Stories Navigation Menu and Shortening Links

With me wiring my original stories (not to be confused with the name of the 1^st story) that are now numbered into the hundreds, tags are not sufficient enough to provide easy access. The links at the bottom of the blog are obviously wasting space and the uneven spacing makes it look out of place. With reference to the Japanese version, it's moved to directly below the blog navigation menu and links are in the form of drop-down selection menus. In terms of code I have to deal with each time I add a new link in the old one, it's a lot fewer and less confusing: I do it more frequently than the blue navigation box next to it.

Relating to the above, links pointing to something that is on the same site (blog) the link is posted at would have the main part of the URL would be omitted in the code. Example: "http://the1iam.blogspot.com/2010/05/alternate-dimension-other-saeko.html" could be shortened to just "/2010/05/alternate-dimension-other-saeko.html" by omitting "http://the1iam.blogspot.com" (27 characters) and would still work, if it's on the same blog.

When I load my main blog, I noticed that the is a lag between my bottom most post that appears on the main page, and the right sidebar. It seems that the old version of the above-mentioned navigation menu is a possible culprit as the code of the bottom widgets is before the sidebar. (I have a fast connection, so this might unnoticeable at times to me.) So, since I have 110 links in that navigation menu, I would save (110*27=2970 bytes) 2.9 Kilobytes or 23.2 Kilobits per load. Actual savings is more as I remove the old version.

This needs to go through further testing in different browsers and operating systems. Known browsers that would not render correctly include IE8 and the PS3's built in browser.