I am not new to live redesigns and staring at this screen late tonight I know what needs to be done. I need to adjust the layout of the site to better integrate some new features that I have planned. The problem is I don’t have everything planned out, so I am going to implement a temporary (or maybe permanent) redesign that follows the same template as Work Boxers since that template gives me a lot more flexibility.
Hopefully I get it done before most of you wakeup to check What’s New at FG, but if not then just please bare with me. No the layout isn’t crazy cool or design-o-riffic, but it can make FG a more complete site for you readers.
Comments aren’t open because I am scared of all of you.
UPDATE: Screw it, let’s add comments since I am not scared of you people. Hehe, haha, hoho.
Looks good to me! I’m on a slow connection, so at first it looked random, but it all loaded and now all is good in my universe.
Thanks Tony. I have been up for a while so I don’t know how much more I will do, but in the future there will be a bit more graphical splash and color added here and there.
At first the big titles were frightening, but I think they’re growing on me.
Is it just Safari, or do those little spreadsheet-y things on the right not all line up? Probably just a bug, but thought I’d throw it out there in case it was a bigger issue.
Looks fine to me in Safari. The two right columns should only align at the very top.
I’m a little reluctant to suggest this, but it just seems the design could really benefit if the left content area were fluid. Trust me I didn’t want to suggest it (a fluid layout is kicking my ass literally as we speak), but I think it would really improve things.
As it is right now, even just at 1024 width, the right third of the screen is empty. The middle column is actually even left of center. The categories and “free stuff” are the focal point. It’s difficult to read the column of content way over to the left.
Just my two cents.
ack! Liquid?! Damn, haven’t toiled in that direction in a long time. I will look into it Brian. Thanks for the suggestion.
Heh, I think I might have over-complicated things. Let’s see if that submission form on the right increases reader’s submissions. Let’s see it’s 4:30am right now, good time for a beer.
Oh god my eyes! It keeps CHANGING! Make it stop! Let me off this ride… *hurk*
5:12am…nap time. Hope you feel better in a bit Dylan.
new cool
“Let’s see if that submission form on the right increases reader’s submissions.”
Looking good, Scrivens. I may nip your idea here, I have mine on the bottom for suggestions to my resources (and it does quite well), but I gotta fill up some space over on the right…
*nip* – sound of idea being stolen ;-)
Ahem – comment handler template.
I truely hesitate to coment but… this page is not at all rendering correctly in firefox.
Not that it won’t be fixed.
It’s different… I still haven’t fully adapted myself to it.
What do you mean it doesn’t render in firefox? That’s what I use.
Mike: I like the Submission form in the footer idea, let me see what I can come up with there. But then again if you are stealing my idea then it might just be working.
Oh wow. I was like ‘dang, this redesign either sucks or is still in progress’. Then I hit Shift+Refresh, and it looks great. I just needed a new CSS. Nice job.
“…in the future there will be a bit more graphical splash and color added here and there.”
Excellent. And by “color added” you mean lose the dark grey, right?
I was wondering when you were going to chime in Nicole about the dark grey. Yes, I am looking into it, but unfortunately I think the dark grey has become sort of the FG brand. I will see what I can do for my favorite author (shh, don’t tell anyone I said that).
You know me too well. :)
Also, I would be happy with more color of any sort, dear benevolent FG overlord. I’ll take what I can get.
maybe we can choose skins, like differnt colors, same layout and everything, but colors differnt per skin.
just a thougt :)
btw thanks for changing the layout its really neat :D
Sorry Must have been a hickup on my end(proxy server or somthing)… as soon as I submited the comment and refreshed the page it fixed itself. (the side bars and header had been missing, this was at about 8 am)
I feel kind of silly for having posted that now…
Looks good so far.
Hm… I find it really difficult to actually read the content now. All that stuff on the right completely dominates the page. Even when trying to read the content on the right the white borders around everything make it hard to read. Maybe if you made the borders darker color than the text or something so the text stands out instead of the lines.
Not to mention with the double right columns it looks like a Weblogs, Inc. site now. :(
Hey I didn’t even know you still read this site. See this who entry and redesign were just a ploy to get you out of the woodworks.
Tweaking with colors and what not still needs to occur so hopefully that improves readability for everyone in Tennessee.
Actually Gawker Media had three columns before WIN, so maybe this site looks like them now. In any case the 3 columns gives me more flexibility so it must be done. After more design tweaks and whatnot it shouldn’t even come close to looking like a WIN site.
Well I suffer from information overload now. I got a little overzealous with my bloglines subscriptions, and now I get over 1,000 unreads every morning. And then I get overwhelmed and just start marking shit as read to get it off my screen, so some stuff slips through the cracks. :)
I’m sure you’ll fix it all in time, but I like to point out problems that you are already aware of. You know, just to make sure you are aware of them.
I agree with ‘Derek’, right hand side overpowers the page. Removing or darkening the boarders may help. Also, is all the content really necessary?
Is all the content necessary? Maybe not all of it, but most of it is, otherwise I wouldn’t have changed the layout. I know it’s in every reader’s best interest to just have the entries in a single column with maybe a list of archives, but things just can’t workout like that.
Hope this doesn’t effect anyone’s decision to stop coming here.
Might it be possible to hide the right side content when viewing a single full post? Similar to the default theme in WordPress 1.5. [ http://binarybonsai.com/playground/ ]
yeah, derek, nothing at ALL to do with World of Warcraft, not in the slightest.
I’m with derek, scrivs.. it’s hard to read, much harder than the old one. It looks extremely cluttered and unpleasant. A 3 column layout seems to work better if the narrow columns are on the extreme left and extreme right and the actual content is in the center, and preferably the center is flexible so the content can flow based on your window size
Damn, JC came out of the woodwork as well to complain? Now if only I could you get guys to write something I have this whole game figured out.
Well Ok, so it is World of Warcraft. But when I actually do get around to looking at bloglines, it’s the information overload that keeps me from paying attention to anything. Honest! :)