Herself's Webtools

Creating icons for iPhones and the iPod Touch is not all that different than creating bookmark icons.  First you create a 57×57 png image.

If you want an icon for all of your website or a default for pages that do not have individual icons then just name your image:

apple-touch-icon.png

and upload it to your home directory.

If you are on Blogger or some other software where you can’t upload the icon you can place it anywhere on the web and create the following link in the ‘head’ section of your pages:

<link rel=”apple-touch-icon” href=”http://your-icon-location.com/your-icon-name.png”>

If you have different pages people might wish to bookmark and you wish to have a separate icon for each then:

- create the icons

- upload them to the root directory of your website

- In the head section of pages that you wish this icon to appear add the following:

<link rel=”apple-touch-icon” href=”http://your-site.com/icon-name.png”>

I tried doctoring photos and shrinking them and using them and the results were pretty good.  Gimp works well for creating icons this way.  One site reported that creating larger icons and letting Apple convert them resulted in clearer pictures. It didn’t for me but if you are using photo images you should give it a try.

Apple will round the corners and gloss up your icon.  You just need to create the square image and let Apple do the rest.  ‘Trust the force’.

I could not get this to work on an old section of a website that uses frames.  It may or may not work on framed sites.

If you change or add an icon it does not update on users phones/touches.  It must be rebookmarked for the new icon to appear.

Let’s face it 800×600 is more than a little cramped and less than 10% of the population is using 800×600 screens. A bit more real estate on Blogger would be nice. Denim, Stretch Denim, Washed Denim and Stretch Denim Light are nicely hackable templates. It is very easy to change the colors, up load a header picture and no one will recognize it before long.

First back up your template!
Go to your dashboard
->layout
->Template
->Edit HTML
and select Download Full Template.

Now pick your favorite Denim Template
Template
->Pick New Template
Pick any one of the Denim series and hit ‘Save Template’

Go Back to ‘Edit HTML’
There are only 4 lines we will edit on this template:

OLD

#header{
width: 760px;

#content-wrapper{
width: 760px;

#main-wrapper{
width: 464px;

#sidebar-wrapper{
width: 240px;

NEW

#header{
width: 950px;

#content-wrapper{
width: 950px;

#main-wrapper{
width: 580px;

#sidebar-wrapper{
width: 300px;

Then click ‘Save Template’.

View it and see how you like the new look.

You can play around with the main-wrapper width and the sidebar-wrapper width but keep the total of the two 880px.