New Design!
This post is somewhat redundant, as you’ve probably noticed by now, but the site has a whole new design. If you’re interested in some of the design choices and features then read on, Macduff.
New Colour Scheme
More prettier colours! To be honest, the old layout was getting me down a little. Hopefully this one’s a little easier on the eyes (and a little less brown).
Tidier Front Page
Sick of scrolling through endless home pages looking for the one article you haven’t read yet? Me too. That’s why I’m going to be doing a teaser and the “Read it all →â€? trick for all but the slimmest of posts.
More Flexible Layout
My photo gallery wasn’t quite working with the narrow page, so I decided to go with something that can stretch its legs out when necessary. Ah, the room!
[Update] Gus was apparently unhappy with my use of the phrase ‘flexible layout’. I don’t mean it’s more flexible for you, I mean it’s more flexible for ME to do what I WANT with it. So there.
More Trees!
I quite like my photos of the trees out the front of my place, so I decided to use them a little more. Hence, the watermark in the background, and the new banner image.
Moved Search Box
The search box is now at the bottom of each page. It looked somewhat ugly anywhere else. You can get to it faster with the “Search� link under the “Meta� section in the sidebar.
All-New Sidebar™
Well, ok, not really. But I got rid of the calendar. While it was cool to be able to see when the updates were happening, it wasn’t that necessary. And I rearranged the rest of that area some too.
New Wordpress Build
Considering it’s a collection of php scripts, I don’t know that build is the relevant term, but, for lack of a better one, here it is. I’ve updated my install, which should fix a few bugs at my end and probably not be noticeable to anyone except subscribers to my RSS feed, and even then hopefully not.
And remember folks…
… if you’re on Slingshot Internet, you may have to wait a day or so for the updates to catch up. Sorry.
Comment by Angus • Thu 29 Jul 04, 10:24 pm #
Very cool colours and images! However, some bugs:
1) More Flexible Layout? I don’t care if you qualify that statement with blather about your gallery section; it’s a fixed width layout, and must die. Expect to hear from my team of highly trained ninja monkey assassins, who flip out and kill people all the time.
2) Search box title isn’t a U2 song. Please fix :).
Comment by Nato • Fri 30 Jul 04, 2:48 pm #
I’m using firefox, and the titlebar is currently down the bottom and not on the side…
Comment by brehaut • Fri 30 Jul 04, 3:58 pm #
Gus, sometimes you can be a real asshat about usability.
“…it’s a fixed width layout, and must die.…�
why oh great and knowledgeable one is this so bad? Personally ive seen very few sites pull of fluid width content nicely. most times its the same people who use tiny fonts. fonts including trebucet (nice for titles, crap for copy). so you end up with masses of text in a line, (thus weak paragraphing, and hard to follow lines) and hard to read, strong typefaces that strain my eyes even on my loverly rendered crystal clear Mac display (how do you manage one CRT??).
oh heck, i just described your site!! im sorry, i didnt mean to offend you about your hard to read site.
[exiting inflamatory mode]
As for the fixed-ness of this design, i invite you to increase or decrease your font size, and watch how nothing really munts in the body copy or sidebar.
I think its much more important that the widths are all em based, and thus scale nicely with the users text preferences than the whole page sprawls out into single lines because someone thought having a fluid text area was a good idea.
If im doing a design, i want it to be readable no matter what, i dont want to have it ugly and nasty because someone has windows maximized (why i must ask, why???) and the fluid layout is now inedibly wide.
Its partly a matter of taste, and a matter of fashion i think, and i prefer having the designer get things right and is much easier to get your proportions right if the widths dont change.
I think this is all i have to say.
good day.
Comment by Matt • Fri 30 Jul 04, 4:54 pm #
eek. It’s getting hot all up in here.
Comment by Angus • Sat 31 Jul 04, 4:49 pm #
Heheh. About the Trebuchet — you’re right. I’ll switch it over to Comic Sans immediately ;).
Luckily I wasn’t being entirely serious — I thought I’d just chuck that old argument in there and see what happened. Personally I like fixed width designs as long as they’re somehow usable at lower resolutions (I often surf at 800×600 or so, even though my, er, lovely CRT is at 1280×1024…) as yours seems to be.
I’m going to do some further experimentation with my site sometime — perhaps use a quasi-fixed layout with a ‘max-width’ setting in pixels/points and an actual width as a percentage as it is now, so it scales nice up and down. Should be interesting. The current site was largely uploaded in response to nagging by Brehaut :P.
In conclusion: Am sorry, was mostly joking, ninja monkeys didn’t mean to do that to your car.
Comment by Matt • Mon 2 Aug 04, 6:06 pm #
Oh man. I was looking forward to being on “Imp My Ride.�