New Skin!
I'm once again having another go at starting the blogging thing again. I spent yesterday slowing working through the theme file and trying to clean it up so that it doesn't take so much time and space to load. I'm not certain I've entirely achieved that but...I tried!
So, before the actual posting begins (I've actually started writing some this time, so it may happen!) the changes need to be tested. My internet connection is pretty much unusable currently, so I've only being doing rough and ready testing only using one browser version. I suspect, however, that some of my readers will be a little bored and would like the opportunity to pick apart my work.
The actual task of picking apart the theme system was something of a challenge; the original styles.css was over 24KB, and there were other files of about that order. I have actually outright deleted some of these (such as the custom comment display system) and severely truncated many others. A number of images and things have been removed, some of them have then been replaced with CSS tricks.
As it stands, the theme is now approximately 114KB, down from the original 1.3MB (this is not including the 107KB background pattern that I have added). I hoping to squeeze some more out of this by performing some minification on the CSS files which are on the server (keeping the expanded ones for later work), but that can wait until it's at least vaguely stable.
In fact, the rapid changes to the styles and other bits of code means that I have disabled the headers that tell your browser to cache the styles and other normally static resources. This will mean that this is a slight drop in performance on all pages, as the browser goes to see if I've changed anything in the last few seconds.
One major known outstanding problem is the fact the entire thing is still loading jQuery — a JavaScript library which is almost as large as all the theme files. It is, however, used as part of the current footnote system that I'm employing; I'm hoping to re-write this in the next couple of weeks to use considerably more static code.
Back on the actual blogging side of things, writing posts will hopefully also be encouraged by my shiny Proms Season pass; the environment up in the gallery is rather relaxed, and the time in the queue and then waiting for the start of the concert is good for a little bit of writing. If I could get my keyboard silent, I must admit that I'd be typing little things all the way through — not because I'm not enjoying the music, but because I find a live orchestra very conducive to doing something active.