Latest news 2024-09-23: new blog post "Tales for Our Times: Raising Funds and Awareness for St Martins Housing Trust".

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Sticky Hamburgers 🔗

Image of Dickimaw parrot in clouds with some cookies and a hamburger

The previous posts covered the migration of this website to a cloud cluster server and the site cookies (strictly necessary and optional). The optional cookie is only set if you choose to change the default site settings. This post describes those settings in more detail.

The settings page allows you to adjust various stylistic options on this site. They’re not used on every page, but if you visit the site regularly you may prefer to make some adjustments to better suit your device and taste.

Image of a page on the Dickimaw Books site using the default settings

The main part of this site has a yellow and green theme to match the logo’s yellow parrot holding a green book. The main banner shows the site name “Dickimaw Books” with the logo on the right. At the bottom of the banner is the cookie notice and some icon links to the RSS feed and social sites. Both the cookie notice and those icon links can be hidden by changing the default settings. (This won’t usually make a noticeable difference to the overall banner height.) If you hide the cookie notice for the main site it will also hide the cookie notice on this blog.

Below the banner is the main navigation bar (with a green background and yellow text) and below that is the area where the latest news item is displayed.

If the browser window is wide enough (over 600px) there’s a side panel on the right with additional links related to the current page. This right-hand panel will stay in view as you scroll down the page. However, if the browser window is narrow (≤600px), the panel will be moved to the area below the latest news item and will scroll off the screen (along with the banner, main navigation bar and latest news) as you move down the page. This secondary context-sensitive navigation area now starts with a “Skip to main content” link, which will take you to the start of the main page content (below the navigation area) to make it easier to skip past a potentially long navigation list.

Image of site page displayed in a narrow window.

If you have a wide screen but require a large font then you may prefer to have the context navigation panel below the recent news (as with a narrow screen) instead of on the side of the page. In which case, if you go to the settings page and scroll down to the “page style” area then you can switch from the default style to the “without side panel” style (shown below).

Image of site page using the “without side panel” style.

Alternatively, you may prefer to hide the context sensitive panel until you need to use it. This requires a button that can show or hide the side panel. This type of button is sometimes called a “hamburger” button because it often has an icon with three horizontal bars (representing the items in the navigation list or menu) that look a little like a stylised hamburger. Buttons that require action but don’t submit information to the webserver require client-side code to perform the action. This means that if you want to use the hamburger page style you need to allow JavaScript. Most browsers support JavaScript but some people prefer to disable it out of security concerns. So if you have disabled JavaScript, don’t use the hamburger page style.

The hamburger style also makes the main navigation bar sticky (it sticks to the top of the window). The hamburger button is placed at the right hand side of this bar so you can still access it as you scroll down the page (see image below).

Image of site page with green navigation bar stuck to the top of the window.

Perhaps you don’t like the yellow and green, in which case there are plain versions for all of the above, which just have a grey border. For example, the plain style with side panel is shown below. (This setting will also change the colour scheme used by this blog.)

Image of site page in plain style with side panel.

Some of the images are quite large, especially in the shop, gallery and book list. If you have a narrow screen or limited bandwidth you may prefer smaller images. In which case you can select the small images option in the settings page. Below shows the standard size image in a narrow screen compared with the same page using the small image setting.

Image of page in narrow window with image wider than the window. Image of same page as before but with a smaller image.

If you like to have little icons, there are a selection you can choose from. Some of the icons are images, designed for either the yellow/​green or the plain styles. For example, below shows the yellow/​green sticky hamburger style with image icons in the main navigation bar (following each associated text link) as well as for the bullet points in the context sensitive navigation list (not currently supported on all pages). Note also that in the main body of the page the “available in store” link is now followed by the chosen shop icon and the permalink icon has also been changed to an image icon. The side panel also has an icon to hide it (or you can click on the hamburger button again).

image of site page with image icons

Most of the available icons that you can select are actually Unicode characters. Their appearance (and whether or not they are supported) depends on the font used by your browser. For example, below shows the page using coloured Unicode pictographs as the icons (in the main navigation bar and the permalink).

Image of site page with coloured Unicode pictographs.

The same page with the same settings in a different browser with a different font is shown below. In this case the font doesn’t have coloured pictographs but instead has symbols that just use the current text font.

Image of site page in different browser.

Not all fonts support all the possible symbols. Unavailable symbols are usually depicted with an empty rectangle or a boxed question mark.

For a more compact layout you may prefer to hide the text in the navigation bar. The image below shows the plain sticky hamburger style with no navigation text so the navigation only consists of pictographs. (It also has the small image setting on.)

Image of site page with no navigation text.

The pictographs mostly relate to the topic (such as the email symbol U+1F4E7 📧 for the link to the contact page) but for those of a more fun-loving nature there are also more frivolous symbols available.

For example, the image below has the “About” icon set to the U+1F99C🦜 parrot character, the “Shop” icon set to the U+1F986 🦆 duck character, the “LaTeX” icon set to the U+1F981 🦁 lion face character, the “Software” icon set to the U+1F427 🐧 penguin character, the “Books” icon set to the U+1F989 🦉 owl character, the “Gallery” icon set to the U+1F99A 🦚 peacock character, the “News” icon set to the U+1F993 🦓 zebra face character, the “Contact” icon set to the U+1F40C 🐌 snail character, the “Blog” icon set to the U+1F99B 🦛 hippopotamus character, the “Settings” icon set to the U+1F984 🦄 unicorn face character, and the menu icon set to the U+1F995 🦕 sauropod character. The close icon for the side panel is the U+1F996 🦖 t-rex character. The page also has the U+1F418 🐘 elephant character for the permalink and the context-sensitive navigation list has the U+1F95A 🥚 egg and U+1F423 🐣 hatching chick characters for the top-level, and the U+1F41B 🐛 bug and U+1F98B 🦋 butterfly characters for the second level.

Image of site page with frivolous icons.

The settings are stored in a cookie. You can opt for a session cookie, which your browser should delete at the end of the session (but remember from the previous post that some browsers use session restoring) or you can opt for a persistent cookie. Once the cookie expires or if you use your browser privacy settings to delete it, the site will revert back to its default style.


[Update 2023-05-05: this blog now uses the same page style as the main part of the site.]

Nicola Talbot 2019-09-28 (updated 2023-05-05) 📂 Site 🔖 Cookies Site settings

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Nicola Talbot 2019-09-15 📂 Site 🔖 Migration

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image of dickimaw parrot with cookies in cloudsOnce upon a time, a little parrot decided to migrate across the vast ocean to the cloud lands, with nothing more than a handful of cookies. The Dickimaw Books site has migrated to a new web hosting provider and this is the story of its journey.
Nicola Talbot 2019-09-15 📂 Site 🔖 Migration

Recent Posts

Tales for Our Times: Raising Funds and Awareness for St Martins Housing Trust
Tales for Our TimesTales for Our Times is an anthology of forty stories featuring loss and hope, dreams of love and belonging, biography and science fiction and adventure. Written by Norfolk-based writing group Ex-Cathedra and published by Smokehouse Press, the book will be launched on World Homeless Day 10th October 2024 midday at the Norwich and Norfolk Millennium Library. All profits from the sale of this book will be used to help raise funds to support Norwich-based St Martins Housing Trust in their work to help the homeless into independent living.
The Briefcase: a crime fiction short story
The Briefcase book coverConvinced that his secretive wife, Annie, is cheating on him, Aide meets an attractive young goth at the pub who helps him pick the lock of Annie’s briefcase to search for incriminating evidence.
Smile for the Camera: a cybercrime story
Smile for the Camera book cover.Evelyn, a CCTV operator, sees too much information while she monitors a store’s self-service checkout tills in this cybercrime short story about identity theft.
Read an Ebook Week Sale 2024
Ebook coversThe DRM-free ebook retailer SmashWords “Read an Ebook Week” Sale is on from 3rd–9th March 2024. My crime novel “The Private Enemy” and children’s illustrated story “The Foolish Hedgehog” both have a 50% discount and my crime fiction short story “I’ve Heard the Mermaid Sing” and cybercrime fiction short story “Unsocial Media” both have a 100% discount (i.e. free!) for the duration of the sale. Did you know that you can gift ebooks on SmashWords?
End of Year Ebook Sale
Book coversThe DRM-free ebook retailer SmashWords has their end of year sale from 15th December 2023 to 1st January 2024. My crime novel “The Private Enemy” and children’s illustrated story “The Foolish Hedgehog” both have a 50% discount and my crime fiction short story “I’ve Heard the Mermaid Sing” and cybercrime fiction short story “Unsocial Media” both have a 100% discount (i.e. free!) for the duration of the sale. Did you know that you can gift ebooks on SmashWords?
Ebook Sale July 2023
Book coversThe DRM-free ebook retailer SmashWords has a sale from 1st – 31st July 2023. My crime novel “The Private Enemy” and children’s illustrated story “The Foolish Hedgehog” both have a 50% discount and my crime fiction short story “I’ve Heard the Mermaid Sing” and cybercrime fiction short story “Unsocial Media” both have a 100% discount (i.e. free!) for the duration of the sale. Did you know that you can gift ebooks on SmashWords?
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Autism
Books
Children’s Illustrated Fiction
Illustrated fiction for young children: The Foolish Hedgehog and Quack, Quack, Quack. Give My Hat Back!
Creative Writing
The art of writing fiction, inspiration and themes.
Crime Fiction
The crime fiction category covers the crime novels The Private Enemy and The Fourth Protectorate and also the crime short stories I’ve Heard the Mermaid Sing and I’ve Heard the Mermaid Sing.
Fiction
Fiction books and other stories.
Language
Natural languages including regional dialects.
(La)TeX
The TeX typesetting system in general or the LaTeX format in particular.
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Norfolk
This category is about the county of Norfolk in East Anglia (the eastern bulgy bit of England). It’s where The Private Enemy is set and is also where the author lives.
Security
Site
Information about the Dickimaw Books site.
Speculative Fiction
The speculative fiction category includes the novel The Private Enemy (set in the future), the alternative history novel The Fourth Protectorate, and the fantasy novel Muirgealia.

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Alternative History
Sub-genre of speculative fiction, alternative history is “what if?” fiction.
book samples
Bots
Conservation of Detail
A part of the creative writing process, conservation of detail essentially means that only significant information should be added to a work of fiction.
Cookies
Information about the site cookies.
Dialect
Regional dialects, in particular the Norfolk dialect.
Docker
Education
The education system.
Ex-Cathedra
A Norfolk-based writing group.
Fantasy
Sub-genre of speculative fiction involving magical elements.
File formats
Hippochette
A pochette (pocket violin) with a hippo headpiece.
I’ve Heard the Mermaid Sing
A crime fiction short story (available as an ebook) set in the late 1920s on the RMS Aquitania. See the story’s main page for further details.
Inspirations
The little things that inspired the author’s stories.
Linux
Migration
Posts about the website migration.
Muirgealia
A fantasy novel. See the book’s main page for further details.
News
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Posts about the Dickimaw Books store.
Quack, Quack, Quack. Give My Hat Back!
Information about the illustrated children’s book. See the book’s main page for further details.
Re-published
Articles that were previously published elsewhere and reproduced on this blog in order to collect them all together in one place.
Sale
Posts about sales that are running or are pending at the time of the post.
Site settings
Information about the site settings.
Smile for the Camera
A cybercrime short story about CCTV operator monitoring a store’s self-service tills who sees too much information.
Story creation
The process of creating stories.
TeX Live
The Briefcase
A crime fiction short story (available as an ebook). See the story’s main page for further details.
The Foolish Hedgehog
Information about the illustrated children’s book. See the book’s main page for further details.
The Fourth Protectorate
Alternative history novel set in 1980s/90s London. See the book’s main page for further details.
The Private Enemy
A crime/speculative fiction novel set in a future Norfolk run by gangsters. See the book’s main page for further details.
Unsocial Media
A cybercrime fiction short story (available as an ebook). See the story’s main page for further details.
World Book Day
World Book Day (UK and Ireland) is an annual charity event held in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland on the first Thursday in March. It’s a local version of the global UNESCO World Book Day.
World Homeless Day
World Homeless Day is marked every year on 10 October to draw attention to the needs of people experiencing homelessness.