Albeit too late and too slow to count as a new look for 2009, a few changes are being slowly rolled out hereabouts. There’s a new header and tag line (both likely subject to further revision), a new title font, a re-jig of the blogroll listing to the right, with more sub categories, and one or two more minor visual changes. Comments can now be edited immediately after posting and also are threaded, so you can reply directly beneath the comment you are responding to – try the reply button.
I’ve got a few other significant changes in mind, which at the current rate will be in place by mid February, but does anyone have any strong feelings either way so far?
I think it looks good. The new changes are impressive. I really like the feature that allowed me to edit my last comment after posting so I could change the stupd spelling mistakes which I always notice just after posting.
;-)
I’d forgotten I’d added that feature a couple of weeks ago. That and the threaded comments seem to work OK.
er (*winces*) I cant say I am fond of the new look, NL, chiefly related to the Header, but then again, all blogs are a work in progress, are they not?
Minx, given that you are known to be a person of exquisite taste and elegance, you can’t leave me dangling – what so offends your eye and why?
My Dear NL,
As ever, you flatter me intensely!
I cannot honestly say that I am very fond either of the header or of the strapline – both look as if they have just been stuffed in there, and not given much thought, which, of course is nothing like you. While it draws the eye, I am not sure if it draws the eye to the page.
One other thing is that its a bit, well, white – a nice clean colour to be sure, but couldnt it be topped up just a bit?
All this said, Andro is designing me a new look for my blog; she’s been very patient and caved into all my frankly rather Diva-esque requests, so it may be a case of taking the log out of your eye before I take the splinter out of my own!
( *lopes off into corner, Mob Cap in Hand*)
ARSE – That SHOULD read take the Log out of MY Eye before I take the splinter out of yours!! PUTZ!!
Would the new handy ‘edit your own comment’ feature come in handy? Assuming you spot your error in time…
Food for thought there. My tastes are classic Bauhaus modernist, hence the white and clean – it was very pale grey before, not much different and actually blanker, but ‘stuffed in there’ is not good, and not the intention.
Expect changes.
I’m with Lawminx…
Even before reading your post I had caught it out of the corner of my eye – and thought there were suddenly banner adverts on your blog (eww)
Read this post and then looked and realised it was your title.
So I dunno – it was just distracting I think – can’t remember what it was before – but whatever it was was *not* distracting….
Course it’s all personal taste :)
Cait, ‘I can’t remember what was there before’ makes the case for a change, I think. And surely not resembling a banner ad, far too minimal – but distracting is not particularly the desired effect. So something to work on.
no no no!
Can’t remember what was there before was a *good thing*
That means it was unobtrusive and didn’t detract from the purpose of the site.
After all – design should not be what jumps out – the content is (and the content is great)
I think it’s ok, apart from the colour for ‘nearly legal’. A wee bit more space between the title and the strapline might be helpful to make things clearer, but then again these things do still depend a fair bit on how different browsers render it. I like the font.
The colour should have been the same as the blog’s link colour, just a bit lighter, but seems to vary by browser and plaform. It is an image, not rendered text, so the space is constant – and I like the closeness. It is logo rather than pure text, but still legible. That said, there is clearly some fiddling to do.
Ah yes, I realised it was an image afterwards – surely platform and browser shouldn’t make too much difference if it’s a gif? Anyway, I like the new colour – or at least how it looks on FF3 on Ubuntu ;-)
The gamma difference between a windows system and a Mac is pronounced and affects colour reproduction, less so between a Mac and Ubuntu, I think, because I did the jpg on Ubuntu :-)
So, header take two… And sorry Minx, the white stays. Just call me El Lissitzky (as if.)
My Dear Mr El Lissitzky,
I appreaciate the changes you have made to Mr NL’s Blog since it is, after all,”das Zielbewubte Schaffen” is it not?
I’m ok with the white – its very clean.
The header and strapline are a gazilllion times better! :)
From this, all is clear. The purpose of creation is to please the Minx. ;-)
oh!
and see, you’ve changed it and I didnt notice.
And having looked – I love the header and logo now.
Much better now :) Not an overly helpful comment but then that’s me.
We aim to please…
I, too, am a fan of minimalism in web design; in fact, Nearly Legal has a not dissimilar feel to conflictoflaws.net, so I’m bound to like your overall concept.
That said, a couple of small suggestions:
1) the ‘nearly legal’ in the header looks slightly blurred, and a little washed out (using FF3 on Vista.) What software did you use to make the jpeg? Photoshop, in my experience, creates the crispest text images. As an aside, I actually thing K2 as a theme just looks better with a background picture in the header, not least so the menu tabs have something to sit against.
2) I think it could do with a border, or shadow, between the white content div, and the grey border. The grey is light enough that it doesn’t create enough of a contrast by itself. Again, this is personal preference, and it’s something I wrestled with on conflictoflaws.net.
I’m rather tempted to go for a complete redesign of conflictoflaws.net sometime soon, though I fear that is through excessive tinkering rather than it being actually necessary…
The toned down is deliberate, but blurry is odd. I used photoshop and it looks OK in Firefox/Safari on Ubuntu and Macs. I hadn’t noticed an issue in Explorer on XP. Hmm. I might try compressing again.
I’ve adjusted the tone of the menu tabs to give some contrast, but I’m a little weary of the standard K2 look, seen all over the place, so tried something else. The grey border/white content div has always been there. I did try out a border back in the miss of time, but, for myself, didn’t like it.
But this is work in progress, expect more fiddling about to go on.