I am initiating a site template redesign. This iteration is TEMPORARY and designed to re-establish the lost RSS feeds. That said I still want to make it so it works. Comments welcome.
From Perkel: The reason for the change is that this blog is an old blog and the old look was created by modifying the index.php file instead of using themes. But the last upgrade broke the RSS feed so it’s time to use themes and do it right. I’m not a theme guy but I grabbed one that was functionally close and I’m trying to get the functionality working. So the “look” stuff will be done later when we find the right look person. So that’s what is happening today. Comments from Wordpress experts appreciated.
Too much white space, the bordering of objects is ambiguous. I’ve always hated sans serif fonts for news, but thats just an opinion. The point of the site is to distribute news and opinion. Not art. Don’t focus on how aethetically pleasing the site is. News should be short, succinct and to the point, for both copy and layout.
and BTW Improbus –
just because the buttons have the glass effect doesn’t mean its web 2.0
HHOPPER: This format is only temporary. It will be tweaked considerably in the next few days. Please be constructive in your criticism and suggest changes that you would like to see.
I want to see a quote function. When a right winger says something stupid, I have to manually quote it in order to post the obviously superior liberal reply. 🙂
Give me quotes. Or give me dea… on second thought, just the quotes will be fine.
How about re-designing that logo? It looks like it was spit out of some logo making software from the mid 1990’s. You can hire people to do that, or I bet you could get one for free just by having a “best logo” contest on the site.
1) Move the center column to the left column position. That way if there isn’t enough screen width (widescreens are a stupid fad) the main interesting stuff is on screen, and the rest can trail off into cyberspace.
2) Lose the double spacing of the text — it makes it look like you’re padding a college paper or something.
3) Use some designers tricks to clump the individual stories into nice solid chunks. They stand by themselves, so why make them merge into one vanilla page?
4) Make the editors commentary in a more prominent font than the quotes from the wacky sources –swap the two, maybe — remember John C. Dvorak posts here sometimes!
5) Lose the red headlines. Make them black and a different, heavier font.
I think you need to ask Amber MacArthur her opinion.
As for me, centered and more thickly bordered would please me.
By the way, change is good! It’s your blog. Do as you wish.
This sounds like some racial shit! Whoops, wrong topic…
ewwww – I’ve already removed it from my office pc and now it’s gone from my home pc. I’ll check back in a week or so…maybe
It’s an improvement. But.
A. FUNCTION
1. Reading from Google Reader I still just get the headline and have to click again on the headline to view the content and comments.
B. APPEARANCE
2. It’s blinding (in a very Not Good kinda way). Something other than white background on everything to tone it down.
3. Darker text in the balloons. Not nearly enough contrast for these old eyes, especially with all that white space blazing away around them and causing me to squint. (I’m good with the font .. just darker/better contrast, please.)
4. Centering please. I’ve only got a 17″ monitor but there are three skinny columns and huge (probably 25%) wasted space at the right. Let the middle (real content) column spread out as much as it can. Or let me spread it.
5. I don’t care about the balloons one way or the other but I really do like that I can just scroll down through the comments to read them rather than having to click in and out of the annoying old threaded thingy.
6. Count me in for bringing back the numbers on the comments.
7. Don’t do quoting. It gets abused way too much. There’s already enough noise in the comments. (ducking and running)
I was comfortable with the old style. I’ll need some time to get use to this.
Bring back the post numbers. If there is a reply to a specific post, I often go back to read what is being commented on.
I’m not crazy about the gray text in colored balloons. Use black on white text. Save the colored background for block quotes or something. Do we really need balloons? That troll from Utah might think they are condoms or something.
Ya, it is off center. Not only on the page, but also inside those balloons (or condoms for Utahions) too. The symmetry could be a little more polished.
It does look crowded / busy, especially at the top of the page. Maybe a smaller font for the sides or heavier box lines.
I don’t mind the red color like some earlier comments did. Maybe it has been darkened.
It would be nice if suggested stories could be sent to the editors easier.
*
It is YOUR blog though. While I appreciate the effort to please your readers, most of us appreciate that you have opened up to allow us to comment.
still looks like it was designed by a 12-year old
I second what Mr. Fusion said, and believe that is target audience, Shindrak.
When I launch a post via rss from iGoogle home page, the post loads without article body and comments.
When I launch a post via rss from Firefox “live bookmark” it loads correctly.
Looks good!
I would like to see you try out the black background and light letters, like on “The Best Page In the Universe.” It’s easy on the eyes…especially at night when reading in the dark!
First of all, do you think you’re going to get much in the way of positive feedback from a fanbase of “The Cranky Geeks”?
Second of all, as long as the content itself remains the same, and as long as it stays legible and lean and loads in less than 5 seconds on my connection, I don’t care if you put pink elephants in the background.
Other than that, looks good.
it bothers me….and I can’t explain why.
I don’t like all the space between the text…and, it IS off center, which is bothersome.
Yuck. Why don’t you just go to a newspaper front page?
go back to having it centered and then it will be fine
I don’t mind it too much.
I would prefer it if somehow it could fill my wide screen monitor, without offending other users. Perhaps the left hand side could be dynamic. I am not a web designer so I don’t know if this is doable or not. It at least needs to be centered.
I also agree that the quotes are way too big.
Nice to see someone actually cares how users feel and use their site. Personally I hate drop downs for entry of State in Web forms. Years ago somebody decided that drop downs would be much easier than entering two characters on a keyboard. So not true!! Click, type a character or scroll, and in most cases an additional click to get your state. Believe it or not I know that TX is Texas. I don’t need to pick it from a list!! (Sorry my personal crusade! Don’t get me started on Credit card expiration dates by month instead of number, drives me crazy!!!!)
Keep up the good work.
Not too bad.
Unlike everybody else, I am GLAD the post numbers are gone. Nothing worse than reading and article with 125 comments and coming to one that says
#26 Blah
#39 Blah Blah
#48 Blah Blah Blah
#61-64, and #88 Blah Blah Blah Blah.
#101 Blahblah
#123 Blahdiblahblah
And of course the replies give you no clue as to wtf they’re replying to (without scrolling up and re-reading the post). Either quote, or make your reply self-contained enough that people don’t have to scroll back to the top of the page to figure out what you’re talking about.
Some interesting changes…
recent entries – so I can jump to another post without returning to the main page.
authors – so I can check other entries by the same contributor.
recent comments – if I’m in the mood to see what ECA is going-on about now…
pages – Best videos of 200x…
column archives on the left, but still have the option to search at the top-right. Nice to have two ways of looking-back.
Funny how so many of us got in the habit of replying in reference to the post’s number. 🙂
The main page is good. the fonts are much more readable.. the font;s on the comments. are pretty light… maybe make them blue?
Interesting to be scrolling up the page, checking the layout, and notice that bill‘s comment had just been added to this post.
Nice.
Look is clean, but I have noticed a definite issue with scaling. Does not handle that well at all. I have a 24″ monitor and it seems to ride one side and the rss links overlap other text.
I would like to go back to the quoting of other sites with the higher contrast backgrounds like in the previous format. Makes it easier to distinguish what is from this blog and what you guys are referencing.
Otherwise, I like it. Aside from the issues I mentioned above the site looks great. Good job (mostly).
Nemsoli
Funny to see spam entries showing-up in the “Recent entries” section.
One was posted to the 2004 story about Ted Kennedy getting stopped at the airport!! 🙂
1. While the lack of comment numbers will not be an issue henceforth, any old post’s comments will be unintelligible. Unlike some, when I do research, I often find myself paying attention to old blog posts and their comments. How am I to make sense of old posts when the comments are referencing nonexistent comment numbers?
2. The site redesign is much better than your old format. I bet too many were given a crack-pot impression from the old site. It smelled of UFOlogy and conspiracy. Fix the width issues and you should be good for a couple years.
I like it so far! Looks more professional somehow 🙂 Work out the little bugs and go with it. Nice work.
I would like for the text to fit my browser. I have always been turned off by fixed width web sites.
Earlier in the evening, on a new laptop, my first experience with Vista and IE7, and I thought the new computer was fubarred beyond belief. Too much money in it to take a hammer to it, so I stayed just long enough to download Firefox. But I thought Vista/IE7 was doing very strange things to this site, and now that I’m back on the main frame I’m relieved to know it wasn’t my poor little laptop. Hey, it looks good, the previous commenters made some very good points, especially numbering the comments, but the content means more than the package.
Finally. Welcome to 2005!
Looks good.
Center center center. The world centers its websites nowadays, its the cool thing to do. And it makes reading much easier.
Other than that, it looks OK, and the RSS is back, which is so important to me that I wouldn’t complain if you didn’t center, as long as RSS stays.
And there’s too much stuff going on on the sides, it makes it hard to concentrate on the article/comments. I know it’s not really different from before, but this seems to be a good forum for voicing my opinion on that matter. Perhaps try putting stuff on the bottom after the last comment.
Yay RSS feeds!
you guys havent Blocked links to Blogspot yet??