It’s that time again!
Yes, it’s time to dust off the trusty text editor and get editing all those lovely files whose names are acronyms: HTML, CSS, PHP (and .htaccess, but don’t worry too much about that one).
I’m having a redesign!
This theme has been in development for ages, on my local install, and it’s now time to roll it out and make more edits live. I love making edits live, it’s so exciting, no? Anyways, it’ll be fixed up by the end of the day, and I’m also happy to announce the imminent return of stories, articles and poems, hooray!
Now is the time to submit feedback about the new look, because after a while I will have forgotten how the CSS works and then it will be too late.
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It’s quite white, isn’t it? Give me time, it will probably grow on me. The big fonts and lack of wasted space at the sides on my medium-to-big screen is good though. …Are good.
As for forgetting how the CSS works: surely your CSS is semantic enough to make sense even a decade later when re-read?
Oooh, yes, I like the way you present comments.
And overall, having explored a bit, I like the simplicity of your design. I think it’s possibly missing just one more element - a colour, or a vertical stripe on the left or right hand side. Something, to reduce the whiteness. As I write this comment into the comment box I’m able to set the scrollbar so that there is absolutely no colour visible (apart from the cyan coloured links). That’s one small step too minimalist for my tastes.
But, yes, overall it does work. Very different though! Various things, which I thought were non-negotiables of Mark Kenny designs, have in fact changed. Most stimulating… :)
Cool, I shall take your comments regarding colour on board and see what I can do. I started this design just after I deleted everything a while ago, and while it started off as a “I don’t care, this is gonna just look boring” it kinda flourished into this!
I think I’m beginning to trust my own instincts when it comes to design.
I do love the font, though, who would have thought that Arial could ever look so lovely? It’s like writing with fridge magnets, really nice chunky letters! I think I’m just going through all of the Microsoft fonts, Times New Roman (ages and ages ago, never again!), Georgia, Tahoma, Trebuchet MS, now Arial.
Actually, that’s something I love — people complain (myself included) about how Microsoft has held back the web with IE 6 being so feeble, but they designed the fonts that appear on 90% of sites on the internet!
So what did you consider to be “non-negotiables of Mark Kenny designs”? I am all afire with curiosity!
Oh, also, with the CSS, it’s actually quite complicated in parts. For example, the CSS for the comments is surprisingly involved! No prizes for guessing which browser caused all the troubles ;)
Some of it is dead simple, but you forget what margin and padding you’ve specified for each section, and then you have to litter everything with little
!importantdeclarations. When you’re working with more than one stylesheet, it’s easy to forget which bits do what, and which parts apply to which sections.Also: check me out! I’m using a proper colour scheme at last! Plus I’ve abandoned
#2178a7for unvisited links — this is an all time first for a number of years!Non-negotiables (although I am sure there were exceptions to all of these before):
- Small font and compact layout, lending everything a peaceful, understated air despite bold colours
- Avoidance of Arial et al, as you have mentioned
- Sidebars with extra info and links
- A “you are here” path displayed somewhere
- Graphic or photo with either an outdoors feel or some kind of boldness
- A predominance of blue or green or something dark
- Absence of pure white
- Shading, graduation somewhere
By the way, I love the coloured bar to the side of the comments; I don’t like the way the box goes round your own name though. Not one bit. Need to find another way to highlight your own name.
(And finally, what are you like, including a code like #2178a7 in a sentence! Makes no sense to me at all. I know it’s a colour, but without actually trying it out I have no idea what colour. Might have been good to display that number in the colour concerned. But that’s just a nit-pick.)
PS The invitation to Germany was genuine. (see your comment on my blog)
Yeah, I know, isn’t it great not having a sidebar? I feel so liberated! Finally I don’t have to worry about too many archive links, or people getting confused. It’s so nice!
You’re right about the “you are here” links (called breadcrumbs or a trail). What an oversight, I ought to look into putting that back, maybe. Though the “Being Mr Kenny” at the top is a link to the homepage.
And I deliberately tried to avoid blue and green, it was getting to be too cliche.
#2178a7can be seen as the unvisited link colour all over any of the sites I’ve made. You can see it on the front page of Open Space. You can work it out like this:21= low red,78= higher green,a7= very high blue — so it’s a blue!How’s this for my comments? I’m afraid it’s good browsers only, IE doesn’t understand the selector logic :( If you’re using IE, you’ll see the box, not the background colour. If your curiosity becomes too much go and get either Firefox or Opera.
Already on firefox. The new version for your comments is fab. In fact it is exactly what I had been thinking of, but didn’t like to suggest it and be too bossy.