Bewildering Stories News

The Prophet of Dreams

The Readers’ Guide’s reference to manuscripts discovered “at the bottom of a trunk in an attic of the City” is the literal truth for all practical purposes. The original transmission appeared to contain eleven chapters. But at the bottom of chapter 11, separated by unexpected page breaks, chapters “13” and “16” as well as an Epilogue have turned up. Truly a Bewildering Story, but one that turns out well.

We’ll keep the original chapters as numbered and continue The Prophet of Dreams in issues 89, 90 and 91. At this point we can say only that we’re not sure exactly where the series will end; if fill-in chapters appear in future issues, they’ll be welcome, and they’ll be linked to the preceding chapter and table of contents, as usual.

Button restyling

In this issue I’ve finally gotten around to something I’ve wanted to do for almost two years now: restyle the color-change buttons. There are a number of reasons for it:

The default buttons in Netscape have a respectable size and shape, but they’re drab.

Internet Explorer’s buttons are just plain grotesque. Big, fat beetles have their place out in the countryside, not at the top of our contributors’ pages.

The combination of the logo and buttons takes up too much space on the page. It’s tolerable only if you have a taller screen than mine. We do need a logo and buttons, but they ought to decorate the text, not dominate it by shoving the title and byline into the bottom half of the screen.

It’s not possible to restyle browser buttons; they’re built in. However, custom-styled buttons are relatively easy to create. I’ve seen some fancy-shmancy ones, but on examining the style sheet I kept coming across absolute sizes and notes like “This may not work with browser such-and-such.” Out ! Bewildering Stories wants readers to feel at home and enjoy the stories, not stop and watch us show off. Readable, accessible, interactive and elegant: that’s a good motto.

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