What Do You Think Of The New Weblog Look?

As you’ve probably noticed, the look of this page has been updated. What do you think of the new look? (Please leave your opinion in the comments for this entry. For reference, here’s the old look.)

Put a +2, +1, 0, -1, or -2 at top of your comment indicating how you feel.

FYI This entry written by Will Gayther – I wrote the software that runs this weblog, and did most of the redesign.What Do You Think Of The New Weblog Look?

39 thoughts on “What Do You Think Of The New Weblog Look?

  1. Will, I gather you’re working on the site now… I’ve synchronized everything recently and will log off now so as not to generate any conflicts. I’ll check in again shortly.

  2. I like the new format for the recent comments, but what happens when someone adds a very long comment? Do you show the whole thing or limit it the first X chars? I also like that the comments under each entry are numbered which helps them stand out and not blend together like they had the tendency to do before.

  3. FYI, I’ve been slowly working on a few things that had been bugging me…
     
     I’m trying to open up the comments field a bit more…
     For the URL display, I’ve hidden the “http://” for people who don’t type in a URL, and I’ve added it for people who leave it out…
     
     I’ve also added the date that comments were added, and souped up the “Recent Comments” page so it includes the full text of the 5 most recent comments.

  4. Will, to answer your question I would rather easily see the menu items over the weblog links but I see the point that this is the weblog page and the weblog and weblog links should be the focus here. I find that the new format moves the weblog links that I did use (NMJ @ Seton Hill, Onion, Daypop, Google News, SciTech Daily) down the page so that I now have to scroll which takes a bit of getting used to. I really feel that the NMJ @ Seton Hill link should be visible without having to scroll.
     
     I am also getting used to the new colors. :)

  5. Not a comment about the new look as such, but in Safari the sidebar is positioned just left of the middle of the page, obscurring the entries and leaving a large white gap at the left side where it should be. Makes for rather difficult reading!

  6. Will and Chris, at least both of you are doing re-vamps! I recently turned over the UWEC English Festival website to a new webmaster who has a great design, but has not put it up yet, after eight weeks or so. My hat is off to you two.

  7. Will, one thing you could try for the sidebar links is padding-left: 5px; and text-indent: -5px;. This’ll indent every line underneath the first line. I’m doing the CSS of the UWEC redesign and just used something similar for some menu items today.

  8. Neha – which links aren’t there any more? I deliberately left them all there, if any are missing I will put them back. Are you sure they aren’t just under the red-colored menus at the top?

  9. Will, the colours do clash on the sidebar, and barring this computer that I’m writing from, every other that I’ve been on shows the blue as purple.
     Going back to the sidebar, you’re right. It does look much better (less “busier” say) but some of the old links aren’t there anymore. I suppose Dr. Jerz would have wanted some of those removed, but it was a nice collection. Maybe if they got rearranged alphabetically?

  10. Will, I’d say this has been a successful exercise, wouldn’t you think? The colors should be easy to change… the content of the navigation bars need some work, but that’s just something I’ve been too busy to look into.
     
     Will, I’d like to thank you — once again — for all your hard work on the site. For those who are following along, Will has been working on this project long after the independent study we arranged had expired…
     
     And now a few line break tests
     …to see how the additions work…
     !

  11. I appreciate all the comments!
     
     I also appreciate the comments about it looking a lot neater. I thought the old layout was waaay to “busy” – I spent a lot of time trying to fix that. I do appreciate both positive and negative feedback – I think it’s a lot better, but certainly not perfect.
     
     As for the clash between the reds, yellow, and blues – I agree it kinda clashes. I left the reds on there so the menu items could be used on the rest of the site, which is still themed red – any ideas on changing this Dr Jerz?
     
     If you want to see how I would ideally like to have it look, cover up the red menus on your monitor, but leave the links area. I think it looks really nice. At least, on my monitor…
     
     Which brings me to the reason why I used light purple. I didn’t use light purple. I used light blue. BUT although it shows up as light blue on my monitor, it shows up as light purple on other peoples monitors – which, I agree, looks odd. It’s something to do with the brightness and contrast settings. That’s why. Perhaps I could try making the color a bit more gray…
     
     Mike, I switched around the menus because I felt they were really unclear – there were menus, then stuck in the middle were links, then there were more menus. Now all the site menus are grouped, and the links are grouped seperately from the menus. So yes, it was a deliberate move. I think the menus could changed to better reflect site navigation, but I just don’t have the time to do it right now, so I’m hoping Dr Jerz will. I don’t understand what you mean by “redunancy in what’s up top and on bottom”.
     
     Rosemary, I can understand your the-colors-changed shock, I’ve had the same thing happen to me. Several people have commented on the yellow clashing with the blue – it’s even worse with the menus open. From a usability standpoint, I like the menus being closed. Open they would take up a lot of space, space which could be better used for weblog content. I seriously doubt most people even saw the menus in the previous layout because they were so far down the left-hand side of the page. Everything is a trade-off – would you rather have them quick and easily see the menu items, or the weblog links?
     
     Chris, I agree with your sentiment about not being able to tell which links span several lines. I’ll think about how this could be displayed better. The problem is that if you add in bullets, I think it adds more texture to the links area, which draws the readers eyes over there first. I’m trying to get the main content – the entries – to be the first or second (after D.G. Jerz) thing people look at.
     
     Thanks Anonymous Coward, I think the page breaths better to. ;-) The last layout was drowning – help me! help me! it cried out to me. In defense of Dr Jerz’s design skills, I still think his original design looked nice (http://localhost:8080/weblog/index.jsp, warning, takes 20 seconds to load). But with his longer entries, two columns wasn’t working. And I took white space away in places I probably shouldn’t have. :-(
     
     Bobby and MJ, like I mentioned above, I’m sure if you saw it the way it looks on my screen it would look ok to you – I will try and figure out how to fix it. :-)
     
     Thanks Neha. How do you think the sidebar could use some work? Are you referring to the entire side, or just the links section? (the header color does clash a little, a strange side effect of the red, but otherwise…doesn’t the links section look nice?)
     
     oldtimey – blue entirely would be preferable, but I wasn’t quite ready to ask Dr Jerz to redesign the rest of his site so I could make the menu entries entirely blue. ;-) The idea is that the unfolding menus will eventually be used everywhere else on the site as well (but just for the menus they are used for now). It WOULD be nice if it looked exactly the same in all browsers…(design-wise, it’s pretty close, there’s just that problem with Safari…)
     
     Thanks Kirsten and Susan – my main goal in redesigning this page was to get rid of the “busy and panicked” look I thought the old one had. I spent a lot of time going “Should I have 10 or 15 pixels of white space?” and doing my best to get rid of the extra “clutter” and lines. :-) The plus symbol to do the expansion, is of course stolen from windows – the ui standard by sheer brute force. The red-blue-gray colors did end up clashing somewhat. It’s something to think about…
     
     MisterBS – if the css didn’t load for you…Dr Jerz’s comment about rebooting (sometimes hitting refresh does the trick) is the best advice I can give you.
     
     Lisa and Yoon – I wish I could do something about the Safari problem, but 1. I don’t have access to Safari, so it’s really difficult for me to test to find which changes would fix it, and 2. It works EVERYWHERE else – even Mozilla, which is pretty damn standards complient. I wish I could offer something better than “Use Mozilla”, but it looks to me like a big in Safari. And without going back to a table based layout, which I got away from so that the content could load before the menu, I’m not sure how to fix it. I’m emailing with Lisa, so maybe I’ll figure it out eventually…
     
     Ben – I see Dr Jerz has added white lines to seperate the comments a little more. I agree that the seperation could have been done much better, I just ran out of time. Thanks for your comment though! One possibility is to alternate background colors for each comment – the first is light blue, the second white, the third light blue, the fourth white… I’m not sure what you are referring to by the error in the navbar’s Weblog field – it’s supposed to be open, and a different color, so they are easy to spot and to signify that this is where you are (ok, that last part didn’t work so well. But the blue heading kinda goes with the blue theme of the weblog…) Hmm, I wonder what it would look like with the text left-aligned…(although I have my reserverations).
     
     Oh, and Ben – I just fixed comments so they won’t get squished any more – A new line in the comment box now gets turned into a newline (<br/>) in the html, so now no one has to type <p/> or <br/> tags any more! It’s a neat idea to add the little plus things on the comments, but I’m hesitant because it adds clutter. And the people I’ve showed to it find the drop-down comments unexpected, but they don’t get confused, they just go “Neat!”.
     
     Heather – as I wrote above, I was actually aiming for a light blue. I’m not sure about making it darker – I don’t want to make the text hard to read (although if you have a photoshopped sample of a new shade you think looks good, I would love to see it), and readability is more important than making the reader feel a little relaxed. Anyways, with Dr Jerz’s hard-hitting commentary, they could probably use some relaxation, right? (haha) Glad to hear you find it neater – #1 motivation for the redesign (neater, less “busy”, etc).
     
     Thanks to everyone for their comments – please continue to make comments either on the design, or on my comments to your comments. A web page is always a work in progress.

  12. You’re using a light purple? Why? Can you maybe make the color darker? From an AP class, I attend, I was taught light colors such as these tend to make the reader relaxed, sleepy, and lazy. Do you want a reader so relaxed they go to sleep reading the weblogs, or too lazy to comment? Don’t get me wrong, mental relaxation is a good thing. I don’t understand why you would want it here though. -1 Our comp. class voted that if you could make the background a little darker it might work better for you and the readers. +2 on the left bar. We all agree that looks much neater than before. Other than the possible color shade change we find everything else great as always.

  13. Yikes, reloading and I get it now. I think the color scheme doesn’t match, but even worse, the navbar renders on top of the main column of text, rendering it all but unreadable (or at least, really annoying). Again, I’m betting this is an issue with the older version of Safari I use, but it does mean I’ll have to switch browsers to read this site.

  14. I can’t even find the maroon and yellow or a sidebar as referenced in some of the previous comments. I’m using Safari 1.0, though, and unable to upgrade due to still being on Mac OS 10.2. (I suppose I could try Firefox…)

  15. One final thought. The Comment link for each post expands to show comments, which is not like a traditional link. Instead it operates like the left navbar’s headers, which expand with the + character. I suggest adding + button next to the Comments link in each post because it performs the same expantion function within the page. Users might be confused by that blue link that doesn’t operate in a standard way.

  16. -2 for comment formatting. My previous comment had returns that disappeared and made one ugly paragraph. Boo hiss boo hiss!

  17. +1.
    Good:
    – Colors and navigation bar, especially the + expanding buttons.
    – Nice light dashed line beneath categories in the navbar.
    Suggestions:
    – Heavier definition between comments, perhaps with a bigger vertical space.
    – The bullets don’t help me locate comments.
    – Error in the navbar’s Weblog field: Recent Comments and Categories open alone, as if they’re a seperate frame without the other page elements.
    – Left aligned text is good, but make the “Literacy Weblog” banner and the navbar “Dennis G. Jerz” text left aligned, too.
    Browser:
    – Mac OSX Camino works.
    – Safari has the same problem Lisa described.
    Regarding Jerz’s comment:
    “I sometimes have to restart my computer or clear the cache in order to reload the new style sheet.”
    Dennis, that is very funny.

  18. Using Safari, on the Mac, runing OS X, the left hand column of links lies on top of the central text area, obscuring it. Email me if you’d like a screen shot. It’s fine in IE on the Mac.

  19. Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. (If there’s anyone out there who’s been shy so far, I’d love to hear from you.)

    MisterBS, as I understand it, IE doesn’t always reload the stylesheet even after it’s been changed. I sometimes have to restart my computer or clear the cache in order to reload the new style sheet.

  20. I’ll agree with several of the above: move to an all-blue scheme, consider altering the bkgrnd blue–it does look lavender on Firefox/Win2k. I like the cleaner look, but am not entirely nuts that the left menus are completely collapsed. I wonder if there are primary/secondary levels of subordination you can sort things into, improving both navigation and visual organization. Also, the CSS didn’t load automatically, so I was wondering, “What blues?” at first.

  21. -1
    At least for the color. The remnants of the old burgundy/yellow don’t blend with the new, and the light blue looks like lavendar to my system. Purer blue with navy added, perhaps?
    +1
    Organization is cleaner. I agree that it looked a little busy before, but maybe the look was professorial?

  22. +1–I actually really like it. Yes, I think that a different accent color on the side bar could be more effective (than the maroon), but I would be careful with implementing an entirely blue design (since blue can effect readability–especially on a computer like mine, where the colors are somewhat skewed on the tiny plasma screen). I feel like the old design was a little busy–what with menus and lines running everywhere, and this one seems to be easier on the eyes. I don’t think, from a usability standpoint, the menus on the sidebar create a problem. The headings are pretty explanatory, and most internet users understand the idea behind the plus symbol. The one change that I would make would to be to better integrate the colors from the “Links” section to the colors used on the other sections of the sidebar–it would add continuity to the page. Or, maybe try changing the maroon to a blue-r red, or use some red on the main part of the page, so as to bring the colors from the side into the page.

  23. +1. I think it might look nice if you stuck with blue entirely (but, you know, all different shades). The old maroon isn’t right, in my eyes. I like the java dropdown menu on the left — looks classy and is way better then other older versions. I would offer to send a screenshot, but the design is probably so structurally-sound that it doesn’t differ much in the browsers!

  24. +1. I like the new look. The old one was getting a little too – well, old. Besides, I like pastels. This one actually has a soothing effect on the eyes, but the sidebar could definitely use some work. I liked seeing all your “New found Citations” on the same page.

  25. -1
    I don’t think the sidebar and main page work with this color scheme either. Also, I think the sidebar links (Newfound Citations) should either have bullets or have more line-spacing, as right now it’s difficult to tell if an item goes to another line or not, outside of mousing over it. Users shouldn’t have to guess on that.
    I do like this color scheme though, except the header and as it matches the sidebar.

  26. -1. I don’t like that the left side links are hidden with the new look until you click on the + to open up the option list. Some people won’t know to do this or won’t be bothered and will miss out on quickly and easily getting to some of your main content. As for the colors, I guess I have gotten used to and like the old color scheme so while I find the new colors a bit jarring now I am sure that I could get used to this or something else in time.

  27. Thanks for your feedback, Mike.

    I do plan on working on the contents of the sidebar… Will wrote some excellent modular components that will let me add and move around things very easily, though I haven’t fully had time to experiment.

    Anyone else want to weigh in?

  28. -2
    Hope this doesn’t offend, but…the new look (as of 3/22 8am) doesn’t appeal to me. I like the general design but the colorization is all wrong: the blues don’t match the maroon and yellow index; the contrast produces a strange pallor, an uncanny echo of the dead old form of the blog in its past life.
    The dropdown menu at the top (java?) appears helpful and is clicky-fast, but you’ve swapped things that were up top (like the “teaching” links) with things that were once on the bottom (like the two articles “On Jerz’s Site”). I understand that this menu takes us away to different pages, but I’m not sure this really reflects the best hiearchy of info — and besides, there’s some redundancy in what’s up top and on bottom in that left column. The fonts in the left column don’t coordinate well with the title and the blog. I think the issue is that the new blog scheme isn’t in tune with the whole jerz domain, so unless the whole domain is being overhauled, I’d wait for this redesign.

  29. -1 The light blue doesn’t appeal to my eyesight. I could get use to it, but the other colors went very well together. This lighter shade, and dark title lines ( instead of red) makes it difficult for the late night teacher checking in. But, I’m also someone that’s never cared for pastels,or bold dark lettering.

  30. -1. Dennis, it feels strange to me rating your new design because you taught me everything I know about designing web pages. I always liked the top-down navigation style, but I agree with Dr. Arnzen, the colors are mismatched. Rhetorically, darker blues are preferred because human eyes have trouble picking up blue wavelengths in color, unless it is set-off with brighter colors for figure-ground contrast (Superman’s costume)…sorry! Since I took “Document Design” and now “Editing,” I cannot look at or read texts the same anymore.

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