Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the CSS

A cartoon drawings: An old submarine and some people fighting underwater against a giant squid

OK, there were only a bit more than 2000 lines of CSS in the basic style of Twelve Eleven theme of WordPress, and today I revised half of it, shrinking the code as much as possible. I do not know (yet) how to minify programmatically a file CSS, so I am checking line after line everything.
Diving in the code helped me in finding interesting piece of web design code, that I was unaware of like the measurement ex that value the x-height of a font, the text-overflow:ellipsis and a wonderful piece of animation that it is the input search of this theme.

I am still quite unhappy about the redundancy of the code (too many nested tags dependency), the reset of Eric Mayer (which I do not find positive at all) or finding pieces of empty CSS classes and that we load all the CSS in one big files while I know that is possible to load various CSS in one only HTTP request. So a little by little I am cleaning up, and trying to remove all the silly nesting (a “return” and a “tab indentation” occupy 2 bites). I already reduced the code to 1500 lines. And even some silly part of html too I commented through PHP.

Anyway, what I am most proud of, it is not the cleaning of the code, but the implementation of WebKit and have the possibility to insert my logo using proper typography. For the moment I am working with 3 fonts mainly: Adobe Pro Garamond, Helvetica Neue and obviously Ltc Bodoni 175. It is a pleasure to work finally on the web with typography, I am about to cry by the sheer joy of it.

It is a pity that I do not have enough time to fix more my blog web page and I am obliged to go to bed because it is 2 AM in the morning. Anyway I changed a bit the style and the blog start to have the shape that I want. Still many details to take care, but at least I am reaching there.

Of my objective list I can move forward of a 20% the first objective (a lot of work need to be done there)

  • Get the most similar WordPress theme to my objective: Write HTML5 & Responsive Design (Twenty Eleven by WordPress), than strip the whole CSS, loading only the essential. Rewrite CSS and HTML on the style that I need to communicate. [30% done]

But I have to go backward on this, because the plug-in of Facebook that I found it is not working like I was thinking, so I have to take a look about plug-ins. I can share on Facebook, but I want to post automagically my post from here to there.

  • Implement social sharing to improve visibility (Twitter, Google PlusOne and Facebook). [90% done]

OK time to a proper rest 😀

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Alessio Carone

I am an extremely open person that loves a good conversation from silly talks or more serious one, but more than anything I love to be with happy people like me. I love to hug everyone, especially friends. Be aware! I always show my passionate southerner italian love to everyone. I am a senior web designer, therefore I like everything that is creative and that is related to communications. I am really good at what I do, and I love to work hard to achieve the best result is possible. "Paying attention to the details" it is my motto. I'm interested by the incredible power of imagination of the humankind, and the way we describe, perceive and feel our thoughts and feelings. Recently I am trying to build a strong Barcelona community about web design. I am participating in various important web conference in England (Ampersand, Dconstruct, New Adventure of Web design), and always reading about design and technology solutions for the web. Anyway, about reading, let's say that I do not read book. I devour them. I read more or less with a media of 2 or 3 books per month. Recently I am enjoying a lot reading on my Ipod Touch. Mainly fantasy or sci-fi, or books about my work, even so sometimes I love to read about some good italian writers like Tiziano Terzani, Italo Calvino or Primo Levi. Still love italian and latin literature quite a bit. Extremely passionate about good author of movies, comics, videogames and obviously good rock and roll music. Even if doesn't look like, I love to travel (especially slow travelling, so I can assimilate better traditions and cultures). For travelling I normally use Couchsrufing and I am really happy to share this experience knowing interesting people around the world. I am quite active in this community, organising many events. The Christmas party it is the best so far of the whole year :D I hope one day to take a trip one way only with no return date, to find in my travelling, myself or a restless person that would like to share her life with me. And I am planning in to the future to live and travel in Japan. If you ever meet me, ask me to cook something for you, because I am so good at cooking, and I love it. And above all I am still quite eccentric, and a little mad ;D My Google Profile Alessio Carone

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