Tumblr browser statistics
I had to troubleshoot a few small quirks in Internet Explorer today while working on an update to the Scaffold theme, and I became curious as to what percentage of Tumblr users still use IE as their main browser. It can sometimes take a frustrating amount of time to fix these small layout/javascript bugs, and I wanted to know if the time spent was proportional to usage. The only Tumblr-related browser stats I have access to are from visitors to the Scaffold demo site by way of Google Analytics and, even though I know that these visitors are not necessarily indicitave of general Tumblr users, the numbers surprised me; Of the roughly 14,000 visitors in the last month, Internet Explorer only accounted for 5.4%.
I know these numbers can by no means be used as a general gauge across the board, but as a theme designer it’s interesting given that the majority of people that visit the demo site do so either a) via the Tumblr theme area or b) via the site of someone using the theme.
Tumblr themselves would have a much more interesting breakdown of browser usage, especially with the amount of time people spend on the Dashboard, but this data was at least a refreshing surprise. I’d be interested if anyone had any information that would either support or conflict these numbers.
The new Prologue Pro by Hayden Hunter has finally been released in the theme store. It’s like his old Prologue theme, but on steroids, boasting a heap of new features.
True fact: my site ran Prologue right up until I released my own theme.
Typographic lolz, courtesy of a phrase coined by @mr_grb after I tweeted about the unusual decision to break the name over two lines on the Windows Phone 7 site.
Darren Firth has some beautiful work, with lovely attention to detail. I particularly like it when people show a few working sketches, and I enjoyed seeing the small decisions made when tweaking his wordmarks.
My copy of Daniel Eatock’s book, Imprint, finally arrived yesterday. He’s one of my favourite designers; a prolific, creative thinker who makes me smile with the ideas behind his projects. (photo courtesy of Gary Ing, because I haven’t had time to take one of my own yet)
Scaffold 2.03 released
A new update is now available for the Scaffold theme which addresses a few items. If you are using the Scaffold theme, there are some important points to note (particularly if you’ve customised your HTML).
Source attribution
Tumblr recently announced a new approach to adding source attribution to posts. This update formats these in a nice way, rather than just having them inserted at the end of your post text.
Tweet button & Facebook Likes
One significant change is that the ‘Show Facebook Like button’ option in the Appearance panel has been renamed, and is now labeled ‘Show sharing links’. Selecting this option now shows the Tweet button as well as the FB Like button. If you’ve been using the FB Like button previously, you may need to go to the Appearance panel and reselect this option. Note that this is still not available in the two-column view, but the changes mentioned below will allow for this to happen in a later update.
Clicky
Clicky is a real-time web analytics service. You can now add your Clicky ID in the Appearance panel to turn on this service.
Structural Changes
This update is important for anyone who has customised their theme HTML, in particular the footer of posts. To allow for more flexibility in the content shown at the bottom of posts I’ve had to rebuild post footers. If you’ve previously made any custom changes to the <div class=”panel_foot”></div> element or its contents, then be aware that your custom edits may need to be altered when you are re-applying them. As always, make sure to do a backup of your theme before updating.
Other bits
There are also a few other small bug fixes and tweaks, including an instance where embedding Vimeo from a bookmarklet was sometimes not working.
There are a few more features that I’m currently working on but I wanted to get these items in quickly, so you can expect another update in the not-too-distant future. I’m also working on a small tool that I think you all might like… but more on that later :)
Small Scaffold update for Vimeo
Just a short note for any Scaffold users out there; There’s a small update that’s just gone live which fixes the layout of Vimeo embeds using their fancy new ‘embedinator’ script. It fixes new embeds, and also makes use of Matthew Buchanan’s updated script to upgrade older embeds to the new format. If you haven’t changed the theme HTML the fix will be rolled out to you automagically, otherwise you can update manually. More updates are on the way :)
The view from my new desk, featuring Hayden Hunter of Prologue theme fame. Rumour has it there’s an updated Prologue nearing completion (check out a sneak peek – password: ‘soon’)
Fixing the background ‘bleed’
I recently came up against an issue in Safari where the background colour of an element seemed to ‘bleed’ through the edge of the corners when applying both borders and a border-radius (see the image above). After seeing David Cole tweet about the same issue I resolved to find a solution, and it came in the form of the -webkit-background-clip property.
-webkit-background-clip: padding-box;
It’s important to note that if you are using the shorthand notation to specify your other background properties then this should be added after those. It seems that the shorthand notation implies a default clip value which will override one that’s previously set. Your mileage may vary, but it worked a treat for me. Read more about the available values for the property here.
Update: This post has been generously translated into Bulgarian by Albert Ward.
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