A little under a week ago, I requested some feedback on the old look-and-feel. I was delighted by the amount of feedback that came back. So after some half-assed futzing mid-week, I sat down in earnest (and indeed in the living room) last night to try to introduce a new look-and-feel. Around you are the results of a full battery-life's worth of CSS work.
The graphic design for the new look is courtesy of Elise. Thanks! The coding has all been done by myself, which is a miracle, as it's more a case of trial and error than anything more scientific. Padding and margins have been confusing, and I've little idea why some of the things work, but they seem to. The stylesheet feels to me a little like a house of cards, ready to collapse with the slightest breath of wind.
All of the futzing was done in Production (1. Make change, 2. Refresh homepage, 3. See what's broken, 4. Go to 1.), mainly because I didn't really listen when Rob told me how to access Dev. After all, it's hardly a mission-critical site.
Anyway, there's still some stuff to be done, but here are the main changes to date, in light of the feedback.
- First of all, I've gone for an 800 pixel width. Francis complained that on his super-duper 20" widescreen monitor, the full-width layout meant crazy line-lengths. I've kept with 800 as 17% of people are still using an 800x600 resolution
- The search box was deemed too big. I've made it such that on regular settings, the button (which now reads Go rather than Search) sits alongside the text-box, saving some real estate
- Meebo Me's gone. People (Rob) were complaining that it took a while to load, and it was frustrating that a new one had to load each time users navigated around the site. (My Web 2.0 skills are not up to dealing with the latter issue.) I love Meebo, but it's staying off for the time being
- Rob (a different one) liked the big font size. I've kept that. I've also got rid of the tacky page fold (top right) taking the advice of both Rob and Francis. (That took me ages to create! Harumph.)
- There's a new colour scheme. Francis had a dig at the old one, but gave no recommendations for improvement. Hopefully this will make him happy. The header even incorporates some of my life loves: pi, primes and sushi
- I've ignored the advice of Rob A. to include more porn, and indeed that of Andy Pandy to "Shut the f**kin' thing down"
- Oh, and I've started (with this one) to tag posts with more than one tag. The functionality was always there, I just chose not to use it.
There are still a few things to do. Firstly, I need to talk to Elise about the possibility of her making a few tweaks to the look-and-feel. For instance, I want the Posted by bar to have a light-blue background, but when I try to do that myself in the stylesheet, loads of other stuff inherits the same background. Also, some of the spacing and sizing needs a GD's eye, I feel.
Also, I need to work on the comment form, as per Rob's advice. Rob: if you're reading, it would be good to get some more input on how it could best be changed.
I need to figure out how not to repeat the date line for posts created on the same date. Some reading about the Smarty template engine needed for that.
And finally, I need to work on some new, more appealing left-hand modules. I can't guarantee satisfying Dominic's yearning for numbers, but I'm hoping to make a more useful sidebar. Again, this needs some template changes, which I find more difficult than the CSS stuff. If you make an error in CSS, it looks funny; mistakes in the templates and the site doesn't work.
Your feedback (constructive) on the new look would be gratefully received.
