Website updates, part 1

From Red Blob Games's Blog

For the most part my website setup has been the same since 2011 when I launched www.redblobgames.com. It's a static site served by nginx. I'm currently working on two updates:

1. I'm (finally) setting up https. This has been more of a pain than I expected.

   I think I have OSCP working. I didn't set up ECDHE but may have that. I didn't set up DHE or ECDH. No POODLE or BEAST. Somehow got P-256. I have PFS. I'll do HSTS later. Didn't set up HPKP but it may be obsolete anyway. Can't set up CAA with my DNS provider. No RC4. I have ALPN, NPN. I have CORS. Don't need SRI. I have XFO and XXSS. I have CSP but don't like it.

   I have acronym overload.

   I'm also updating my internal links to link to the https version.

2. I'm (finally) learning responsive design.

   I have pages going back 27 22 years and I've been making layout changes less and less often. Every time I change something it takes a while to go back through all my pages to make sure it works on all of them.

   My older pages like polygon map generation are designed for a 400 450 pixel width. I had designed that layout to support desktop computers back in the 1990s. As I worked on more visual pages the 400 450 pixel width seemed limiting so I designed newer pages for 600 pixels. For mobile, I told the phone to treat the page as 640 pixels wide, and scale it to fit. I haven't updated that layout in years. I experimented with wider layouts for the probability page and the hexagon page (both pages switch to a two column layout when the browser is wide enough) but for the most part I've tried to stick to the 600 pixel width. It's simple. It works.

   In the past few years browsers have quickly added features like flexbox, grids, calc(), scaling of images, and high-dpi. I've seen some neat layouts using these features, and it would let me do several things I've wanted to do but couldn't figure out. I want more flexibility in my page design than a single 600 pixel column. Lots to learn!

   I'm also strongly considering dropping custom fonts. I don't think they're adding that much right now, and they slow down page loading. I'm also considering using serif. Back in the 1990s serif fonts were a poor choice, as screen resolutions weren't high enough to render them nicely. But today? After a decade of 1024x768 there's been a sudden increase in screen resolutions / density, so I should consider serif fonts.

Labels: infrastructure