yay or nay? / journal / hicksdesign

29/11/03

yay or nay?

I empathise with Paul Scrivens (see ‘Sometimes I get bored’). Designing your own site is very hard, especially when you work on your own, and don’t have any easy way to gauge whether something is a good idea or not.

Cut the chase: to improve the readability on the journal and articles pages, I’ve tweaked the CSS. This means no viewing long pages through a letterbox and support for your mousewheels. (There are display issues in IE 5 Win and Mac, but everyone else should be OK). So what I’d like to know is: do you find it easier and more readable, or do you prefer things the way they were?

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Comments are now closed, but you can still have a jolly time reading what others have left:

Dom said 1818 days ago:

I like it !

David said 1818 days ago:

It be good. Shame you had to sacrifice consistancy though. The site (almost) looks unfinished.

David said 1818 days ago:

(forgot to add this)

Maybe you'd consider keeping with the 'letterbox' style, but letting the content flow down the page. If that's too hard to understand, have a look at the letterbox style, then imagine the white content div not stopping at the bottom of the navigation and scrolling, but allowing to flow down the page. That would look cool from an aesthetics point of view, but I can imagine it being hard to code, especially if you don't want to change the underlying XHTML.

Final note -- it looks good, and it definately more readable, but I'd leave it as letterbox. If people want readability, then they can choose the Diet style.

Dris said 1818 days ago:

After just a quick once-over, I would have to go with "yay". :)

Two things immediately strike me for improvement. First, in Safari 1.1, there's a large margin beneath the name field. A large, large margin. Second, I came in with my browser window abnormally large due to a site I'd just hopped over from. Though I'm not normally at anything more than 800x600 for my browser window, I think it would be good to center the whole body (as was done with the old design).

That's all I have to say! Not a huge departure from before, and that's fine, because the old design was very nice indeed. I continue to adore that navigation block with the brilliantly colored leaf. :)

ste said 1818 days ago:

Looks good to me - I definitely prefer the vertical layout. I had trouble scrolling in the horizontal (Firebird for Mac).

(Aside, I love the new icon for skEdit - great job!)

Shaun Inman said 1818 days ago:

Yay all the way Jon. Form follows function, right? And I wouldn't be concerned about the consistency issue mentioned above. It's quite common—almost expected—to have a distinct homepage design with the interior pages focusing solely on the presentation of content. Cheers!

Egor Kloos said 1818 days ago:

I have to agree with Shaun, consistency in not an issue. The design still retains the look and feel, which I've always liked. And who said that each page should have the same format / layout? And this layout is, in my view, a turn for the better. The journal is much easier to read also I feel less confined because I don't need to scroll as much to check if I haven't missed a previous journal entry or to check back on previous comments.

So, that's a Yay from me.

Scrivs said 1818 days ago:

Definitely preferred over the previous design, which was hard to top already.

Scott Johnson said 1818 days ago:

I blindly clicked on the link to this page from my newsreader, as you reliably have something interesting to say. When I first saw the page, I assumed that my browser had incorrectly rendered the page using the "diet" stylesheet or something and looked for the "regular" button. I clicked regular, and nothing happened. Then I started reading. I was relieved to find that it wasn't a problem on my end.

Sure, I like being able to scroll with my wheel now, but I wish that you didn't have to compromise your excellent prior design for that. And being limited to a tiny letterbox on my 1600x1200 screen never bothered me as much as the scroll wheel issue. In particular, I really liked how everything was centered. I'm rather surprised that the new layout isn't at least horizontally centered.

Overall, the new still has the flavor of the old, but I liked the old better, despite its scroll wheel shortcomings.

Just noticed a problem, though: in Firebird on WinXP, the comment textarea renders mostly offscreen to the left when previewing a comment. (I'm typing this paragraph mostly blindly.)

#10

Jinketsu said 1818 days ago:

Yay all the way.
It's more comfortable to read now and less scrolling.

#11

Adam Polselli said 1818 days ago:

Yay! I really like the change, and think that it makes it far easier to read the content. Maybe you would think about implementing the vertical layout for all of the pages? It looks great! :)

#12

Arthur J. Bahadourian said 1818 days ago:

I like both variations. However, a minor suggestion...Keep the letterbox and have a link (maybe reading friendly) that will display the current layout, normal scrolled pages.

...hands down, great job!!

#13

Jonathan Hicks said 1817 days ago:

Thanks a lot for all the feedback chaps, I appreciate you all taking time to comment. I particularly appreciate the fact that people do actually read this blog, and I'd like to make a pleasant experience for you - so I think Shaun is right, form should follow function.

It looks as if it might be a goer, but I still want to do some work to the style, as it does look a little too plain at the moment. I might even revert to everything being centered again...

More importantly, I promise not to bore you all with any more blogs about this sites design. Thanks for your patience!

#14

Nedward said 1817 days ago:

Excellent job-- I've always loved reading your site, but I always found it difficult. This is prefectly readable, and lovely! Nice job!

#15

Lars said 1817 days ago:

Basically what Egor Kloos (and others) said.

I wouldn't have thought it possible to improve on the previous design, but apparently it was.

Center it and you'll have a friend for life (or at least until the next makeover :)

P.S. A minor detail (at least when viewed in Firebird 0.71) is that the font size in the comments textarea is very small.

#16

Jeff Croft said 1817 days ago:

This version looks great, even if it does lose a bit of the uniqneness of the old style. I say do what feels best -- either way seems to work fine to me.

Jeff

#17

Lars said 1817 days ago:

Jon, I think this is the beginning
of a beautiful friendship. :)

#18

Jon Hicks said 1817 days ago:

Thanks Lars! ;)

#19

Adam Polselli said 1816 days ago:

Lovin' the recent changes! I really like it centered. :)

#20

Lars said 1816 days ago:

Echo previous comment.

I was going to mention how much I'd like to see that vertical bar reintroduced, but I was afraid I'd be thought of as a nitpicker (which, of course, I am anyway).

But now it's back, and, somehow, it all looks even better than before. Oh dear, oh dear. Where will it end?

The alternating comments background color is a nice touch too (possibly a first? At least I haven't seen it anywhere else).

Now the real question is, will this comment look better on white or on green?

#21

Joshua said 1816 days ago:

Hey Jon, I like this layout a lot. It really helps readability. :)

#22

Jon Hicks said 1816 days ago:

I'll be fiddling and tweaking on this for a while I think, but I'm glad that folks are 'for it'. Especially on long pages like this - ist just silly doing it in the letterbox format.

#23

David House said 1816 days ago:

Great!! Took me a while to find where the site name was though. Might want to consider putting it at the top too, if only as text.

Also, you seem to be missing one rollover... ;)

#24

Scrivs said 1816 days ago:

The alternating comments boxes are sweet! Care to share your secret...too busy to look at the code right now.

#25

Jon Hicks said 1816 days ago:

David, the problem is this. There is a bug in Safari that means if you rollover, it sticks in the rollover state. This only affects the logo when its postioned absolutely, such as in the journal. For now, I've taken it off until I find a better solution.

Scrivs - no secret, its an MT plug-in called 'Flip Flop' ! - I'll do a post about it soon. (Theres a link to it on the colophon page)

#26

Shaun Inman said 1815 days ago:

It's lookin' the bomb, Jon. Thanks for that tip about sticky Safari rollovers. I never put two and two together but it makes perfect sense. Ah, poor Dave, time to bombard his team with more bug reports. Cheers!

#27

Jon Hicks said 1815 days ago:

Blimey, thanks a lot Shaun. I consider that a real encouragement coming from you!

Should've mentioned, the safari bug doesn't affect javascript rollovers only when using the FIR rollover method that I use ( a mix of pixy's no-preload and the text-indent: -1000em)

#28

Stephane said 1814 days ago:

Great decision to go with a regular page for the blog, but why didn't you use the same width and the green bar that are on the homepage ?

I think it would help to not feel a little lost with a different design.

#29

Jon Hicks said 1814 days ago:

Stephane,

It seemed like a good opportunity to support users with 800x600 resolutions. Anyway, still playing...