The New Layout

Well, it's here. What do you think?

I've removed much of the advertising that marked this site as spyware, and I removed Sitemeter that's setting 3rd-party cookies. Blogrolling still is incredibly slow to load, but it's still there. I haven't finished with the permalink page, so that layout may change a bit as I fine tune this.

However, the site does work better with FireFox. What you should be seeing at the top, just under the picture, is a line that's updated as the page loads. With FireFox, it counts steps 1-4, then gives you a percentage as the slow blogrolling pages load. However, IE didn't want to do that, instead it kept skipping the last few steps. So, with IE, you get the Steps countdown, but then it shows the link to the Information Booth -- however, the blogrolls may not be completely loaded before you get the link. Oh well.

Feel free to check out the information booth and look around. Let me know if anything looks odd on your screen, please. Oh, and if you're reading this in a RSS feed, you probably won't see any differences. I'm thinking about playing with those settings soon...

Posted by: Ogre at 05:05 PM

Comments

1 I love the step count in Firefox. Cool! Very cool.

Posted by: vw bug at May 30, 2007 07:31 PM (FPOeI)

2 Thanks! I wish I could make IE do that...

Posted by: Ogre at May 30, 2007 07:34 PM (oifEm)

3 I like the layout, but can I recommend one little tweak? (Not that I'm giving you a chance to say no). Bring the white space on the left in 10-20 pixels to match the framing you have on the right side, so you see about 20 pixels of the textured background and about 10 pixels of plain green (or whatever the count is on the right)

Other than that I like it! I think the step count is pretty cool, and I like that it seems like a lot of clutter is gone.

Posted by: Echo Zoe at May 30, 2007 10:43 PM (8POA1)

4 I think I see what you're saying -- I was wondering about the whitespace on the left, I was going for an appearance that led off the page.

On the right it fades into the white...I thought about reversing it on the left side, but I was thinking into green...maybe if I do as I think you're suggesting, and fade the same pattern into the white from the left side, that might work...

Posted by: Ogre at May 30, 2007 10:52 PM (UXCWf)

5 The new design looks good.

My pet fish Eric likes it too.

Posted by: david drake at May 30, 2007 11:12 PM (S83Pv)

6 I thought he was only half a fish. Aha, now I've got you!

Posted by: Ogre at May 30, 2007 11:14 PM (UXCWf)

7 No, no, no - he's a halibut, not a halfabut.

Posted by: david drake at May 31, 2007 12:39 AM (S83Pv)

8 Look, I paid for a good argument.

Posted by: Ogre at May 31, 2007 12:57 AM (UXCWf)

9 No you didn't, time's up. I could be arguing in my spare time.

Posted by: david drake at May 31, 2007 01:17 AM (S83Pv)

10 No, no, I'm quite sure the parrot's dead.

Posted by: Ogre at May 31, 2007 01:24 AM (UXCWf)

11 Looks good, and the Counting thing is cool!

Posted by: Thunder Pig at May 31, 2007 09:51 AM (hokUm)

12 Thanks very much!

Posted by: Ogre at May 31, 2007 11:13 AM (oifEm)

13 try optiming your database and see if it helps with the load time

Posted by: Steph at May 31, 2007 03:45 PM (AC9Dc)

14 optimizing... sorry... trying to type and eat at the same time.

Posted by: Steph at May 31, 2007 03:45 PM (AC9Dc)

15 Thanks for the idea -- the primary culprit in the slow load time is blogrolling -- and I access it about 10 times as the page loads, so that's 10 times as slow...

Posted by: Ogre at May 31, 2007 05:00 PM (oifEm)

16 No no no no no, the parrot is resting after a good squwak!

Posted by: david drake at May 31, 2007 10:34 PM (Ukdfj)

17 I like it. Way cool.

Posted by: Raven at June 01, 2007 03:59 AM (SI2qx)

18 That is an EX parrot!

Thanks, Raven!

Posted by: Ogre at June 01, 2007 08:52 AM (UXCWf)

19 Have you, in fact, got ANY cheese here at all?

Anyway, just saying that it's a VAST improvement over the "all extended entry all the time" layout, which was irritating me to no end.

As a personal preference, though, I do prefer a 3-column layout, as the narrower width makes it easier to scan the center column text.

Posted by: Harvey at June 01, 2007 07:08 PM (L7a63)

20 Well, the main reason I went with the "all extended all the time" was to annoy you -- glad it worked!

I've been going back and forth on the two- vs. three- column layout. Dunno. Guess you could always narrow your browser...

Posted by: Ogre at June 01, 2007 07:20 PM (oifEm)

21 Hmm, my comment must not have posted.

Really like the layout, Ogre, particularly the background. Much better the the previous green.

Unlike Harvey, I kinda like a two column blog at the moment.

One thing, not sure if a big deal: in Opera, getting over runs on the main page for the posts over the sidebar.

Posted by: William Teach at June 03, 2007 05:34 PM (doAuV)

22 Thanks, Teach.

I don't understand -- "getting over" runs over? Huh?

Posted by: Ogre at June 03, 2007 06:56 PM (UXCWf)

23 On the front page, the posts boxes overlap the sidebar. Happening in both IE and Opera. Fine in the individual posts.

Posted by: William Teach at June 03, 2007 07:32 PM (doAuV)

24 PS: it is the way the float is set. On my 12" laptop, with 1024 resolution, get the over run. On my work laptop, 15" wide screen, it is A-OK

Posted by: William Teach at June 03, 2007 09:01 PM (doAuV)

25 Silly people and their skinny screens...

Thanks for pointing that out. I guess I need to set up a variable float for those with narrow screens...oh wait, I already did that. Hmmm... I wonder what I set that caused that to mess up...

Posted by: Ogre at June 04, 2007 02:32 PM (oifEm)

26 Aha, I see it. It was the wide flag picture doing that! Thanks again for pointing it out.

Posted by: Ogre at June 04, 2007 02:44 PM (oifEm)






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