A few small changes.

[Hawk]

Short version: it will have better functionality than the current Lightbox for this use case, and will require a lot less code than the newer Lightbox v2.

Ahhh! OK! That what I was wondering.

[Gumboots]

Personally I found the HP&P pages have an interesting take on the game. You can obviously tell that there wasn't an "established" play style that the collective of map makers have since steered strategy towards. If it's a problem to keep it updated, could it be "frozen" in terms of format somehow? Idk about such things, maybe even as a PDF?

Had a look at it. Turns out it's really easy to update those pages to use much the same code as the rest, including the typography, while still keeping the H&P look. Even fits on phones now. So ok, we can keep them.

[Gumboots]

Had a bit more fun. These obscure sections are good for trying out ideas, because they're simple and they're self-contained.

The "Most Hated Man" pages are getting a font for the body text that is in Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 by default (Gabriola) and is easy to read, but suits the 19th century feel. It'll have to fall back to something basic for mobile, since they probably won't support Gabriola, but I'll play that by ear.

The heading is done in Tangerine, which I might call in via a web font. That's not much overhead if it's done sensibly (only has to call 24 glyphs in total) and it's a lot clearer than the old heading image which did the same job.

And naturally I went eye candy on the banner, but the whole thing is still not heavier on the browser than the current setup.

[Hawk]

Are you going to have a fall back font for the web font for folks that don't allow those scripts?
Just curious.

[Gumboots]

There's no javascript involved with web fonts. It's a simple relative link to a stylesheet. But sure, I'll define a fallback font anyway.

[Hawk]

Ah! Cool.
I know some sites use a javascript to display some web fonts. I can't think of the script right now though.

---

Edit 1: One of them is fonts.gstatic.com
There's one or two more I've come across in my travels around the web.

[Gumboots]

Fair enough. Google will provide a stylesheet already formatted, as will a few other sites. IIRC, Font Squirrel is another one. Obviously most people link to the Google CDN, but for the amount of overhead involved this site could get away with serving it (and avoid Google).

I'm still not sure I will use a web font though. I'm half-inclined to play with them, since they are becoming more relevant and more useful, and I've never messed with them before, but it's not essential.

Main concern at the moment is my nifty banner image may not be public domain. I'm sure I got it from a public domain source originally (Project Gutenberg springs to mind) but the original lithograph is currently held by the Boston Athenæum and they are rather more restrictive.

[Hawk]

I believe I still have a few pictures of The General I took myself at the Kennesaw Railway Museum.
If you're interested I'll see if i can find them. I really can't remember if they'd be usable for the banner or not. It was pretty tight quarters for proper picture taking.

---

Edit 1: Well, I found all the pictures I took but none of them could have been used as a banner.
However, in my searching I found a folder named 'Unusual Gravesites' and one of the pictures in it I thought you might enjoy.

[Sugus]

Wow - that's really enjoying. I hope that we never will see </RT3>

[Gumboots]

I see what you mean about that museum. They don't give you much space. I did find some old shots of the last time they took it for a run, but they're not really usable either. Had an idea though. I can simplify things by using the old cover shot as the banner for that section.

It's a good fit for style, and nobody has complained about this site using the picture in the middle, so it's all good. I can put the big one on the cover page, and a scaled version for the standard header on the story pages. It looks fine, and it's less code.

Edit: BTW, turns out the overhead for serving that font from this site is only about 30kB, which is roughly two avatars worth. Hardly a big deal in the scheme of things.

[Hawk]

That picture fits pretty good for the banner of that section.
It would be nice to find one similar that fits the header a bit better but that one works.

[Gumboots]

I've noticed bandwidth usage for this site has gone off the charts over the past few days. I checked for the usual suspects (Chinese spiders and other miscreants) but this time around it looks to be just a whole lot of really bored people in lockdown who are looking for a game to pass the time.

So I'll keep an eye on it and just let them go for the moment. Can't blame people for needing some extra entertainment at the moment.

[Hawk]

Maybe some of the old players are bored at home and digging out old games.

[Gumboots]

Did a bit more digging and found a couple of script kiddies trying brute force attacks. They must be bored in lockdown too.
(No harm done. They were just being a bit annoying.)

[Hawk]

That's not a surprise.

[Gumboots]

If anyone is wondering where this is up to: this time of year is the best time for working outside (nice temperatures and the UV isn't a killer) so I've been catching up on stuff that got away from me over summer. That means not much energy left for coding at the moment.

[Hawk]

Can't say as I blame you. Spring is always a good time to get outside. Take advantage of the great weather.

[Gumboots]

It's early winter here. Subtropical climate. Think winter in Florida. It's like that.

[zzc]

Hi there. I've been lurking around the forum and downloading maps and finally registered to inform of this.

http://hawkdawg.com/index.html is returning a 404 page? Am sure it was still working yesterday.

[Gumboots]

That's odd. I'll take a look. Thanks for the tip.