14 May 1999

New Look
A redesign of the front page is posted today. The idea is to reduce clutter and add some color. The grayed-out headings are sections that I expect to implement, or revive, in the next few weeks. Comments welcome as always.

Memory Lane
This would be Version 2.2 of Locus Online's home page. This was the front page up until yesterday; Version 2.1. I neglected to save Version 2.0, the October 1997 redesign that introduced the rounded dark red lines framing each page. (It had a menu of section headings in a smaller curved frame along the left side.) But here's Version 1.0, the very first Locus Online homepage, what the site looked like from April to October of 1997. The heading links don't work; I haven't preserved the entire site.

Fonts
Many web design gurus consider it presumptuous of webmasters to expect, much less ask, their readers to view their site with particular browsers, or with browser windows set to certain dimensions, or to have certain fonts installed. But here's a tip for viewing Locus Online that will also improve your other web-surfing: a collection of increasingly common fonts used on websites is available free from Microsoft. These include Verdana, Locus Online's favorite font since October '97. If you don't have Verdana installed on your machine, you'll see the text of this editorial in Helvetica or Arial (or whatever font you've set your browser to use). But Verdana is used on an increasing number of websites because it's slightly wider than other sans serif fonts and therefore easier to read, particular at small font sizes.

This text is coded in Arial.
This text is coded in Verdana.

In case those look the same to you, here are samples displayed in graphics files:

The free Microsoft fonts also include Andale Mono, Webdings, Trebuchet MS, Georgia, Comic Sans, Impact, as well as Courier, Times New Roman, and Arial. All come in Windows or Mac versions. The link is the banner...

--Mark R. Kelly