Nov 26, 2005

I’ve spent most of my sleeping hours skinning my blog to look just like my website! I am now a Master Blogger Skinner. HA! Yeah, right… More like I’m just starting to understand how these things are actually put together.

Honestly, it is rather simple if you understand CSS, but I’m just getting used to the power of CSS. I’ve been using it for years on the fringes of my web designs – I’ve mostly used ASP variables, etc. to do what CSS does. What can I say, I’m old school…

But, now I’m getting into CSS, and this blog skin is a first foray into more complicated item decoration. I’m still waiting to dive even deeper in, doing a complete layout in CSS. To see the real power of CSS in layout, check out css Zen Garden. As an example, this page and this page share the same HTML – only their Style Sheets are different!! Now, that’s amazing!

*SIGH* I am but a Padawan… :^)

I’ve also added an XML feed (Blogger’s built in ATOM feed), and also put in a quick-link to subscribe to my blog on Bloglines. I’ve noticed that there are lots of neat things to do with Feeds, ATOM and RSS..

Some nifty sites to check out:

• FeedBurner – Takes your Blogger ATOM feed and makes it RSS. But, its an old RSS standard. From the website – “FeedBurner helps bloggers, podcasters and commercial publishers get more value from the content they create.”
• Bloglet - Makes it simple to allow people to get email updates when you post to your blog.
• FeedBlitz - Ditto on Bloglet
• RSSWorkshop - A tutorial with a bunch of info.
• RSSTutorial - Another set of info with links to tools, etc.

Its super easy to set this stuff up, and best of all, its all free!