Updated design

17 thoughts on “Updated design”

1. Looks great. A whole lot cleaner and more readable.

   Although the headings are a little too hard to differentiate from the paragraph text.

2. I don’t like the wasted page margins and the three column layout that requires me to use a lot of screen real-estate to have everything appear as you’ve designed it. If I have my current browser window not so wide, the rightmost sidebar slides down way past the next-rightmost sidebar (in IE6). And if my browser width is even less, all of the sidebars float down below the content of the page.

   So, heh, none of the sidebar ads reach my eyeballs. Oh wait, that’s a feature.

3. Hmmm. You’re right. Looks fine in IE7 or Firefox at any resolution. But the right sidebar floats down in IE6 at 800×600 or less.

   I’ll work on it. I’ve made the page margins less, which gives the content more room to breathe. There are some IE6 hacks I could use, but it may take a few days.

4. Heluva lot better than the previous layout.

5. Interesting. The reduced margins work much better and I find it more pleasing to give the content more room.

   I also notice that the right sidebars (which are quite narrow – thanks for that) stick much longer, with the content column narrowing first. At the point just before the sidebars pop to the bottom (and together) , the content still gets 2/3 of the within-margin space, and that’s nice too.

   I personally don’t like the font and style of intermediate headings, even though the big title and the normal text don’t distract me at all. It’s probably some habituation of mine concerning fonts (never having liked Optima much either).

6. Long, I did a few tweaks to the headings to make them stand out a bit more. Thanks for that feedback.

   I also made another change that I’ll bet you notice. Hint: It’s only visible if you view this site using Windows Vista.

7. Clean and elegant!

8. I like this a lot better. I’m using IE7 and I don’t have to change the zoom level anymore to be able to read it. That’s a big plus to me.

9. Ed,

   I think the extra all white background is hard on the eyes and makes everything blend together.

10. Very nice. Clean, professional, and easily readable.

11. Ed,

    I have to agree with Ray for after reading for a very short time the text starts blurring and washing out, with or without IE7’s Clear Type enabled. It actually gets almost painful and causes eye strain after a short while and this is a problem I find increasingly common on blogs that have gone the same way as yours, i.e. all white with fine text. While I like simple web layouts I found your previous layout much easier on the eyes without necessarily being too fussy.

    I can adjust my CRTs to give a slightly better read by much fiddling with both contrast and brightness, but not by that much, though this does take them outside their optimum profile settings. But however I adjust any of my LCDs, cheap ones or a couple of high end ones I can’t really improve readability more than very marginally and again spoiling the display properties for other uses as the only way that has any real benefit is to reduce brightness to close to minimum.

    Strangely, if I print a hard copy of the page, whether with a laserjet or an inkjet, the page reads quite well.

    P.S. I think it must be partly a font type and/or size issue as I just noticed that text entered in the Write Comment box doesn’t suffer anywhere near as much though the overall whiteness of the page is still not comfortable for long reads.

12. Thanks for the feedback, John and Ray. First, let me say that the site is more readable in Windows Vista thanks to the use of the Segoe UI font. Unfortunately, I can’t find a site that offers a legal download (cough, cough) for that font for earlier Windows versions or other operating systems, even though (cough) I Googled for it.

    I’ve tweaked the other fonts and sizes just a bit to see if that improves things. It appears to make things less jagged here. YMMV.

13. I just noticed it, and it looks like an improvement so far.

14. Old design was a lot better, personally I think the way a site looks is very important, and at the moment I don´t really enjoy reading the new site, just because the way it looks. Perhaps I´m a bit strange but this is way I feel about it.

15. No problem, Rasheed. I recognize that no design will please everyone. (I’ve been through enough magazine redesigns to know that.) Hopefully it will grow on you.

    FWIW, my old design was rated 2.6 on a scale of 10 (where 10 is hot and 1 is ugly) at one design site. It also didn’t work with the ad layouts I use. All the alternatives for tweaking the old layour resulted in content that was harder to read, so I decided to make a clean break.

16. HI Ed,

    Thanks, revisiting your site I find the new font size is much better on the eyes as it doesn’t fade in and out as the previous one did, though the brightness or whiteness of the page is still an issue for long reads. Perhaps I’ll have to have a play with IE’s accessibility settings as this overall whiteness appears to be the new default on a lot of blogs I visit.

    John

17. Ed,

    You could use some sort of logo for the site. Why not see if you can use a Windows related logo or one from your inside and out books? The gear from the front cover of the XP book as an example.

    As for the font, using a larger font size might make it easier to read. The new layout is clean but very spartan. Only in that the text/navigational columns and header blend together too much. The blue colors work better for a Windows Blog.

    Here is a good example of a clean layout but with more readable fonts:

    http://www.dailytech.com/

    Pirillo does a good job of breaking up the text portions from the side bar and header:

    http://chris.pirillo.com/

    That makes it more readable IMO.

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