This may be the best blog design on the internet. (I wish!)

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check mark As you can see, I’ve had a new design done for the blog. I’m not sure yet what I think.

What do you think? Could you give me your opinion in the comments? I would sure appreciate it.

This entry was posted on Mar 30, 2007, 8:52 pm and is filed under ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Comments (19)

#1 by Rory on Mar 31, 2007 - 9:05 am

Ooh, now I’m trying to remember the previous one…

For me, this one looks a lot more “professional”. It says to me, “I am offering serious advice on the matters you see displayed on the top right.” Your previous designs were much more personal and “homely”. They said, “This is me, Dave Olson, and this is my belief system and goals.”

So, for my money, it depends on what feel you are aiming for.
#2 by Dave on Mar 31, 2007 - 10:13 am

Rory, thanks! I did want it to come off as more professional. It’s always nice for people to think that you have some serious thoughts. It does seem to me that it is lacking in colour. What do you think?
#3 by Rory on Mar 31, 2007 - 12:04 pm

I’m not sure about the “navmenu” colour – it seems to clash with the gray body rather than complement it. (However, I love the buttons, the border either side. V. cool.)

Again the sidebar colour: It doesn’t sit easy on my eye with the gray body colour. Not that I’m an expert on colour.

One thing that might enhance things considerably: Can you change the “header” font in the sidebar? It looks too compressed, the t’s and i’s are a bit lost. It needs something a little easier to read.

Okay, I’ll stop now, in case it’s getting too depressing…
#4 by Dave on Mar 31, 2007 - 3:36 pm

Rory, I’ve changed some of the colour scheme. What do you think? I also made a change to the font in the sidebar, but I’m not sure it’s any better. Thots??

BTW it’s not depressing at all… bring it on.
#5 by Rory on Mar 31, 2007 - 11:27 pm

It might just be my bad eyesight, or memory, but I can’t really see a difference

What would it be like if you added the attribute, “text-transform: upper-case;” to the sidebar h2?
#6 by Dave on Mar 31, 2007 - 11:43 pm

Rory, good idea. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that. I changed the text-transform attribute and the letter-spacing. I must have lost my bearings with being an SOB and all.
#7 by Robyn on Apr 01, 2007 - 4:00 am

Dave, I think this design looks really good! We all need to keep playing with ideas and growing or else we fall behind!
#8 by Adii on Apr 01, 2007 - 8:16 am

This is a great design. I love the clean and trendy feel to it! Keep up the good work!
#9 by Dave on Apr 01, 2007 - 8:21 am

thanks Adii. I was trying to go for clean.
#10 by Rory on Apr 01, 2007 - 9:08 am

Yup! The sidebar is much easier to read. And I’m liking the navbar colour scheme a lot more. Are you happy with it?

To be ultra-picky, the buttons now seem to have a slight overhang. It might have something to do with the margin or padding attribute, or something.

All-in-all, it’s looking good, Dave. “Clean”, that’s about right.
#11 by Dave on Apr 01, 2007 - 1:13 pm

Rory, you know I think the colours are “okay” but kinda blaah actually. There’s just no pop in the theme. I pulled the colour palette off of colourlovers.com and it works but….. Not sure what you mean about the buttons having an overhang. What browser are you using.
#12 by Rory on Apr 02, 2007 - 9:42 am

Dave, don’t worry about my pickiness. If it’s fine with you, that’s what matters.

Colour is a difficult thing, isn’t it. It is quite hard to find something we feel right with – and also get the right combination. I used a fashion book to get a combination of colours over at my new-look hamelife, but what I wanted to be a golden colour has just come out looking orange.

Hey, how about putting a dark border around the “page” div. Oh no, wait a minute, your theme is quite fluid. What about wrapping the content and sidebar in a div, and then setting a border around that? Or, perhaps your header could have a different background to the body, and then your “page” div could have a dark border.

Good heavens, I’m not being much help here, am I. I just wonder whether a border would lift the content from the body. At present, the white against gray, without a dark border to break it, might be the cause of the “blaah” impression. Just throwing a few thoughts around, here. Something might stick.
#13 by Dave on Apr 02, 2007 - 9:48 am

Rory, Yeah I was thinking about a border around the sidebar and content too. Went to do it the other night but realized I had to do more work than just change my stylesheet. I’ll give it a go after I finish reading the articles in the blog carnival you linked to.

BTW I like what you’ve been doing to your site. Looking good. Really like the information box just under your header. Great touch.
#14 by Dave on Apr 02, 2007 - 12:28 pm

thanks Robyn. Ideas, ideas, ideas… never seems to be a shortage of them.
#15 by Rory on Apr 03, 2007 - 7:10 am

Dave =

I think that’s just about all I can say. (And then I’ll go on and say more…) The border does it for me. I’m a border kinda guy! It just seems to lift the site off the page. The buttons look cool, too.

The big question is…what do you think?

Oh, and thank you for the compliments. Was I fishing earlier? Surely not!
#16 by Rory on Apr 03, 2007 - 7:12 am

Oh, and you’ve given your HUGE name a light shadow. Ha!

Did I miss that before?
#17 by Dave on Apr 03, 2007 - 7:19 am

Rory, I really like the border too. Thanks so much for the suggestion.

I like the layout much more after implementing the things you’ve suggested. I still want to move my search section up into the navbar but I’m having a bit of trouble with the formatting. And one thing I am always thinking about is that while it may look great in Safari, I just don’t know what microsoft will do to it….

BTW, I didn’t notice the fish hook until after I had posted my comment.
#18 by Rory on Apr 03, 2007 - 4:40 pm

I hear you, Dave. Perishing Microsoft being a firefox user, I have only just found out that Internet Explorer has made mince-meat out of my menu buttons. I don’t know where to begin.
#19 by Rory on Apr 15, 2007 - 7:22 am

I’m really keen on the larger font for the main text – excellent. I just wonder whether the font in your sidebar could be cranked up a notch or two. It is quite tiny. You could turn it up to 0.9em, or even 1em – although I think you might have to drop the sidebar h2 attribute down to 1.1em, unless you’re happy with a bigger h2. Anyway, just a suggestion.

And, on a purely aesthetic level – and coming from someone who likes his CDs all alphabetised, and all his ducks in a row – I like the post entry to be in line with the post title. But take no notice of my minor case of OCD.

By the way, do you use the firefox extension WebDeveloper? It is a real beaut! You can edit the CSS on the fly. It doesn’t make any changes literally, but it gives you an idea of what changes would look like. When you find something you like you can cut and paste into your “presentation”.