Four Island

The people have spoken! "Subtle Mode" wins with an amazing majority over the rest, though "Mobile" did pretty well (considering it was my vote and I didn't cheat this time). One thing that does disturb me, though, is that two people voted for the "Rainbow" layout. Really? Can't you people see the invisible warning message "I WILL STAB YOU IF YOU CHOOSE RAINBOW"? Gosh. :P

A "Mobile" layout for phones - 3 vote(s)! A "Subtle" layout for TEH SNEEKINESS - 6 vote(s)! A "Rainbow" layout for OMG EPILEPSY - 2 vote(s)! Other (specify!) or NONE I DONT CARE YOU FAT - 1 vote(s)!

So, as I'm sure some people will be happy to know, I have started work on 'Subtle Mode'. It's basically going to be a bland layout of Four Island with not-so-eye-blinding colors. I'm going to try to get that committed to Four Island soonish, because I have a much better idea for Four Island 3.0 that will replace Subtle Mode: Masquerade Mode. Yes. Awesomeness. :P

Also, last night (or perhaps earlier, I only discovered it last night), someone left an anonymous comment on my Annetenna post. I approved it, but for some reason, my blog system accidentally deleted it. Yes, this is probably a sign that Four Island 2.0 really needs to go. Anyway, I'm very sorry to the commenter and if you're reading this, please resubmit your comment to the Annetenna post and I'll ensure that it gets posted this time.

Finally, you may have noticed this week's poll is about media players. You may have also noticed that the options are "Apple iPod" and "Everything else". That's because that's seriously how it is. Don't fight it! :P

Do you think I fail at updating on a normal schedule? Yes, I do. Clearly. It's been a week.

You totally do - 1 vote(s)! Yes, you kind of do - 1 vote(s)! I would have to agree with the above two options - 0 vote(s)! I'm legally required to add a "No" option here - 0 vote(s)!

I actually had an excuse for not updating last week, though. Due to a bug in my coding, I couldn't actually access the Poll Update page in the Admin Panel because of the quotation mark in the fourth option. Wait, that's still my fault, and I was being lazy by not fixing it earlier. Oh well. :)

Anyway, now that's out of they way, let me introduce you to an amazing new feature on Four Island that I spent all night working on! It's the Theme Switcher! YAY!

I often get nostalgic about old layouts (as evidenced by every time I release a new one) and I would like to go back to said layout, but I can't without changing the entire website. I've found a solution!

You may have noticed the "Theme Switcher" combo box in the Hatbar. You can use that to choose which Four Island Layout you would like to see. Currently you can choose 7 (the current), 6.2 and 4.5. It actually works! :)

I doubt I'll ever implement 6 or 6.1, as they're not so different from 6.2 (well, the original 6 was kind of weird, as it had no background picture) unless people want me to, but I'm think I might want to implement layout 3. It would be very hard, though, because Layout 3 is from before The New Four Island so it doesn't conform to the templating system and other stuff. Plus, the site was different then, The Fourm and the Quotes DB weren't integrated into the rest of the site and most stuff was accessed from the "Misc" page.

So, choose your favorite layout and get Four Islanding! If you notice any bugs in any of the layouts, please let me know. :)

Layout Judgement Week is over, welcome new layout! Layout 7 is here to stay.... for a while.... until I get bored again.... :)

Though nobody made a single comment on my post (IM SO HURT!!!!!!!!!) I gathered from that that you liked it. Plus, I found a few bugs that had made their way into production and squashed them! :)

You may have noticed the short downtime that just occured: that was me, I had rewitten my ubiquitous admin panel and needed to make a few database changes. But now it's up again!

Like oh em gee! Time for the mandatory layout nostalgia that always comes with a new layout! This time, it's about length of existence! I was talking to Drifty the other day and was randomly measuring the lengths of the layouts. And I'm astonished to find out that Layout 3, unlike I had led everyone to believe, is not the longest lasting layout.

Let's measure them in two categories: major layouts and minor layouts. Major layouts being 1, 3, 4, 6 and the rest, minor being those plus their derivatives like 6.1. For this experiment, I will be considering Layout 2 a minor layout of Layout 1 as there really was no major change there. Layout 4 in The New Four Island is considered 4.5. Layout 2 doesn't have any definitive date as there was no blog post about it so it is measured with Layout 1.

Let's start with minor layouts. Layouts 1 & 2 together lasted 72 days. Seems long, but wait. My long worshipped Layout 3 lasted for 150 days! Very long. Layout 4 (my favorite layout) first existed for 13 days before being rudely interrupted by the disgraceful Layout 5, which lasted only 8 days. Layout 4 then picked up again with another 20 days, bringing Layout 4's total existence to 33 days.

Then the New Four Island arrived, and so did Layout 4.5, which lasted four an astounding 165 days. So far, 4.5 is the winner. But wait! Next came Layout 6, which lasted a measly 39 days, soon followed by Layout 6.1, which only lasted 34. But then, the sun was blocked out by the massive layout to follow. Layout 6.2, our most recent layout, lasted for a huge 184 days. Layout 6.2 is the winner for minor layouts!

Here we go with major layouts! Layout 1, as stated previously, lasted 72 days. Nothing much to boast about. Layout 3 then lasted 150 days, bringing it to the lead. Wait, what's that? It's Layout 4! Layout 4 lasted an amazing 198 days before leaving. However, the undoubtedly longest living major layout ever on Four Island (so far) was Layout 6, with a massive 257 days of life.

YAY that was fun. Isn't Four Island history fun? Well, nostalgic me thinks so. :) Anyway, I hope you enjoy the new layout of Four Island!

Hiya all! I'm sure you've noticed something rather different about Four Island, I made a new layout! No, it's not the long awaited three-column layout that Bluemonkey prophesied while standing in the Sahara Desert, surrounded by raging sand-winds, one day. No, it's simply Layout 7, a pretty unique Four Island look as it has several things different between it and the previous 4 major layouts. (I don't generally count Hatkirby CDI, Layout 2 or Layout 5 as major layouts, really.)

The biggest difference is probably that it just looks so different from the other layouts. The other layouts had a banner, a navbar, and content down the middle. This one is more, full screen. The banner is at the very top, the sidebar-ish thing is at the very left, and the content is floating in the middle of the remaining space with the navbar sitting contentfully above it. It's not another centered layout, ladies and gentlemen. :) Plus, the glaglaglada of "Recent Comments", "Recent Fourm Posts", "Recent Whatevers" that have annoyed people in the sidebar have also moved, they now reside in the footer, looking pretty nice, I think. :)

Also, because I'm now using more space for the site, The Fourm doesn't replace the sidebar. It's still right there, looking happeh in it's surroundings, eating a lot of cheese. And Fouripedia is like, totally gone. For now. Maybe.

For some reason, whenever I write a new layout, I always end up doing a TON of work around Four Island. Here's something I'm very happy about: I rewrote a lot of the Quotes module, so now it looks a TON prettier and it works a lot better now. Plus, I've added AJAX so you can vote on quotes and flag quotes without leaving the page! Speaking of AJAX, yes, I took it too far! Now you can do a ton of stuff without leaving the page such as voting on the Poll Of The Week, commenting on anything and voting on blog posts! YAY AJAX! You can see the rest of the changes I made at source control.

And as I bet some people (whisper) will notice, Four Island no longer uses HTML. It now uses XHTML! It was gasps very annoying gasps going through my templates gasps and lowercasing all of the gasps tags. Lol :)

I hope you people like Layout 7, and that's what Layout Judgement Week is. I sort of did Layout Judgement Week for Layout 6 too, but I didn't tell anyone about it which is why it sort of omg failed.

Layout Judgement Week is the first week following the release of a new layout. During this time, I'd love it if you could traverse my site and see if you like the new layout. If you do, please comment on this post and tell me so! If there are any changes you would like me to make, just tell me! If you don't like it, after the week has completed, I'll revert to Layout 6, but I like this layout, so I hope you do too. :)

Oh yes, I did it again. A new layout. Well, not really. Like 6.1, layout 6.2 is a minor update to the major Layout 6. I've removed the phpBB-style background and made the center semi-transparent instead. This way, all text is still visible, but you can also see the background, something I was going for for ages.

I got this idea from CSS-Tricks' RGBa Browser Support. I saw that and immediately went "YAY THAT'S LIKE TOTALLY PERFECT!" (the previous sentence may have possibly been paraphrased :)) I've been trying to achieve an effect like this since I saw CSS-Tricks' Blurry Background Effect and thought it'd be a great way to overcome the problem.

So, if anyone has any difficulties with the new layout, such as it throws up in IE 7.6546465 or looks so disgusting that you'd like to eat a cheesedoodle, just comment and tell me. :)

Remember back when I was being nostalgic about old layouts when the 6th layout was released? Remember I was pining for a supposedly non-existent screenshot of the elusive Layout 1? Well guess what. I have found one.

I found it while traversing Wikipinia one lazy day. I found, in my User hierarchy, an old list of websites I hosted, with other information about them such as launch date. Upon opening Four Island's page, I gasped in amazement as I saw, staring at me, the long-sought after screenshot of Layout 1. :)

I can't believe how much Four Island has changed since that. Does this site even slightly resemble the one in that screenshot? Plus, back then, I knew a lot less about blogs. I even remember thinking that posting once a day is too much. Now I'm concerned about posting too little. :)

You may notice a discrepancy in that screenshot. As you know, The Fourm wasn't released until March 30th 2008. However, the third layout was enacted December 3rd 2007 and there's a link in that screenshot entitled "Fourms". Well, Four Island did have a fourm before Layout 3. It ran miniBB fourm software (which was a mistake because that resulted Four Island being blocked from a certain place for a long time) that wasn't that good. It was removed October 22nd 2007.

I haven't updated my Wikipinia user pages since forever, but there's a lot of interesting information in there. For instance, the original release date of Color Pencils was April 27th 2008, even though everyone thinks it's May 5th 2008. Weird. :)

#5 + (8) - [X] #86 + (8) - [X]

Ok, I'm quite aware that today is not the first of the month. But, because yesterday was New Years, I had to do something special. However, we haven't done QOTM for a while and I decided that I might as well do it (hello from parentheses land!).

Strangely, this month, there are two quotes of the month! #5 (Envy) and #86 (Voices from Nowhere) tied exactly at 8 points each!

I'd also just like to announce the new minor layout, 6.1! If it conflicts or uglifies anyone's face, just tell me!

Well.... I can see now that Layout 6 has to go. Oh well. I have to stop trying to change. :)

YES!1!1!1!1 - 2 vote(s)! It's, like, ok - 6 vote(s)! No - 10 vote(s)! Indifferent - 0 vote(s)!

So yes, I guess we are once again back at Layout 4. There have been two unsuccessful attempts to move to a new layout. It seems Layout 4 is quite popular. I'll try to resist the urge to change again, kay?

So, you people will start coming back to Four Island now that Layout 6 is gone, right? Right? :)

EDIT: Oh dear, it seems like I'm just being paranoid. People actually do like Layout 6. So, we're back to it. However, Layout 6 still clashes with IE. GAH, have to fix that.

Well, the new layout is out, and the 4th is gone. I guess we all had fun with it while it lasted.

We've had it for a while and it's nice - 4 vote(s)! It's getting old - 4 vote(s)! Ewww! - 0 vote(s)! Indifferent - 0 vote(s)!

I'm sorry I'm updating this poll on Sunday instead of Saturday. Something came up that, as usual, I was not told about earlier. :)

Speaking of the new layout, the 6th layout is out and, hopefully, complete! It is good and stuffs and yay.... ok, that was surreal. We're already up to the 6th layout? Strange.

Stranger is that we just had the 4th theme, and now we're having the 6th theme. The reason is because the 5th was created after the 4th had been around for a while, but it was pretty much the same thing, but in a notebook style (aligned to the left of the screen). Everyone hated it. It clashed with browsers and other evil stuffs. In the end, I just switched back to layout 4.

Technically, you could call the theme we just had 4.5 because the new Four Island was released during its lifetime, and the New Four Island didn't only clean up the code, it changed the display a little.

Anyway, with Four Island so far from where it started, I'd like to post some screenshots of the older layouts. However, there are no known screenshots of Hatkirby CDI (the pre-Four Island layout) or Layout 1. The only screenshot of Layout 2 (which was pretty similar to 1) I can remember is on one of those domain identifier sites where they tell you a lot of information about the domain, and it's WHOIS info. But I don't even know if that screenshot's still there.

So, because of that, I'd just like to show you Layout 3, the longest living Four Island theme. Coincidentally, I had saved the sources files defining the third layout in a backup, so the following screen shot is a recreation of Layout 3. Here's the screenshot.

Now, with the 4th layout's life time getting closer and closer to the large lifetime of good ol' layout three, I give you, the more prettiful, Layout Six.

OK, you may have noticed the new Four Island layout. Yes, I thought you did. I got tired of Layout 4 and decided Four Island needed something new. But I was too hasty with it.

In my haste to put up a new layout, I forgot a few necessary things such as affiliate links and the Quotes subsection links. And Fouripedia isn't integrated correctly. Also, the development site was having difficulties with the automatic posting feature, so I disabled the pending queue, and thus forgot to re-enable it. That's why there wasn't a post yesterday.

I am going to re-enable the posting queue as soon as I finish typing this post. I'll also attempt to fix the many problems people seem to have with the new layout. Once layout 6 has entered a stable phase, I'll announce it like I usually do.

In the mean time, if anyone has any suggestions or problems with the new layout, feel free to comment on this post or reply to TimTam's Fourm topic, New Layout in Fourscore Improvement. I welcome any suggestions because I dislike Four Island not being as functional as it used to be.