I have not posted in considerable time, but that is because I have been busy with lots of things, not the least of which was redesigning this site. I have lots of things in my backlog to post about, so expect thing to pick back up. Shoot me some feedback on the new design and please let me know if you spot any bugs, I will be polishing everything off (adding a picture to the about page, etc.) in the next couple days.
online.
First thought: the line height of your body text could do with being increased slightly.
Second thought: I completely missed the Name, Email, Website fields. They are not aligned with the post and do not sit underneath the ‘Penny for your thoughts’ title so I scanned straight past then. Posting the comment without filling these out also erases your text which is rather frustrating and raises the importance of this issue.
There are a few solutions that come to mind; ideally you’d move them above this comment box however this doesn’t quite work with your design.
- You could highlight the whole form in some way when one field (usually this comment box) is selected.
- Improve the error reporting so that errors show on this page and already filled fields are not erased.
Sorry the first comment had to be negative :P I am in awe of your work and overall the new design is very clean and easy to browse.
Thanks for the extensive feedback Tom! I will be touching up the files tonight and I will be sure to address the line-height. As for the comments, I think I am going to see what some others think of the layout before I go shuffling things around. I am fond of where they are now because the fields to add your name, email address, and website, sit under the already posted names. However, you may have a point and I will keep it in the back of my mind. Thanks again!
Very good, andy! I like it. I admit that I liked the clarendon better though. Helvetica doesn’t fit with my idea of you.
Thanks, Colin. I liked the clarendon a good bit better too, but I really wanted to move completely away from any images with the new design; hence the Helvetica.
When are you going to pull a site together and start destroying the series of tubes?
You could try sFIR ( http://novemberborn.net/sifr3 ) or Cufón ( http://cufon.shoqolate.com/generate/ ) to switch the type. That’s what I did with Ben Bours’s site ( http://www.bbbours.com/ ).
Aherm. I meant sifr not sfir. Acronyms trip me up sometimes.
@Colin – sifr is always an option, but I would like to keep my site free of any Flash, no matter how well integrated; I am just a clean, html kinda guy. (Plus it tends to destroy load times, especially on slower connections.)
As far as that cufon thing is concerned, it seems that it doesn’t do much that I couldn’t already do on my own. Embedding fonts in html is actually quite easy, contrary to popular belief. The problem is with legality: it is illegal and in pretty bad practice to put fonts online that don’t allow web embedding. I wouldn’t want to run into any legal issues, or worse off make some great type foundries mad at me!
My hope, with this redesign, is that the website will act more as a frame for my work, which expresses my personality, rather than be too expressive itself. I do thank you for your in depth feedback though!