The Scarlet Letter of Atheism
Note:
This is a double post from Skeptivism.com.
Recently, Professor Richard Dawkins launched The OUT Campaign, as a call to arms for atheists to “come out of the atheist closet”.As it says on the website:
Atheists are far more numerous than most people realize. COME OUT of the closet! You’ll feel liberated, and your example will encourage others to COME OUT too.
One of the ways you can also speak out is by adding a red scarlet letter of atheism to your website. Unfortunately, the website only provides one big scarlet letter ‘A’ on a white background. Since one choice equals no choice, I have created a different kind of banner.
A banner in the corner?
The banner is a nice transparent PNG-file, with the red scarlet letter ‘A’ sticking out. The edges are antialiased to mix gracefully with the background.
However, some older browsers, including Internet Explorer 6, are unable to display the transparency of PNG files correctly. The little script will display a nice transparent GIF image, lacking the scarlet letter ‘A’, in stead.
The banner can be displayed both in the left or right corner of the page, and several text options are available: come out, keep out, reach out, speak out and stand out.
How do I add the banner to my website?
First of all, download the banner pack (see below). If you unpack the zip or tar file, you will see a whole bunch of images and two javascript files.Open the javascript files in a text editor such as notepad or Smultron.
Look for
var imagedir = 'http://your.domain/image_directory/';
and change ‘http://your.domain/image_directory/’ into the url where you will upload the image files into. Don’t forget to add the trailing slash (‘/’) at the end of your url.
Now, look for
var imagetext = 'speak';
and change speak to the preferred text you want the image to say before the word “out”. Your choices are ‘come’, ‘keep’, ‘reach’, ‘speak’ and ‘stand’.
Save the javascript files and upload all the files to the preferred location on your own website. Please make sure that you upload both the .gif and .png files if you decide to only upload the images you want to display.
Add the following code right below the <body> tag in the page(s) you want to display the banner on:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://your.domain/directory/outcampaign_left.js"></script>
Don’t forget to change ‘http://your.domain/directory/’ to the url of the javascript files. Change ‘outcampaign_left.js’ to ‘outcampaign_right.js’ to display the banner in the top right corner of the page. Upload the files you changed and everything should work like a charm.
Please, be courteous, and don’t deep-link to the images and javascript files on my server!
And where can I download the files?
Windows: Zip file
Mac/Unix: Tar file