Ayush's Blog

Creating Footer For Jekyll

I am updating this jekyll blog to a new theme. For the new theme, I had to update the footer to include links to my mail, github and twitter.

What I really wanted was to just show the relevant icons and then link them to my accounts.

Github and Twitter’s SVG icons are given in the default implementation of Jekyll. Thankfully :). The problem was with getting the mail icon. So I had to research the internet to get the desired icon. I found this. Though the svg paths the file uses are not optimized (for viewing at least).

So I embarked on a run to optimize the thing so that I could include the svg directly in my footer.

Notes:

  • All svg files are simple text files which have an <svg> HTML tag representing the icon.
  • path and polygon elements are used to describe the figure inside the svg element.
  • To merge two path elements, just append the d attribute of the second into first (not sure if this works everytime).
  • viewBox attribute on svg element determines the coordinate system used by the browser to render the svg. Learn more.
  • scss files can create variables. This is used to determine base colors once and then reused across all the css files. Found this really interesting. :)

The final looks like this:

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{% if site.author.email %}
  <a href="mailto:{{ site.author.email }}">
    <span class="icon">
      <svg viewBox="0 0 14 14">
        <path d="M7,9L5.268,7.484l-4.952,4.245C0.496,11.896,0.739,12,1.007,12h11.986 c0.267,0,0.509-0.104,0.688-0.271L8.732,7.484L7,9z M13.684,2.271C13.504,2.103,13.262,2,12.993,2H1.007C0.74,2,0.498,2.104,0.318,2.273L7,8 L13.684,2.271z"/>
        <polygon points="0,2.878 0,11.186 4.833,7.079"/>
        <polygon points="9.167,7.079 14,11.186 14,2.875"/>
      </svg>
    </span>
  </a>&nbsp;
{% endif %}

{% if site.author.github %}
  <a href="https://github.com/{{ site.author.github }}">
    <span class="icon">
      <svg viewBox="0 0 16 16">
        <path d="M7.999,0.431c-4.285,0-7.76,3.474-7.76,7.761 c0,3.428,2.223,6.337,5.307,7.363c0.388,0.071,0.53-0.168,0.53-0.374c0-0.184-0.007-0.672-0.01-1.32 c-2.159,0.469-2.614-1.04-2.614-1.04c-0.353-0.896-0.862-1.135-0.862-1.135c-0.705-0.481,0.053-0.472,0.053-0.472 c0.779,0.055,1.189,0.8,1.189,0.8c0.692,1.186,1.816,0.843,2.258,0.645c0.071-0.502,0.271-0.843,0.493-1.037 C4.86,11.425,3.049,10.76,3.049,7.786c0-0.847,0.302-1.54,0.799-2.082C3.768,5.507,3.501,4.718,3.924,3.65 c0,0,0.652-0.209,2.134,0.796C6.677,4.273,7.34,4.187,8,4.184c0.659,0.003,1.323,0.089,1.943,0.261 c1.482-1.004,2.132-0.796,2.132-0.796c0.423,1.068,0.157,1.857,0.077,2.054c0.497,0.542,0.798,1.235,0.798,2.082 c0,2.981-1.814,3.637-3.543,3.829c0.279,0.24,0.527,0.713,0.527,1.437c0,1.037-0.01,1.874-0.01,2.129 c0,0.208,0.14,0.449,0.534,0.373c3.081-1.028,5.302-3.935,5.302-7.362C15.76,3.906,12.285,0.431,7.999,0.431z"/>
      </svg>
    </span>
  </a>&nbsp;
{% endif %}

{% if site.author.twitter %}
  <a href="https://twitter.com/{{ site.author.twitter }}">
    <span class="icon">
      <svg viewBox="0 0 16 16">
        <path d="M15.969,3.058c-0.586,0.26-1.217,0.436-1.878,0.515c0.675-0.405,1.194-1.045,1.438-1.809
        c-0.632,0.375-1.332,0.647-2.076,0.793c-0.596-0.636-1.446-1.033-2.387-1.033c-1.806,0-3.27,1.464-3.27,3.27 c0,0.256,0.029,0.506,0.085,0.745C5.163,5.404,2.753,4.102,1.14,2.124C0.859,2.607,0.698,3.168,0.698,3.767 c0,1.134,0.577,2.135,1.455,2.722C1.616,6.472,1.112,6.325,0.671,6.08c0,0.014,0,0.027,0,0.041c0,1.584,1.127,2.906,2.623,3.206 C3.02,9.402,2.731,9.442,2.433,9.442c-0.211,0-0.416-0.021-0.615-0.059c0.416,1.299,1.624,2.245,3.055,2.271 c-1.119,0.877-2.529,1.4-4.061,1.4c-0.264,0-0.524-0.015-0.78-0.046c1.447,0.928,3.166,1.469,5.013,1.469 c6.015,0,9.304-4.983,9.304-9.304c0-0.142-0.003-0.283-0.009-0.423C14.976,4.29,15.531,3.714,15.969,3.058z"/>
      </svg>
    </span>
  </a>&nbsp;
{% endif %}

The new footer file can be found here.