Comments on: Change

By: ...deb

...deb — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 19:02:42 +0000

I like all the tweaking you’ve done since I was here last. Much more readible text. Good blend of bolds, italics, sizes – without looking cluttered. The links seems to look right. I Like the bear. The shading helps my eye wander more easily. Not that I have a wandering or lazy eye.

PS – I have been loving your implement-theme poems.

By: Johemmant

Johemmant — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:59:03 +0000

I think it’s because there is so much of it across the page now, newspaperish. I appreciate the font hasn’t changed, there’s just more of it. And thanks for not minding my minding :) Have a good weekend, in a week or two I will have adjusted.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:30:32 +0000

Oh, O.K. — thanks for clarifying your critique. Hmmm.

I must say I’m very pleased with all the concrete criticisms and suggestions for change here, many of which I’ve already implemented. Based on this, I’d strongly encourage other bloggers to solicit criticism when working through a redesign of their site.

By: leslee

leslee — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 11:31:49 +0000

No, you’re right. It’s not the whiteness on the left side of the text. I think it’s just a bit unbalanced on the banner – the black bear on the right isn’t balanced strongly enough on the left, so the “via negativa,” which is lower and less bold, seems to slide off. Something needs to balance in the banner, though it doesn’t have to be the title.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 01:18:49 +0000

Hi Leslee – Glad you liked the bear! It may or may not be a long-term resident up there. As for the sidebar, I’ve changed the link font style to resemble what the old theme had (differentiation by size rather than boldness), and I suppose in time I’ll decide to darken the background color to resemble Modern, too! I like this pale green myself, but I think it strikes a lot of other people as generic or corporate – reactions to colors can be very visceral. something darker might well help to minimize the distraction issue some people are having, too. I’ll keep thinking about it.

You’re the first to mention a discomfort with the unbordered left margin. I’m having a hard time empathizing with that one.

Thanks a lot for sharing your reactions.

By: leslee

leslee — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 00:58:36 +0000

I like the bear! That does give it some personality. The sidebars are good, too. I agree that they’re more likely to be used when they’re so accessible, as opposed to on another page or when they scroll down one column too far. Not sure about the color. But you can always tweak that at some point (presuming it’s relatively easy to change color coding).

Maybe you could consider some border on the left side, so the text isn’t trailing off into whiteness?

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 00:13:57 +0000

Hi anon – Thanks for the feedback. In defense of the recent comments links, they do serve to alert readers other than me to the existence of comments in old posts; unlike a lot of bloggers, I keep comments open indefinitely because you never know what will come in.

Sorry to hear you feel the sidebar stuff is a distraction. I’ve heard that from some others, too. I’ll work on ways to mitigate that, but I also suspect that it will seem a little less distracting once you get used to the new design.

Smorgasblog was great and I enjoyed doing it. I stopped because it took up too much of my time; I think qarrtsiluni is a better use of my energies. I can’t do both and still have time for my own writing.

By: anon

anon — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 23:27:15 +0000

I have to agree with some about the lack of hominess – feels a bit sterile. Most troubling to my eye is the heaviness on the right hand side of the page. My eye was drawn away from the entry on the left to the double columns and blocky text on the right. It’s something of a distraction. Your writing really deserves center stage.

Comment previews have always seemed superfluous to me. If a piece of writing moves me one way or another I will inevitably read the comments.

Tangentially, I miss the smorgasblog feature. To my mind, it was a more effective means of calling attention to posts from other bloggers. Having a snippet of writing is often a more compelling and practical lure than random titles from a rolling bloglist, I think.

My two cents. Otherwise, thank you for providing reliably interesting content. It’s always a pleasure to read here.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 20:31:03 +0000

“Bunched”? Sounds like you either need a new browser, or need to adjust the settings on the one you have. Because the text is the same font and just about the same size as on the old theme. You’re allowed not to like it, though, of course. :)

Look at it this way: by no longer using it myself, I’ve made the “Modern” theme all the more distinctly theirs for those few, discerning bloggers who do use it. Which could include you, if you ever decide to go self-hosted with Florescence.

By: Johemmant

Johemmant — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 20:14:06 +0000

Can I say I’m not too keen? I was a huge fan of the old one too, and I felt bereft when I turned up and saw this…it is clinical and hard to read, text seems bunched somehow. Aren’t I awful, you go to all this trouble and I bitch and moan. Sorry.