all the features listed above and adding:
Did I mention that all this is available for Download?
Published by marco on 5. Dec 2004 13:16:30 (GMT-5)
Updated by marco on 5. Dec 2004 13:21:38 (GMT-5)
The WebCore has a new home (again)! The home page is updated to be much more dynamic (and take advantage of WebCore applications) and many other pages have been updated as well.
You don’t have to get the WebCore to use it — it’s also available as an separate open-source component. Check out a demo... [More]
]]>Published by marco on 12. Apr 2004 14:47:32 (GMT-5)
Updated by marco on 16. Mar 2008 17:14:23 (GMT-5)
The earthli WebCore now uses a nifty JavaScript calendar component to let users easily choose and set dates. This makes choosing dates for pictures in earthli Albums a breeze!
You don’t have to get the WebCore to use it — it’s also available as an separate open-source component. Check out a demo or download it now.
Brought to you by earthli Software.
Published by marco on 21. Mar 2004 15:15:15 (GMT-5)
Updated by marco on 21. Mar 2004 15:15:28 (GMT-5)
The WebCore home pages have finally gotten an update — there’s a lot more introductory text explaining what it is and what it does.
The new library (2.5) isn’t available yet, but we’re getting there.
Published by marco on 16. Dec 2003 00:48:01 (GMT-5)
Updated by marco on 10. Mar 2008 22:10:52 (GMT-5)
]]>As you can see, the WebCore has also acquired a shiny new logo.
]]>Published by marco on 24. Aug 2003 23:57:10 (GMT-5)
Updated by marco on 16. Mar 2008 17:21:20 (GMT-5)
There is a brand new release of the earthli WebCore, along with upgrades for all four modules. The modules are now available for download in easier-to-install packages and include much better installation instructions.
As you can see, the WebCore has also acquired a shiny new logo.
Published by marco on 19. Mar 2003 22:27:20 (GMT-5)
earthli.com is proud to announce that the code on which this web-site runs is finally ready for release to the masses. It is published under the open-source GPL license and is available for download right here on earthli.com. The release is accompanied by full documentation for both casual users and developers. For more information, visit the official WebCore home page.