Blogolicious!

What's the Blogolicious form?, you ask. Actually, you didn't ask, I just did. If you read it again I'll ask it again. That's the way with the written word, no matter how many times you read it it says the same thing. No more, no less.

Of course, you probably know what the blog form is, new items posted at the top over previous items. Updated regularly so there's something worth coming back for day after day, time after time, etc after etc. Basically a blog is the website format pioneered by the likes of Suck.com back in the 1990s.

My version of this I call blogolicious. It's not revolutionary or anything close, just with my own sense of style, design, layout. I don't have the color field or wallpaper background. There's no web-safe color bands, or boxes with garishly colored holding lines. There's no pseudo 3D look with fuzzy cast shadows or gleaming highlights. There's no illegible gray text on a slightly different gray panel. And there's certainly no series of strange icons nobody can decipher or can remember what in blazes the darn things mean.

What you get with blogolicious is a whole lot of white space. This makes for a neat, clean, uncluttered look. It also makes the illustration spots pop. Which, being an illustrator, is rather the point in a way. Surrounding the popping pictures tucked into all that white space is black text. Easy reading, that. Just like a book. Very conventional and maybe a tad boring. Boring to look at that is. Not boring to read, I hope.

For folks who really like interactive gimmickry, here and there I will have one of those pop-up balloons for a pic or a bit of type. Just put the cursor over the picture or word, like RIGHT HERE. And the requisite hypertext link which I make no guarantees is worth bothering with.

The text width is kept narrow, rather like a newspaper or magazine column. This makes it easier to find the next line down, you don't get lost tracking back to the next line like you do with real long lines of text. Less side to side eyeball work or turning your head. Though it does mean more scrolling. So more finger work. It's a trade-off, you can't have everything.

I like to keep the text away from the edges of the window or screen, too. Like a book where you have someplace to grasp it with your thumbs without covering what you're trying to read. Though I imagine very few people are holding their computer screens like a book. Unless you're reading this on your phone, which in my view is an odd use of technology, but seems to work for some folks.

Perhaps I'm too old to understand, but I don't get the instant messaging craze. Seems to be a phone call you have to type out or read. Email on your phone, more or less. Which might be fine for sending a memo, but having an ongoing conversation? What's the point?

Directions for Using the Blogolicious Form

1. If you've gotten this far you must already know how it works. Otherwise you wouldn't have gotten this far. It works the same as any other blog, only less so. Which means no comments section, or permalinking, or reddit, RSS or a whole bunch of other things I have no clue how to make happen. Even if I knew what they were.

2. If you want to know how to blog you might try How to Blog. They even have a bit about how to get links if that sort of thing interests you.

3. If you simply want to know how to use the internet contact Al Gore. He invented it.

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