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For my 100th post, I'd like to list out a few cosmetic changes that I've brought about in this blog, as well as the bunch of stuff that I've added that people might have missed/didn't know existed/don't know how to work.

Asynchronous Comment Form

The brilliant work from Stephen, the form is completely removes the comment page from the equation when it comes to adding comments. You only get to see it if there is an error. The new version includes a dynamic preview of the comment being written. You can give it a whirl here!

Categories

My Asynchronous Blogger Categories Index is at work on the right. You can see all the categories by clicking the Categories button, which will open them for you. Clicking them will load the posts filed under the particular category asynchronously, which means you won't have to leave the page you're on, and changes at del.icio.us are reflected immediately. Included are feeds for particular categories, as well as category permalinks (append a ?Category to the URL). You can implement it on your blog too, by following the instructions here.

Native Blog Search

One of my proudest hacks! This gives you blog search results in your own blog, hence cutting out the ugly Google page completely. Every part of this hack can be adjusted and fine tuned by power users to meet their needs, but in its original form its a much needed departure from millions of clicks to get where you want to get. You can see it at work on the right in the sidebar (at the top), and you can grab its code from my post, Native Blog Search.

Hybrid Link Field

Use the link field for what it was meant to be used, and more! Now you can hold all sorts of data in there, and then output them as and when required. For the moment, it supports holding an external link and the categories a post is filed under. You can see it under the titles on every post. The "Posted Under:" is generated by the script. Grab its code here.

Colour system

I changed the colours to exclude all dark colours. Made it as calm as I could, while keeping the overall minimal aspect intact. You might not think its minimal, but anything less than this and I'd have to start removing features. The main colours on this blog are Steel Blue, White and Gray, with hints of Light Yellow. These being my favourite colours, will stay for a long time! Hope you find it a comfortable read!

Footer

I changed the colour and look of the footer because it was getting way too dark. I've switched to a more soothing blue and white combination after my last redesign. So I'm keeping the use of dark colours to an absolute minimum. It looks something like the Windows Vista Aero glass theme, but it wasn't inspired by that! Believe me! :)

Scriptaculous

My experiments with UI effects and animation drove me to use script.aculo.us. Its a Javascript effects library, which is cross browser and very easy to implement in your pages. You can see it working practically everywhere. Right from the search, to the categories and comments. Its truly a fantastic piece of work which you should definitely look to. A more powerful set of libraries is offered by Yahoo!, but you'll find most of the effects you'd ever need within script.aculo.us.

New Window

On of my lightweight scripts, but quite useful. It creates 'Open in new window' links out of specially marked links. You can see them with a small new window icon next to them. If you notice, they'll suddenly appear once the page finishes loading. Yep! Thats the script at work! :)

Latest Updated

As already pointed out by Avatar, in a joint effort with Stephen, I cooked up this hack to show the latest post which is updated. It doesn't matter how old the post is. As long as it has been modified, it'll get bumped to the top of the list. However, I've added a special indicator for hacks, by giving them a light yellow background. This is so that people can see that a new hack has been put up, or an old hack has been updated!

Here's to The Last Word turning a hundred posts old! :) c|_|

[Update] Today happens to be my sister's 8th birthday as well! So all is befitting these celebrations! Happy birthday to my sister! :)


7 Comments

Script.aculo.us rocks! Am becoming interested in your 'jabber status' icon... will be looking into it more shortly ;)

Well, if you want to add it to your page, you can find all the info you want here (Jabber Webpresence) (although its only 3 lines of instructions! :P)

love the design improvements, and crossbrowser improvements Aditya.

and cngrats for the 100 post milestone.

[quote]I changed the colours to exclude all dark colours.[/quote]

hm... lucky i witness those :P and did you forgot to mention the hover thing on your syndicate thing ;) with the '--' the little blue box, now the blue box on top, and many more ;)

anyway, congrats for the 100th post ! and happy birthday to your sister too :) have a good celebration :)

@Avatar: You forget to mention who made me go cross-browser! ;)

@Effendi: Thanks for the lovely words! And I can see you've noticed things on this blog very closely! :) The thing is, I wanted to limit it functionality changes (and bare minimum design changes) because I wanted people to see how much they can do as compared to how much they were doing currently.

After all, I added all those for a reason, and I want that reason to be justified! :)

Yes Aditya it was e, but i am too modest to say things like that..

=)

hey! congrats on ur 100th post :) and happy bday to ur sis too :P




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