Last semester, I had taken a course (and got an A, yay!) named User-Centred Web Design. The course basically taught us how to create a website that is user-friendly. I actually enjoyed the course since I am a budding web designer who still have lots more to learn. One of the topics that we had learned was regarding navigations. How do we make navigations more user friendly? One of them is to highlight active pages in order to prevent our visitors from getting lost in a site. This is extremely useful for huge sites such as Amazon, eBay, a company’s website, etc. You wouldn’t want your visitors to feel lost. When I was redesigning the company’s website, I had learned a very useful technique to highlight active pages. Usually, most people will highlight those active pages by hard coding it. What I meant here is that a person may edit the page one by one in order to highlight the active page. I found this very frustrating since I am a lazy bum and I wouldn’t want to do that. After reading many articles, I found a very useful way on how you can highlight your active page automatically and I had apply this technique in order to highlight active pages in the company’s website. This will work fine not only if you use WordPress but also if you use other CMS such as Cutenews, FanUpdate, TextPattern, etc.

Notice that whenever you click a link in Rogue-Dolls, the navigation will get highlighted. For example, if you click ‘about’, you will see this:

(Curious? More info after the jump..)

I mentioned before that I was hired to redesign a company’s website. I did not really design the content-management systems. I only design the main layout of the website. I was pretty confident with my HTML/CSS skills. Over-confident to be honest. Little did I know that redesigning a company’s website is a totally different board game compared to redesigning a simple graphic website. Even though a company’s website may look simple and less fancy compared to a personal blog, but it has more links and styling elements. I thought I was good with HTML/CSS, but the process of redesigning the website proves to me that I still have a lot more to learn. One of the things that I had understand more during the process of redesigning is the CSS positioning. I’ll try my best to make you guys understand without torturing you too much.

In this tutorial, I will explain to you each positions in HTML and CSS. If you grasp the concept well or just plain smart, you can use these tricks to make a simple layout. We will look at the 3 positions. The static, relatives and absolute. We will also look into a little bit of floats and clear.

(Curious enough? Click here to satisfy your curiosity..)

So how sexy is the new Rogue-Dolls? It is very sexy to me! I hope you find it sexy too! Welcome to the new Rogue-Dolls. I had revamped everything from the layout to the Content Management Systems. The site is currently running on WordPress 3.0. I have to admit, WordPress is a beautiful piece of software. I never thought I would revamped everything as I was planning to just stick with Cutenews. I was experimenting with Fantastico one night and installed one of the CMS offered. When I look at WordPress and it’s interface, I love it! I am still getting use to a lot of things though. Compared to Cutenews, WordPress is more complicated but it is more powerful. One of the bad part is I am using some of my script to run the site such as the icon management script and also the download manager. I am not planning to change that yet and it is not compatible with WordPress. I need to convert most of my scripts to WordPress Plugins to make it compatible but that is so tedious and I am not planning to do that for the time being. I want to focus on my graphics.

First off, my apologies for being inactive for a while. If you are a loyal reader and a frequent visitor, I had mentioned earlier that I was involved in redesigning an investment company’s website and I was busy focusing on that. Now, the website is done and I can fully focus on Rogue-Dolls now. I must say I learned a lot after working with a company. I thought I was good when it comes to HTML and CSS but apparently, there are a lot of things that I am unclear with and working with that company helped me to discover more things and learn new stuff that I am not familiar with. I am planning to write a tutorial on a topic that I do not quite understand before this (regarding HTML and CSS) but after working there, it clears out my doubts a lot. Lets talk about the layout now.

So, I want something really different from the previous layouts. I decided to design something that doesn’t involve anime, models, actors, actresses, J-rock, J-pop, etc. I decided that I need something new. Something that will look good for a very long time and will not bores me easily. The current layout bores me even though it looks good. I am guessing it is the white background. So I came up with a typography. I don’t know how it happen. I was listening to a song by Marilyn Manson and I was messing with photoshop and this is the product. Ren + Marilyn Manson + Molesting Photoshop = Typography Layout. I was singing out loud and without noticing it, I was typing the lyrics on this layout! It was really unplanned. The lyrics are from Marilyn Manson song titled Coma White. I know Manson is weird but I like him and his songs so don’t judge me. I hope you guys like the new layout. I know it is different from the past ones but it is time for a change (this does not mean that I will stop making anime icons! I am still obsessed with them! But I don’t think my layout will be based on animes anymore). Most of the pages are done. Except for the main pages. It is still ugly! So don’t click on it! I still need to style it.

So what is the future of Rogue-Dolls? I’ll be treating this website as my blog. No more as a graphic site any more. Graphics will still be posted but it will also be a place where I get to rant and you guys will be force to listen. What will I rant about? Let see. Why do people record sex tapes of themselves and why do they cry when it got leaked? A very interesting topic and I think these people need a hobby! If you don’t want it to leaked, don’t record it in the first place. It will always, always, always, always (I repeat), ALWAYS LEAKED! Lets get into that later. Back to Rogue-Dolls, so yeah, it will be my little sanctuary!

I’ll be changing some of the previews in the icon textures sections. Some actually hurts my eyes. I’ll do it sometime tomorrow. I am currently also expanding my knowledge on Java. No, not the Indonesian island. Java, the Programming Language.

So that is about it. I missed designing icon textures and anime icons. I might put some in here later. I hope you guys love it. Oh well, Its 12:18 am here and I need to go to bed. I usually sleep around 2.00 am but I am getting old.

Oh, I just got myself a new laptop. It is in RED COLOUR and I love it! It is a Dell Studio XPS 16 but by the looks of it, it is so heavy. It could be use as a gaming platform as well. The first game that I am going to play on it is Resident Evil 5! Yes baby! Can’t wait. Okay, I really need to stop typing.

Yes, I know it is written that the author is Renetta Renula. But that is me. What do you think of the name Renetta Renula. It sounds awkward to me but I like it due to that reason. Night Guys!