A few weeks ago I decided I didn't want to stick with the old default banner that came with movable type. I knew I wanted to customize it, and show some random pictures in a sleek new design. Well, I achieved a great deal (of mediocrity) with my banner redesign.
Along with messing up the structure of the page, the original idea that I wanted to use had no real function, and didn't look very good either. So, tonight I decided to trash it and start over.
I grabbed my coding monkey and sat him down with a bottle of extra strength nyquil, and I started coding away. I ended up with most of what I wanted to accomplish. I got a new design that is pleasing to mine eyes. The banner also serves a real function... to provide a common link throughout all the pages in my site, 'ceptin the forum and gallery.
I only used one image in putting together the banner, a background image. The rest is held together with CSS and prayers. I wish I knew how to have text from one layer be opaque, while the background to that same layer is transparent (alpha blend) without having to use a transparent background image. The text on the links in the banner had to be seperated into a seperate div tag in order for the text to avoid inheriting the transparency of the containing layer. That's the only thing I wasn't able to do.