The Letter - not a redesign

2nd Jan 2011

The wily-eyed among you may have noticed a few subtle changes to your favourite website The Letter in recent days. Here's what's changed.

1. Using the excellent HTML5 Boilerplate templates, I've updated the code base to use HTML5
2. Tweaked the CSS to allow for min and max screen resolutions using the @media CSS rules. The design now adjusts across four columns right down to a single column design (ideal for iPad / iPhone etc.)
3. Swapped a lot of the large transparent PNGs I was using for the background for CSS instead
4. Introduced a web font for the main headings (Banksia)
5. Cached the most recent 240 posts as a text file for speedier page loading
6. Started to use Google Friend Connect in the hope of encouraging more people to comment
7. Got "tags" working the way they should be. Previously, when you selected a tag, I was simply doing a search on the chosen tag. Now though, it's pulling out all posts with the same tag
8. I've taken advantage of the new HTML5 anchor tag rule, which allows me to wrap a link round block elements. So now all posts can be clicked (previously only the post title was clickable)
9. I replaced the "jump to" links at the top of the document with some ARIA roles (for accessibility)
10. And finally I've hidden an easter egg in the form of a new "best of" page. This new page displays the top twelve most popular posts according to Google Anlaytics. There's no direct link to this page, you'll have to find it yourself (and the first person to provide a link in the comments to this page gets...)

If you see any glaring issues, let me know. All feedback welcome.