In our ongoing efforts to enhance the Redbeard Solutions website, we recently focused on two key areas: perfecting the visual presentation of blog post navigation and ensuring better compatibility with reading tools like Safari Reader Mode.

Styling Blog Navigation

Our goal was to transform the plain text links for navigating between blog posts ("Previous" and "Next") into more visually distinct buttons. We applied custom CSS to achieve this, incorporating:

  • Button-like Appearance: Using padding, background colors, and hover effects to make them stand out.
  • Consistent Sizing: Aiming for uniform button dimensions across all posts, even with varying text content, by utilizing min-width and flexbox properties for alignment.
  • Correct Ordering: Ensuring the "Previous" link appears on the left and the "Next" link on the right by using CSS order properties.

This involved iterative adjustments to the style.css file and verifying the changes across multiple blog post pages.

Improving Reader Mode Compatibility

We also addressed how blog content is interpreted by tools like Safari Reader Mode. By ensuring the HTML structure of our blog posts is more semantic – using tags like <article> and <main> appropriately – we help these tools better identify and parse the main content of each article. This leads to a cleaner reading experience when Reader Mode is activated.

The Process

This work highlights the iterative nature of web development, especially when paired with AI assistance. We identified an issue, proposed a CSS solution, implemented it, tested it, and then refined it based on feedback. This cycle of "code, commit, test, and iterate" is crucial for building robust and user-friendly websites.