The Hickensian

17.10.04 Its not quite finished...

130 comments
Tagged with: design, hicksdesign, updates

But it’s not far off. Sometimes, even though you’re not finished, it has to happen. The old has to go. The thing is, a site is never finished, so its either take the plunge, or it’ll never happen.

There are rough edges, IE bugs, and not-thought-about-yet-bits aplenty. Give it time, think of this as the starting point, and like the last design, it will evolve over time. Oh, and you’ll probably have to delete stored ‘style’ cookies again – sorry about that. In the meantime, 2 changes of note are the (sort of) fluid layout and relative font sizing rather than the old pixels. More on all that later.

Comments | RSS

No.1

∞ Matthew Buchanan said 1941 days ago:

You realise I’m now going to need a wider PowerBook screen so I can see your tree over there ->

Nice work Jon.

No.2

∞ Daniel Oliver said 1941 days ago:

Yeah it looks great. I really like it.
Nice work.

No.3

∞ Joen said 1941 days ago:

Beautiful, and surprisingly original.

No.4

∞ Justin said 1941 days ago:

Congrats on the new design, it’s looking good Jon, though I get a thin white border around the comment area, and it (along with the rest of the comment area) intrudes into your nice background.

No.5

∞ John Oxton said 1941 days ago:

Jon,
I’ll say it again as I did for version one! Wow! it’s really encouraging to see what can be done with CSS and this serves as a real inspiration for me.

One comment, though I know you aint finished, this is a bit odd: With Sage open on Firefox on PC the comments form gets mangled to hell and when I resize the matter only get’s worse.

No.6

∞ Rob Mientjes said 1941 days ago:

The whitespace is great, the colours are a nice shade of green and the background is one of the better ones around. So overall I love it.

No.7

∞ Phunky said 1941 days ago:

well this is just what you wanna wake up to in the morning :D

A nice fresh deisgn from Hicks!

Makes me wanna get mine completed today!

No.8

∞ Ben Poole said 1941 days ago:

Yum! Looks great.

No.9

∞ Josh Mast said 1941 days ago:

Well, I’ll be honest. I’m not the biggest fan. The content bits are fine, but the whole field turned on its side thing to the right tends to make me really disoriented. Maybe it’s just a personal dislike. Not a huge fan of the grass/tulips outlines either, I thought they were supposed to be some horrible abstract ‘spikes’ or something at first. But anyway, it’s your website and I don’t want to seem like I’m being too nitpicky. Good work!

No.10

∞ Wim said 1941 days ago:

Great work indeed. Nice how the last design evolved into this one. You managed to take one step further.

It even looks good with style turned off. As you’re still tweaking: the logo isn’t clickable in safari.

No.11

∞ Matthew Pennell said 1941 days ago:

I’m getting a horizontal scrollbar in Firefox, but it somehow makes just the top of the tree on the right disappear when you scroll – which is a cool effect, even if unintentional.

No.12

∞ Richard Earney said 1941 days ago:

Hey this is lovely!

It was a (nice) shock to see it on my Cinema Display as opposed to my iBook!!!

No.13

∞ Martin said 1941 days ago:

Rather nice evolution. It will be great to see it in a more finished state (I mean, once you’ve gnawed your way through the teething problems).

No.14

∞ Anne said 1941 days ago:

Really cool!

No.15

∞ Faruk Ates said 1941 days ago:

Looks great, it really does, but could you please add color AND background color to your form fields?

I currently have to read the preview box below to see just what the hell I’m typing, because the fields themselves are illegible.

Other than that, though, I’m totally digging this, minor bugs aside. :)

No.16

∞ Dave Foy said 1941 days ago:

Heck, I read the bit about deleting style cookies in my RSS reader first, so when I hit the site and saw a rather bare, unstyled, erm… mess (!) I thought it was a subtle Hicks joke. “Ha hah hah haa” I smugly thought to myself, thinking myself in on the kind of dry humour we Brits are so fond of…

Until I actually did delete cookies that is! Feel kind of silly now.

But great job Jon, yep one or two bugs but basically a lovely lovely job, as always. Well done!

No.17

∞ Angad said 1941 days ago:

Wowee!!
.....
Just wowee!!

No.18

∞ chugs said 1941 days ago:

Fabulous !!

Instead of making any more comments I’ll just wait for the little bugs to be quashed and the write-up to follow :)

No.19

∞ Rachel said 1941 days ago:

very cool!

No.20

∞ Denis Radenkovic said 1941 days ago:

Oh, I love your new logo!
... and, I can almost smell the grass from here!

No.21

∞ Hans said 1941 days ago:

Two things: I’m disappointed. I loved the previous design so much that I’d never want to see it go. This one’s too open. Too white. Too wide. Too “scattered around.” The previous one was much more contained. This design gives me hell on my 1680×1050 laptop as the sidebars are too wide and lines of text are a mile long.
Also, there’s a noticeable break in the tree image where it starts repeating—quite ugly. Would be nice if you fixed that.

How could you?! You took away my precious vines!

No.22

∞ Blair Millen said 1941 days ago:

Very nice update. I like the way you’ve kept the general feel of the last design in terms of colours etc…. yet you’ve done enough to make it an official “re-design”.

The repeating graphic of the rolling countryside on the right is a touch of class too!

No.23

∞ Neil Merton said 1941 days ago:

Nice! Can’t wait for the final version. The new logo looks great too :)

No.24

∞ Javier Cabrera said 1941 days ago:

Its really nice, i like it!
I’m going to take the idea of two styles for my blog ;) i like the Tree very much but what i dont like is the fixed background. ;(

Anyway, is clean and cool at the same thime. Congratulations :)

No.25

∞ Michael Bester said 1941 days ago:

I think it’s got a great feel to it – very fresh, very open, very airy. I love the vertical pastoral treatment! It’s a very original look.

There is one thing that bothers me, though. In this design, there isn’t enough distinction between the sidebar and the main content. My eyes don’t know where to focus at first glance. In the previous design, the green navigation menu was at the top of the sidebar, creating the distinct column and seperating the main content from it.

Now I’ve read that you’re a fan of text on a white background, that you prefer the purity of it. I absolutely agree with you on that. But perhaps on this design you might consider adding some background color treatment to the sidebar, helping to create better contrast.

Echoing what Frank said above (#15), I think this also holds true for the comment form.

Other than that, it’s beautiful!

No.26

∞ Michael Bester said 1941 days ago:

One other thing – love the new logo and the little leaf icons!

No.27

∞ Faruk Ates said 1941 days ago:

Ahhh, much better this way. :)

Only thing remaining is the Submit button itself – or maybe I should just wait 5 more minutes? ;-)

ps. Michael Bester? the name is Faruk, not Frank. :)

No.28

∞ Will Pate said 1941 days ago:

You’ve outdone yourself Jon. Congrats.

No.29

∞ michael Bester said 1941 days ago:

Faruk – I apologize for the faux pas!

No.30

∞ Jenni said 1941 days ago:

Oh, wow, very… very nice! Your new layout is your best yet.

No.31

∞ Eric said 1941 days ago:

I don’t really like it. It looks so cluttered.

But I was sooo a huge fan of your old design it will probably only take a frew days (weeks, months, years) to get used to it.

And you have noticed the effect you get by hovering the contact menu item, haven’t you?

Oh, the logo is definetly a evolution, very nice.

No.32

∞ Olly Hodgson said 1941 days ago:

Dammit! I was just finishing up a new deisgn, thinking it was awesome, and then I come along and see this. Git.

Very nice indeed.

No.33

∞ Paul said 1941 days ago:

The new design looks good in Firefox, will have to try it in Safari when I get my powerbook back.

I’m going to give Textpattern a try on my site as it needs a change, so might as well change the CMS at the same time :)

No.34

∞ Tony said 1941 days ago:

Lovely work. Nice and fresh without feeling to heavy handed or contrived. Couple of points:

It might be worth taking the deepest blue in the field image right up to the browser edge, regardless of screen width. Where the image finishes currently you’re left with a white bar in a wide window.
The turn off styling function didn’t work for me in Firefox, Safari or Camino
Also, the search function seems to be broken, but you probably already know that :)

No.35

∞ Kris Khaira said 1941 days ago:

I like the abundant white space on the left side on this one. I hated the old cramped, centered-box layout. This is lovely.

I think you should remove the “Skip to content” button on the top. Something’s not right if you actually need it. How about reducing the height of the banner? I think you can put the search field and the “turn off styling” button on the sidebar. my 2 cents.

great layout.

No.36

∞ Darren said 1941 days ago:

Design looks great, a very nice refinement. Does anyone else get very slow scrolling with the fixed background? That’s always been one of my peeves with background-attachment:fixed.

Also, it would be nice to disable the comment previewer, as it’s making my typing v-e-r-r-r-y slow (XP, Firefox).

No.37

∞ Shawn Grimes said 1941 days ago:

Fantastic job on the new layout so far John. Your new logo is very nice as well.

No.38

∞ Rakesh Pai said 1941 days ago:

Somehow, I liked your previous design better. But that’s probably just me. The logo looks neat.

No.39

∞ Juan Carlos said 1941 days ago:

the new design is great. I’m glad you kept a lot of the old elements. the image on the right is beautiful, and all the whitespace towards the top really opens everything up. The comment preview is nice but I can see how it could be a problem for some. You may want to make this an optional thing.

One thing, and this is more of a personal preference, there seem to be a lot of little double slashes everywhere, which work in some areas and not so much in others. I really don’t like it in the numbered nav. It looks funny when they are all stacked up on top of each other. It makes that part feel really crowded. You may want to to try something a little less obtrusive.

No.40

∞ Josh said 1941 days ago:

Just when I think I made something that looks cool, I come here and Jon one ups me again and again.

Great new site and new logo, that is one of the better logos I have seen in quite some time.

No.41

∞ Alex said 1941 days ago:

Oh my. This is very very very nice. This is one of the nicest designs I’ve ever seen. Wow.

No.42

∞ Michael Pierce said 1941 days ago:

I love the new design, athough I hated to see the last one go away, especially the connection back to the old design. The use of whitespace is great.

Are you going to update the favicon to match the new design? Maybe the leaf icon you’re using now?

No.43

∞ Simon said 1941 days ago:

I really like your new design Jon, your logo is pretty cool too !
Thank for inspiring me !

No.44

∞ Manuela said 1941 days ago:

This is really wonderful. I like your new design very much. Much easier on the eyes. Congrats, Jon!

No.45

∞ Scott said 1941 days ago:

Does this layout make anyone else uncomfortable? Something about seeing a vertical horizon is causing a stress reaction in me I think. It’s very strange to see. That’s not to say the whole page isn’t extremely cool. Nice work.

I didn’t notice the break in the graphic until it was mentioned, and I even took a quick glance to see if it was repeating. I think I missed the fact that it repeats because of the clever addition of the large tree. You don’t really notice the background as much. If not for the break in the white foreground and the little hickup with th background tree, I don’t think anyone would notice that it’s tiled (except perhaps people browsing with enough resolution to see the whole image 2+ times.)

No.46

∞ shawn said 1941 days ago:

One weird bug that I noticed: I expanded my window horizontally so that I could see the “tree” that was mentioned in the comments. Nice. I then tried to resize my window back to hide the tree and it didn’t work – everything else in the page got narrower to make room for the full width of the image on the right. In case you hadn’t discovered this bug yet, I thought I’d let you know.

Personally, I’m not a fan of the horizon. The grass and flowers, yes – very much so, but not beyond that. I agree with Scott that it seems to cause stress. Weird but true.

Great job! Looking forward to seeing the final product with all the bugs ironed out.

No.47

∞ shawn said 1941 days ago:

Btw, the strange background bug that I mentioned was in Firefox 1.0PR on OS X.

No.48

∞ Mike P. said 1941 days ago:

What a change!! Looks great.

No.49

∞ Yannick L. said 1941 days ago:

Beautiful! I really like it.

No.50

∞ chet said 1941 days ago:

Beautiful. I love it.

No.51

∞ Tom said 1941 days ago:

I like the look of “wide”, so far so good.

No.52

∞ Marc Jones said 1941 days ago:

Nice stuff (I expect little else from you TBH).

The “browser news” grfx are scaling nasty on my 1920×1200 screen though (ie look ok if I resize my Safari browser window).

PS, I’ve added the browse happy link to a guestbook/chat site I run, it’s been deemed most useful, so thanks for it.

PPS the live preview is off the hook cool!

No.53

∞ Scott Boms said 1941 days ago:

Very striking. Clean, elegant and generally very usable.

One small suggestion though. Perhaps consider putting an anchor link at the bottom of the template(s) to quickly take you back to the top to the nav.

No.54

∞ jakob said 1941 days ago:

Very nice to catch the new design before the weekend is out. Particularly like the new logo+font and various dropped-leaf iterations (I liked the old logo +font too). Also like the reinterpretations of elements of your previous site which remain recognisable but not identical, and the fresh breath of white space I think is good too. Your site being so connected with your personality, it’s good to see a pic of you too in the colophon (or had I just missed that before) :-)

Biggest problem in my view is the landscape. I like the idea of the never-ending landscape but I don’t feel it works at all, except as visual weight. Some may view the ‘irritation’ of the unconventional as something which draws attention, but personally I think the effect wears off quickly, particularly with the frequency with which I, at least, visit your site. So, in contrast to another answer, I do find the landscape on its side contrived.

The same idea might work with a different image which extends vertically ‘without end’ (and the effect would then be all the more original in my view), or alternatively turn the concept around and return the horizon to the horizontal and scroll the infos sideways … but that has its problems too.
Hopefully a constructive answer.

No.55

∞ Phil Balchin said 1941 days ago:

It’s still //Hicks Design, but it’s different. Can’t quite put my finger on it yet, might be a bug in firefox, strange it dosen’t seem to effect any other sites? whats the landscape of ?

No.56

∞ Alexander Micek said 1941 days ago:

Tony had a good point, but I think you left that white beyond the right of the field image for a reason: the blue will fight with your wonderful color scheme in larger monitors.

Instead of my reflex reaction of adding a gradient to fade from sky color back to white, if I were you I would add clouds simlilar to the style of the cut out flowers you have on the left side. I’d love to see how that would turn out. Though, the sky does not have any clouds currently – might look goofy. Just a thought.

Regardless, things are looking grand.

No.57

∞ JD said 1941 days ago:

This design is refreshing! :) I love it! :)

JD

No.58

∞ Drew McLellan said 1941 days ago:

Ahhh, England’s green and pleasant land.

Jolly good show, that man.

No.59

∞ David Barrett said 1941 days ago:

Erm.

Noice.

No.60

∞ The Havoc said 1941 days ago:

Grrrrrrrrrrreeeeat!

No.61

∞ Andrew Krespanis said 1941 days ago:

I love how disorriented the landscape makes me feel!

If there is a full write up to follow, can you tell us why you chose to move the sidebar to the left?

No.62

∞ Jina Bolton said 1941 days ago:

This is absolutely beautiful. Actually, that is an understatement. I just redesigned my blog, and now you’ve made me want to redesign it again! :)

No.63

∞ Eric Cotton said 1941 days ago:

Ingenious! I didn’t think you’d be able to out-do yourself on your old design, but I guess I was wrong. Great work!

No.64

∞ Kevinn said 1941 days ago:

Wow! Great job redesigning the site!

(And now it works on sub-1024 browser width size!)

No.65

∞ Jeff said 1941 days ago:

So far so great. I really like what you’ve done with the place. Now for some exploring.

No.66

∞ Angad said 1941 days ago:

What I absolutely love about it is I set it to auto scroll and then I tilt my head sideways and I feel I’m in a moving car!
Especially on pages with ots of comments, like this one.

No.67

∞ Steve said 1940 days ago:

If I get the Apple 23” Cinema Display, will I see the moon and stars as well? Please, please say yes…

Brilliant redesign by the way.

No.68

∞ Neko said 1940 days ago:

Absolutely beautiful, as usual!

No.69

∞ Foobah said 1940 days ago:

Love the new design, and the mirrored image parts – nice work. The comments preview is nice, if not a little distracting, and a little slow (xp/ff). And as noted before, a #top anchor would be nice too.
Maybe some kind of ‘top shadow’ on the top of the Playlist sidebar.

Keep up the fresh work dude.
FB

No.70

∞ Andrew said 1940 days ago:

I don’t even want to know what it took to come up with this design… so strange… I love it!

No.71

∞ Dave Child said 1940 days ago:

Loved the old look, but this is just as excellent. Different, still original, very easy on the eye, and much more accessible.

I recently redid my own site, and made a similar decision – there might well be bugs, but when you have to launch, you have to launch. Minor bugs can be fixed later (and the incentive is there to do them that much faster when you already launched the site and the bugs are there for the World to see!).

No.72

∞ Andy Budd said 1940 days ago:

h2. Good Stuff

* I love the logo. Very slick.
* I really like the masked flowers on the side picture and will have to steal that iddea at some stage.
* It’s a small thing, but I really like the style and placing of the “Read the full entry” and “Comments” links.
* Generally I like the whole modern, graphic design feel your going for.
* I like the fact that the new design looks very distinctive and avoids using blog design clichés.
* I really like the overt “skip to nav” link.

h2. Odd Stuff

* The spacing at the top of the page and how the logo interacts with the other elements feels a little awkward. I guess I’d probably want the logo to line up vertically with the main nav and horizontally with the left hand margin created by the “skip” link and the side bar.
* Because there is a lot of detail in the RHS image, it tends to draw the eye away from the main content and creates a sense of agitation.

On the whole I really like it. It’s a breath of fresh air and I look forward to the refinements over the coming months. You’ve raised the bar yet again and given me another good reason not to redesign my site as I can’t possibly compete with all the great redesigns coming out at the moment.

No.73

∞ MaThIbUs said 1940 days ago:

Awesome! Keep it up!

No.74

∞ Denis Radenkovic said 1940 days ago:

Ha, ha, I agree with Angad (comment 66), great! My screen isn’t ‘flat’ anymore, can I pick one of your flowers until I get a big screen, then I’ll go for a walk? :)

No.75

∞ BjÃ¸rn Moen said 1940 days ago:

This is about as beatuful as you can get it. Surprisingly original. Good work!

No.76

∞ soopa said 1940 days ago:

Gorgeous!

I love it.

Only problem I have encountered so far is the stomach curling feeling of rolling down a hill uncontrollably as I hyper-scrolled down this page full of comments…

It was quite fun actually ;)

No.77

∞ R. Marie Cox said 1940 days ago:

I would also like to join the chorus singing the praises of this excellent redesign. Really, truly: job well done. I can’t say it any better than Andy Budd (#72), so I won’t bother.

I do have one question, however, did you find that you had to rework the markup to adjust to the new design or were you able to totally concentrate solely on the style guides?

No.78

∞ Tomas Jogin said 1940 days ago:

I totally adore it. Amazing. The first thing that hit me was that it felt very original, somehow…

No.79

∞ Todd Dominey said 1940 days ago:

Great redesign—two technical things I notice—the visibility of the big ‘landscape’ photo on the right toggles on and off, and sometimes stays off, when the browser window is resized in Safari. Also—when I select “Turn off styling” and receive the raw text, the link doesn’t change states to ‘Turn on styling.’ So there wasn’t a way to re-load the style sheet after ditching it.

And yes, while I really like the sideways field, there is something a little strange about the perspective. It’s quite possible the effect only happens to some people, but it makes my head tilt slightly to the right, throwing off my center of gravity.

No.80

∞ Jeff Clark said 1940 days ago:

Beautiful Hicks! I’m sure you would know this, but as it doesn’t seem like anyone else has even noticed: it looks horrible in IE6/PC on XP.

But in Firefox, it’s beautifully delicious.

No.81

∞ nick said 1940 days ago:

the logo is absolutely fantastic!!! just perfect.

the layout’s nice looking as well. I’ll have to let the right side graphic grow on me (pun intended???), but all in all a nice change up of the site jon.

No.82

∞ cody lindley said 1940 days ago:

I slowly drop my hands from the keyboard and applaud the new design in the traditional clapping of hands.

Brilliant….logo, images, and textpattern usage.

No.83

∞ Rafal said 1940 days ago:

I like the new logo, but I liked the older design better. I think the menu looked better and the side column had a better flow with the menu. The menu looked more appealing and was, well, prettier. It gave your site that unique look.

No.84

∞ Scott said 1940 days ago:

Hmm, this is very different to me but yet, I like it. Very nice rehaul, Jon. The only thing I don’t feel great about is the field turned on it’s side. It just seems awkward.

No.85

∞ steve said 1940 days ago:

I love the layout Jon, fills the screen beautifully. The horizon is really unusual, and after a few visits, I’m starting to love it. The top half looks amazing, whitespace, 2 columns and horizon just fit perfectly.

scarily good, and utterly original

No.86

∞ Ahmaud said 1940 days ago:

This has really helped me reconsider my previous ideas about what a design should look like; as if there is some template that exists. Thanks for Jon for helping me see the light..or flowery field as the case may be. This design is simply wonderful.

No.87

∞ Jorge Luna said 1940 days ago:

Mmmm pretty nice, I liked the previous sidebar img and menu better .. but i REALLY REALLY dig the logo and the header numbers:P

great work!!!

-jl

No.88

∞ Seth Thomas Rasmussen said 1940 days ago:

Wow. What a pleasant surprise. Very nice work, sir.

No.89

∞ Chris Kavinsky said 1940 days ago:

I like the look. Great job Jon. A couple things look buggy. When I first went to the site in Firefox in Windows, the content was pushed so far down, I didn’t even realize it was on the page at first. The wide vertical spacing isn’t there in IE6 though.

No.90

∞ Pete Ankelein said 1940 days ago:

Well, I think it’s great that you’re always trying to keep things fresh and push the design a bit more but in all honesty I think I preferred the previous version….it seemed more cohesive and muted…easier on the eyes. The rolling fields in this one just seem so saturated and distracting.

No.91

∞ AkaXakA said 1940 days ago:

Nice.

Dig the logo, like the modern and loose design for the page.

You could give IE7 for the browser issues if you want freedom.

No.92

∞ Riccardo said 1940 days ago:

Well, I’m soo late on this, but I’d like to share my “wow!” with you all.

I’m into the web since ‘98 and this is probably the best ornamental photo treatment I’ve ever seen – and the whole redesign is really thumbs up for me. A well balanced grid, wise use of whitespace, great logo redesign, nice dingbats… I also like the essential menu header a lot. Don’t know about you, but I’m impressed :)

No.93

∞ Simon Cox said 1940 days ago:

I am loving the unique side vista! Genuis! Obviously I hate you and I am now giving up all thoughts of further design on my own site because its pants compared to this.

Actually the side vista reminds me of model railway backgrounds you used to be able to get.

No.94

∞ ACJ said 1940 days ago:

I, for one, simply love it.

No.95

∞ John Serris said 1940 days ago:

Just wanted to let you know that I think the redesign looks great mate! I checked it out yesterday and actually prefered the “fixed” background you were using earlier. Any reason why you changed this?

No.96

∞ Tim Uruski said 1940 days ago:

Whoooooooooaaaah! That was my literal reaction. I absolutely love the crazy vertical horizon and the new logo is especially snappy!

Geez, I stop reading my news-feeds for one day and look at the stuff I miss! My only big criticism would be right here in the comments. The label for the website field is clever, but isn’t clear as to whether I should supply an http:// or not.

I look forward to further refinements and suddenly feel that my recent churnings of code and colors aren’t so lush.

No.97

∞ Joe said 1940 days ago:

Nice, but I get a horizontal scrollbar in IE6…Firefox too.

No.98

∞ Rune said 1939 days ago:

It is pretty good designed, but it dosen’t work in firefox windows!

No.99

∞ Michael Bystrom said 1939 days ago:

Hello Jon,

I don’t know I sorta liked the other version. But we all have to move on it’s perfectly fine for what you do. I liked the other versions “on-the-right-side” flower thing :-).

Just a note that serach button does not work, but if you hit enter it works.

I just switched from MT to TXP and I used your tutorial on preview thing and is now I’m using TXP for everything even the illustration portfolio where I use custom fields for the images. better stop now or I keep on typing for ever :-)

If you like stop by and take a peek www.michaelbystrom.com

Stay warm
// Michael

No.100

∞ John Oxton said 1939 days ago:

Rune I am using Firefox on windows, seems fine to me, though I have to say I can’t seem to get the turn of styling to work.

Also, the Comments form seems fine in Firefox now Jon

No.101

∞ John See said 1939 days ago:

hi Jon,

Nice new slick design. The new layout sort of gives a fresher fluidy approach to it all. Always a pleasure visiting your site. :)
Keep it going.

No.102

∞ david said 1939 days ago:

i like it, perhaps not as distinctive as teh old website, at least in my eyes anyhow.

something that bugs me is the about text chunk on the homepage, which just seems to be hanging out in all teh whitespace, i think that’s why i prefer teh old design, the layout held all the components together better

love the new logo though:)

No.103

∞ Robin Gruyters said 1939 days ago:

Looks very wicked! Nice one!!

I still need to finish mine. Hopefully I will find some time soon to do it..

No.104

∞ paul haine said 1939 days ago:

The scrolling background makes me feel ill. I’m not trying to be horrible here — I liked the idea when I first saw it, but scrolling down this page and reading these comments, with the disorientating background scrolling alongside has actually made me feel nauseous — sea-sick, almost.

I’m sure I’m in a minority, though — might I suggest that you add a CSS signature to this site, so I can easily disable the background if you decide to keep it?

No.105

∞ Sebastian said 1939 days ago:

Jon, it’s beautiful!

I’ve regularly checked your page for changes to the new layout and I think it’s nearly perfect now—at least for me.
* Background fixed
* entire logo clickable
* logo aligned to navigation and sidebar
* no number (why was it a 3 anyway) on the frontpage
* more focus on the “about” on the frontpage

One little suggestion for your frontpage (k, perhaps it’s a lot of work to implement): It would be nice to see the projects name below the thumbnails when hovering over the latter..

Sorry, should have clicked “submit” after my first sentence…

No.106

∞ Sebastian said 1939 days ago:

...textile doesn’t seem to work properly (see my ul/li)

No.107

∞ David said 1939 days ago:

Wow!

I really like the new design and I was stunned when I first saw it unfold in front of me. Very modern, bright, slick and detailed yet all the content is easy to find and navigate through. I really like the new fontface used for the headers and the new logotype is astounding. The continued use of the leaf is also very nicely done.

About the landscape, it looked a bit odd when I choose “small” stylesheet, since it creates a 100px white area to the right of the landscape.

To sum it up – Wow!

No.108

∞ MMM said 1939 days ago:

Beautiful…
I love it :)

You did a great job on this one :)

Congrats on a job well done :)

No.109

∞ Joel said 1939 days ago:

I am surprised at how you can churn out such a great layout. At first glance it looks eerily similar to the old one, but the alternate style switching and general tweaking prove that particular fancy wrong.

I really like it-you have a very refreshing take on design.

No.110

∞ Pierce said 1939 days ago:

I approve of the fixed background. Stops me getting dizzy like the repeated one.

No.111

∞ Nathan Logan said 1939 days ago:

I wasn’t going to say anything (after I saw it yesterday), but I just have to say…

This layout and design is straight sick. In the GenX/Y sense. That is, it’s incredible. I’m sad to see the old one go because it too was incredible, but this is great. I’m blown away.

The single feature I can think of that would enhance it would be to have the colored part of the image stay fixed and then make the white outlines scroll. But as is, I still love it.

Keep up the awe-inspiring work. This is the kind of stuff that keeps me checking blogs daily.

No.112

∞ Kunal Anand said 1939 days ago:

So now that you’ve moved to the new design, can I use your old one? Just kidding! Nice design on the site. I love how you’ve hacked TextPattern to completely suit your needs. I myself was having problems with getting the number of comments for each post displayed among some other issues. Oh well…

No.113

∞ John Navika said 1939 days ago:

Awesome!

Is there anyway we can see the old site?

No.114

∞ Jon Hicks said 1939 days ago:

Thanks for all your feedback, negative and positive! There are too many questions to answer here, hopefully they’ll all be answered in the next post.

I’ve been busy bug-fixing mainly, and I’m concerned that windows users are having problems. IE 6 and Firefox both played ball on my PC (XP, 1024×768 screen). There are a few glitches in 5 and 5.5, but not as bad as some people have mentioned. Please let me know in more detail if you’re having problems.

No.115

∞ Joshua said 1939 days ago:

I thought the logo looked familiar, then I knew – it looks like CENTERPARCS!
http://www.centerparcs.com

Further more, just great !

No.116

∞ Viking Karwur said 1939 days ago:

Congratulation… Nice Design… “back to nature” :)

No.117

∞ Alistair Lattimore said 1938 days ago:

As always Mr Hicks, a superb job. Your last design was unique and this one carries similar concepts with it and takes it to another new level. It was absolutely not what I was expecting and I love it – without question unique and inspiring.

Keep up the excellent work and I can’t wait to see the fully completed design in the months to come.

Al.

No.118

∞ Andrew said 1938 days ago:

Love all of it, except the picture over there——->

Its annoying not being able to see all of it!

Rest is great, nice feel, excellent job once again

No.119

∞ Alon said 1938 days ago:

Hi,

I just stumbled across your site and I really like it. nice design work. I am curious about your previous site, since I never saw it and would love to see the evolution – is it up somewhere?
Thanks,

Alon

No.120

∞ Joel said 1937 days ago:

I just thought I’d add that I’m not a huge fan of the hover states for the new navigation (at the top of the page). Also, is there a way to access the ‘wide’ style sheet other than using the Firefox PR switcher? I can’t see it if there is.

Still love the design though.

No.121

∞ Pwoli said 1937 days ago:

I love the little shadow under the six playlist|archive thumbnails. I find the image at right sucks my eyeballs too much… Makes the site hard to absorb. Dramatic can co-exist with readability, but it doesn’t work here, I find. Easier said than done: image fades to white as the page is scrolled?

No.122

∞ Anthony said 1937 days ago:

John,

Love the new version—great work, as usual—but am I the only one to get an odd bit of vertigo from the image at the side? Dunno if it’s because it’s a sideways photo, or if it’s because it never moves as content scrolls.

It also may be due to my being nutty.

Cheers,

Anthony

No.123

∞ clint said 1937 days ago:

Ah, I was encouraged this morning with a fresh visit with a fresh redesign… very nice..

is that a indentikal typeface? very nice….. comments preview rocks as well.

I also like seeing a fixed bg image… they arent used enough in effective ways and I applaud the venture..

kudos
cF

No.124

∞ Martagnan said 1937 days ago:

I know what Andy from Little Britain might say about the redesign. Great layout… right up to the white daffs then it all goes a bit gratuitous?

No.125

∞ David said 1936 days ago:

I’m using Mozilla (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040113) right now and everything looks like in latest version of Firefox, except the background & image to the right. All I see is a compressed image of the big tree in the upper top right corner of the browser. Where the picture was in Firefox, there is now only dark blue background color.

Just thought I’d give you a report of how it looked :-).

No.126

∞ David Laakso said 1936 days ago:

Very nice—particularly the vertical image. For what it’s worth, I only see approximately 12 pixes of that image as showing at 800, while on a screen thats’ wider than 1280 pixels, the image is dominant and the sky overwhelming…