Invisible-Movement.net v.6.0: TenTwenty
So, the time has come, 09:09 on 09.09. Looking at how Invisible Movement started off four years ago before it was even public; I thought of four possible dates to launch the sixth version of the site. This day won the poll in my mind as the other three days – 29th November, 08th March and 12th October – are too far away from now and, at this pace, none of them meets one of the four ideas behind the site layout. So, yup, even though a part of me wanted to delay this launch for some other day, the new Invisible Movement layout is seeing the light of the day on 09.09.2008. after all. Ta-dah!
Refresh your page a couple of times if what you see appears to be a total mishmash. You can do so by pressing F5 in the most of the browsers. If what you see looks like a combo of a notepad’s last page, a canvas, some paper pieces and collage-like scraps on it, then you can see it! The gallery might still look messed up for a little while, I am working on it.
If things are still wrong, then you’re using an old browser (e.g. Internet Explorer 6.x or Mozilla Firefox 1.x) that doesn’t play that well with advanced CSS, PNG transparency and such; or perhaps your cache needs to be cleaned and/or your Javascript enabled.
- You have only one second to guess which song inspired the centre image on the page. It’s older.
- You have three seconds to guess which song and which line from that song inspired the content area. It’s newer.
- And for some of you, as one particular story touched me to tears last week, the pick on the right is dedicated to the one and only Special Pick, yet it has no ink to intoxicate one’s bloodstream. If you did not understand this, then you are neither me nor two people in the world who know what I’m talking about. Hmmm…make that two one, as the other person probably forgot it. If you don’t know what this is all about, do not ask.
Either way, the layout you see has a name of its own. It is called TenTwenty. If you’re friends with it, you can call it 1020; but ask it for its permission beforehand, as maybe it does not feel close to you yet. That is normal, the poor thing is a new kid on the block (but it is not singing la – la – la – la – la – la – TONIGHT!).
Since this rather sinister introduction got your attention and perhaps tickled your mind, you should read on. You do not have to, but you should – in order to avoid any confusion as many things have changed. For the better.
The TenTwenty theme is the successor of as well horribly-named Flame, BlackPastel, Notebook, Filmstrip and Technotes; and is a somewhat inspired by the third one. It took me months to be happy with it. Why? Because it was meant to be the theme for celebrating a bunch of things at once: twenty years from when John originally joined RHCP, ten years from when he came back, 1 000 000 visitors and four years of Invisible Movement, both of the later two due pretty soon.
TenTwenty is XHTML 1.0 transitional and CSS valid, just like all the previous themes on Invisible Movement. Its RSS feeds are valid, too. If invalid XHTML pops up, it was most likely generated by one of the used plugins. TenTwenty was tested in Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 3 and Safari 3 (all of them for Windows). It looks almost the same in all of them. It was not tested with dial-up and ISDN connections and/or 800×600 screen resolution (or eventually below); but a lo-fi version for those who don’t feel like loading all this is being prepared. Of course, that version will be stripped of all the fun things.
The alternate images are from various years, taken by various people, on various occasions. Otherwise the theme’s name wouldn’t have its right purpose. The quotes glued to them are some of the most memorable pull-out quotes I and many other people have stumbled upon, reading articles about John. And this is fun, as you’ll never guess which image will pop up on the top right of a page that’s loading. I’m not telling you how many of them are there either.
Why the centre photo with the smile? Well, that photo has somewhat of sentimental value to me. I was looking through all possible images to find one that most resembles the smile John shared with me and my two friends, Dmitri of Russia and Å ime of Croatia, in Vienna almost two years ago, on 07th December 2006, when we’d shown him a banner reading JOHN, TNX FOR YOUR SECOND WALK. This serene photo from the year 2000 was the closest I got to what’s inked on my the messy papers of my mind. And well, as I believe that such a powerful, sincere, motivating smile can not only make one’s day, but one’s week, month, year, two years; as that smile has engraved itself into my psyche and is following me everywhere I go and brightening my day when I think there is no longer hope…I had to implement it here. May the original photographer have understanding for this, as I cannot retrieve the image I have in my own mind. Unfortunately, things we’ve seen in the movie Strange Days are pure, pure fiction.
So, other than sentimental flashbacks, what is new?
TenTwenty is artistic, yet accessible!
Needless to say, previous Invisible Movement themes were EPIC FAILS in terms of good design. I was never too happy with them and, for now, I’m happy with TenTwenty. It looks better in bigger screen resolutions, its accesibility is better (completely css-only, apart from the top-right alternating image) and its cross-browser compatibility is also much better.
The tabbed interface in the sidebar
This space is shrinking space in the sidebar and it’s all about space. It also holds two brand new ways for a site visitor to find what they’re looking for more easily.
Asides aka Elsewhere
As the most of you know, Invisible Movement’s news section functions like a blog. You can comment on almost every single news item, leave trackbacks and pingbacks from your own web page, rate news items and get syndicated content through RSS. Now it also has Asides (good explanation of what they are). Basically, all the one-liner news items containing only links worth visiting, will be in the asides format from now on. You can subscribe to Invisible Movement’s asides via RSS at this URL. They’re not handled by FeedBurner unlike the main RSS feed; but they might be, if this little experiment proves to be successful. Also, asides do not show up in the main RSS feed.
Tags
Tags are a common web 2.0 thing. You can read about them here. In short: if you’re looking for all news where, for example, there’s a mention of Josh Klinghoffer, you can either click the tag from under the news item that contains it or find the term in the tag cloud (soon) and the result should be something like this. Also, tags help visitors of MyBlogLog, Technorati and similar websites find the terms they’re looking for and, eventually, end up at Invisible Movement.
Cleaner subnavigation
Subnavigation looks much cleaner now. Some pages, e.g. audio and video indexes do not have it yet, but that is being worked on as well. Moreover, all the pages linked in subnavigation have little thumbnails to describe what is waiting for the visitor inside.
Pages that do not work yet
Gigography and its subpages, the new section for gear and tabs and its subpages, as well as some of the subpages in the Discography section, do not work yet, as they have not been completed or revamped. The password assigned to them is something really bogus, it is known only to the site owner…in other words, nobody is locking away a part of the site from you, the pages are serving as placeholders until they’ve been completed.
Other things that have not taken their final shape
The footer is a subject to change. Currently, it’s displaying a random playlist fron the past, I’m still think of either putting up a new playlist or simply displaying the most recent media files.
Individual pages that were redone
The former info page changed its name and it now has a licence.
Biography was completely revamped and pretty much rewritten.
Tattoos page was redone in order to be slightly cleaner and more descriptive than before.
Album reviews have been moved from the main articles’ index to their own section, so all the old links to reviews won’t work.
GLOBAL project page, which looks cleaner now. And it is actually possible to find it through navigation.
Pages that are back after a long vacation
Information on Niandra LaDes And Usually Just A T-Shirt
Information on Smile From The Streets You Hold
Icons/avatars
Site information page
Readers’ covers – this one needs to be updated, too; though some songs on it actually ARE new.
New pages
10th Album Rumour Mill is a new page. It is meant to serve as a little compilation of known news about the 10th solo album. It is NOT meant to rush anything or bring tension, just to answer some frequently asked questions. It is not official by any means either.
General site help
Community subsection is a totally new thing, as well as the most of its subpages.
Page on Pink Eye will introduce you Invisible Movement’s own virtual band.
Links to readers’ music pages – we’re creative people
Music Feature Рthis month, Invisible Movement is presenting to you ms. Isabel Jos̩ of Sweden.
Links to readers’ art pages and portfolios – as I said, we’re creative people.
Links to readers’ writings – I don’t like saying things three times, but heck…we’re creative people.
“Readers” would be people who, well, read Invisible Movement. People who come here because they love John Frusciante and his music. Duh. And no link is added to this section without a permission from its owner (there have been some unpleasant things happening with links recently); so if you want to be linked, you have to either contact me or post in one of those threads mentioned on pages where you’d want to be linked. Doing both of those would be the best option.
If you’ve made it to the end of this, you’re the champion, I salute you. Have fun with TenTwenty and do report all the errors to me, as long as you know how to describe them and as long as you know what you’re doing. Thanks for reading!
