As you can see, I’ve embarked on a step-by-step redesign of the site, still very rough and unfinished, but I hope smoothing out as we get into next week. Reactions welcome, including whether readers would like to go back to the old pink-and-grey color scheme (widely disliked, but distinctive), which features are best included on the front page, etc. I think a three-column format is now fairly standard in sites of our type and should allow us to keep recent comments and posts high up for the benefit of frequent visitors, while also offering prominent navigation aids for newcomers and those using the site for research.
I expect to restore the blogroll and about-the-site soon, as well as a serif typeface.
16 Comments
I saw an iteration of the upgrade with just the middle column viewable.
I liked it then, and I like this even more.
Excellent.
Clean, bold, bright and just downright nice.
I like the new design MUCH more than the old one, which was OK, too, but this is better.
ObCaveat: Even though I disagree with some of the things you put there…..
No really, it’s much better.
I like this one better
On my larger monitor, the main page has a lot of whitespace on the sides; the post titles seem oversized, as well.
I’ll miss the old one, but since red is my favorite color, I’m in a forgiving mood.
I much prefer the new style. I would, however, suggest that it be set to stretch according to screen size rather than set at fixed dimensions. MarginalRevolution does this for example.
I usually just read the RSS feed so I rarely see the page. But I do like the new look.
I like the new colors and 3-column format, but, to echo a few others, I I’d like to see the center column’s width stretch to fill my browser window. Right now there’s 3-4 inches of blank page (half on either end) surrounding the text.
I disagree with the comments requesting that the center column should stretch to fit the browser window. It is very difficult to read lines that are very wide. Particularly with a wide-screen monitor a reader would end up with a center column that is too wide to read comfortably.
As for the colors, with the old colors I definitely knew which site I was looking at with a quick glance at the page.
When I try to sign in using TypeKey I get the following error message:
The site you’re trying to comment on has not signed up for this feature. Please inform the site owner.
Is this a feature or a bug? đŸ™‚
I like the new look much better. The old one looked rather dated. BTW, when I try to sign in to comment via Typekey, I get a message that the “site owner does not have this feature installed.” This has also been the case on prior occasions I’ve tried to use it. (and HTML tags don’t seem to work either, at least in preview)
Please ignore the language about TypeKey authentication, which is not presently part of the comments process. At some point I’ll delete it from the comments form.
This is surely an improvement over the earlier site. The “Recent Comments” feature gives readers a greater sense of interactivity when they comment. I don’t know about the red color, but it’s better than the pink. The site looks–shall we say–more contemporary?
On minor formatting error: immediately under the title for a new post where it says, “By [author] on March 24, 2008 …” there is a space missing from the end of the author’s hyperlink and the “on March 24…” Nitpicky perhaps, but better fixed sooner than later.
Links should open in a new window, keeps people on the site while visiting some hilarious link. Also if the link you send them to has trouble, it does not break the browser session,
don’t forget to copy over the old favicon.ico file
In general, the site redesign is very nice.
One improvement that would be really great is if it worked similarly to how http://www.confirmthem.com/ works. There, if you’ve signed in, when you click on the comments section of a particular entry, it indicates which comments you’ve already seen (or more accurately, which ones you haven’t seen). It makes it easier to scan.
Along those same lines, it could also be enhanced such that when you are looking at the main page, it could present the header as something like “Comments (15 – 5 new)”. Obviously one would again have to be signed in / identified.