Opinions on redesign

dangerman

Hi, i upgraded my site to 'version 1.5' today.

http://tcal.net/

You can look at the old design here

Whats your impressions?

Colour, layout etc. I feel I've improved on a decent enough original design, - i wanted evolution rather than a new concept. Did a few obvious things like moving the search box to a much more prominent postion. The transition from 2 to 3 column was simply to give more space for features and items. I've gone to a white background for the main column, cause it just seems cleaner and enhances readability.

It's fixed width still, I played around a lot with fluid layout, but didn't want to give up that kind of control.

Tested down to 800x600 (though it produces a horizontal scroll bar, albeit an unnecessary one, i'll fix this soon) and on Firefox and IE6. - I'm especially interested if other browser configs give any problems.

One possibibly controversial element is the javascript powered submit a link - basically just does a show/hide on a div containing that form, but i know some peeps might be annoyed that without js enabled it'll do nothing.

It validates.

all thoughts appreciated.

cgarvey

Nice and nicer

A bit too cluttered for me, mainly in the right hand column .. but a bit of separation between blog posts would make it easier to read as well. Also a couple of pixels of left padding on the content area (especially the date at top) would make it look a lot less cluttered. But definately an improvement, and better than a hell of a lot of blogging sites out there! Oh, and I love the Outrun flag guy!! One small thing the FAQ Q7 .. I couldn't find any red X!

.cg

dangerman

thanks cgarvey.

I very much take the point of it being a bit cluttered, and as you suggested will try and pad it out a bit more in places. At one stage I had lines breaking up the posts but didn't like the way it looked, but I may look at this kind of thing again, or just increasing spacing generally.

Lol, question 7 in the faq: the little red X i was referring to was the X in the browser, as in close the site. - though I suppose apple people won't find that.

cgarvey

dangerman wrote:

thanks cgarvey.
Lol, question 7 in the faq: the little red X i was referring to was the X in the browser, as in close the site. - though I suppose apple people won't find that.

LOL, I love it!!

impr0v

No real comment on the layout change, but personally, I preferred the old colour scheme. I think the solely grey-blue scheme is a lot colder and less friendly. Also, the panel-like design of the 'submit a link' div has me looking for a way to hide it again if I open it and then decide not to submit anything.

dangerman

impr0v wrote:

No real comment on the layout change, but personally, I preferred the old colour scheme. I think the solely grey-blue scheme is a lot colder and less friendly. Also, the panel-like design of the 'submit a link' div has me looking for a way to hide it again if I open it and then decide not to submit anything.

Will add an X or Close to the div to dissapear it again.

I take the point about the colour scheme, the new colours are certainly far more clean and colder than the off light-brown colours used previously. It's a personal thing I guess, but for now I like the cleaner look.

Going to work on making it look a little less cluttered as suggested above and a few extra little niggles with the page.

Cheers for the feedback.