Well, here it is.
It's a bit like the old style in layout, probably because I am familiar with it's ins and outs, and felt bad trashing it outright. The image replacement for the titles is new, though I am not sure I'm gonna stay with this font for long -- I'm auditioning others, but as its just PHP rendering the font, it can be pretty raw. I actually had to write my own function to adjust the tracking because as-is, it was all squeeshed.
Some little things like tags (finally, duh), and a completely redesigned backend (thanks mostly to the code I wrote for the WBA; that project is still moving forward, if anyone is curious). I did a lot of code trimming and reorganization to make the site easier to maintain.
As it is, the amount the site scrolls at 800x600 is minimal, which makes it even more annoying. I'll probably end up sawing a chunk out somewhere to accomodate those folks. I do believe in "accessibility"; my bluster was just that. Right now I am typing in the backend entry-adder doohickey, which, if you checked out the above screenshot, I've styled with the Segoe UI font—the same font that will be the default on Windows Vista. It is a beautiful font, very very easy on the eye, so if you have the means to pilfer it early like I did, I recommend you do so. Heck, if you're intrigued, whisper in muh ear and I'll see what I have layin' about.
Anyways, here it is. Still some bugaboos floating around, especially with Opera and IE. Actually there's a wierd one involving FireFox's rendering of form fields relative to timed-out DHTML, but after looking at the site with the FF 1.5b1, it seems like they've fixed it, so I'm not too worried.
Bah. I'm Too tired to ramble any more. I like it, and I hope you do too.
10 Missives So Far
01 Shawn said on Sat Oct 1 10:46:55 EDT
Well, I was happy with my own blog look (which is just a CSS hack of a run-of-the-mill wordpress template), but you absolutely ruined that happy. Beautiful! Absolutely beautiful. I love it. I'm going to take a look around but first, a question:
I have the Vista font too, and am curious as to how you added it. Did you just call it in the CSS? Fill me in, I'm sort lost. I guess I'm wondering if the user-end machine would display it if they didn't have it installed on their machine. Forgive me if it is a dumb question, but I'm curious.
Again, I bow in the presence of design and coding greatness ...
02 Shawn said on Sat Oct 1 10:49:19 EDT
Oh, forget the above question. The light went on - no one else sees that section of your site, and you obviously have the font installed. Duh. Peace.
03 Gone Away said on Sat Oct 1 17:17:03 EDT
Hmmm, becoming very minimalist, aren't we? You do this to me every time, Josh - bring in a new look which, because I really like the old one, I'm not sure of at first and then come to appreciate. My first thought was, "Aaarrgghh, what has he done?" But already I'm getting to like it. Very clever stuff with the background graphic.
Dang, he's good, ain't he, Mad?
04 josh said on Sat Oct 1 17:29:26 EDT
Shawn - Thanks for sticking around to see how it turned out, and the positive review. I recommend everyone grab Segoe UI and Lucida Grande when they can, because a lot of websites are using LG now and will be using Segoe UI in the future. I hoard fonts; it's nice to see a website as the designer intended it, and as frustrating as typography can be to the amateur, I love working with it and I do it as much as I can.
Clive - the dirty little secret is that any minimalist feel is created with a load of images and CSS, which technically disqualifies it from that particular classification. :)
The good news, though, is that with a little fiddling the older stylesheet will be available to those who prefer it.
Thanks for the visit, guys.
05 melly said on Sun Oct 2 22:21:48 EDT
Love it. I love simplicity or as Gone calls it - minimalist.
I was kind of dissapointed though that I saw it fine on my IE6 800x600 monitor. No scrolling needed and no problems. At least none so far.
Congrats, looks great, and just in time for the new year :)
06 josh said on Mon Oct 3 1:38:26 EDT
Well, I'll be dunkled. It seemed like it would scroll at 8x6, but then again, I was relying on the webdev plugin for firefox to show me what that resolution looks like.
Well, that's one less thing with this design I'll have to un-fsck. ;)
07 wheat said on Mon Oct 3 10:43:08 EDT
Nice work, Josh. I liked the previous design(s) very much as well, but you always have something new and fresh ready to roll out and replace them. This is just one more installment in a history of fine designs.
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