I have always had a problem with how the page works. Everything is served through a generic cgi script. the actual link to the main page you get when you type in my url is http://toomucheffort.com/cgi-bin/rantfest.cgi?user=talam. Now imagine if I made you type that in all the time. It would suck, eh? To hide all that crap, I had been using a framed site with a 1 pixel top frame and the the rest was the page you are viewing now. Not an elegant solution, but it was A solution, and it was easy. The problem with this is some browsers will forget that the 1 pixel frame is supposed to be 1 pixel and will increase the size of it creating a black bar. Now this may just be Opera, but I don't use other browsers enough to know...and it is intermitant as it is. I have, however, noticed a lot more with the Technology Preview 2 that was recently released (see 2 posts down), and it was annoying the fuck out of me.
Now, other than using frames, there were four other options I could think of: learning a new language (php) are rewrite rantfest _again_, use a Location: page to 'move' the viewer elsewhere, use a splash/refresh screen which is really very 90s, or use mod rewrite. Now, I used frames, because I did not want to learn a new language to hope it solves a small problem, the Location: and splash/refresh pages are so lame, and mod rewrite has a learning curve like you would not believe. I also knew eventually, I would set some of life aside, and teach myself what I needed to know about mod rewrite to make it work, so I went with the quick fix (If you have not noticed, that is how everything works on this site. It is a hobby, deal with it.).
Well, tonight was the night. Thanks to my total lack of caring about doing my research paper that was due tonight, a good deal of frustrations, the good people at www.doriat.com/, and a lot of patience I have conquered mod rewrite for the purposes I needed (mod rewrite is a swiss army knife tool kinda thing...does so many things). I also had to make a couple of simple edits to both rantfest and my template, but that took all of a couple of minutes.
Now what this means to you is the lack of potential black bars and slightly faster load time. Ok, VERY, VERY slightly faster load time that is probably impossible to measure and totally unnoticable, but it is there! Oh, and now you will able to see where you are on the site in the address bar instead of having it hidden behind a frame...sadly, I just realized that. Now for the thousand other things I need to do on the page...maybe next month.
