Comments on: Weekend Update: Tom’s Birthday, TVC + Long Nap, Site Redesign

By: Ken Walker

Ken Walker — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 04:20:29 +0000

Kyleen,

Thanks.

We did have links on the homepage, on and off. I actually took them down from the old design because I wasn’t doing a good job maintaining them — there were links to sites that I almost never visit there. That’s the frustrating thing with bookmarks: once they’re bookmarked, they’re almost always ignored. I’ll see if maybe I can get something else going.

As for the RSS reader well, I’m going to geek out again about this real soon, but you may want to check out netvibes.com in the meantime. Makes feeds happy.

Yeah, a big criticism of the “green” design was that it didn’t make much of the space. At the time, I was coming off a jumbled three-column layout, so it was very peaceful for me, but not economical.

I’ve been tweaking this design a bit to get it to look better. The latest article of our site now shows up on the front page in full now so you can get to the new content fast. I still need to work more on the summary stuff below it, though.

The footer, I think, has potential to be cool (links to favorite books and CDs would be _hottt_). But, I’m only poking at this thing when I have time which I’m mostly frittering away on other projects.

By: Kyleen

Kyleen — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 15:36:25 +0000

I agree that the photo is awesome. Over the past few months the links listed on your homepage have been re-organized a few times (I think, am I imagining it?) — at one point there was a listing of other people’s blogs, which was then consolidated into the one “weblogs” link, which I couldn’t find for a few days . . . which I only noticed because I usually come to your site first and then click through to check other sites (man, I really need some sort of dashboard for RSS feeds . . .). And I like both the color and the typography of the “something like this” design. I think margin and blank space are important, but I think that perhaps this current layout is a bit textually overwhelming whereas the “something like this” design has a bit too much dead space (maybe just making the center column a bit wider so you don’t have to scroll so far down for the comments). So, um, yeah, the picture here is AWESOME, and I like the layout, simplicity, color, and typography (not to be confused with topography, heh) of the green design. Have I babbled enough?

By: Mike Begley

Mike Begley — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 19:43:50 +0000

I dig it. The current featured photo of your chop licking dog is a beyond awesome photo. You can take a zillion (yes a zillion photos) and one like that is hard to find.

By: Ken Walker

Ken Walker — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 15:19:32 +0000

Kyleen, thanks — and thanks for being honest. A couple of questions:

What did you mean when you said all the links are “back”? I’m pretty sure everything in the sidebars now were on the old design, but I could be wrong.

What did you like about the “something like this” design? Was it the colors? Comment treatment? Typography? All of the above?

By: Kyleen

Kyleen — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 15:08:40 +0000

P.S. I do like the “something like this” link (to the $500 mac entry), for what it’s worth . . .

By: Kyleen

Kyleen — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 15:06:21 +0000

Interesting. Hmm. I do like that all the links are back . . . it’s perhaps a little too text-heavy for my taste . . . but then again, I haven’t done much with my own — I’m not even sure what I want my blog to look like, much less yours!