New Blog Theme
I was looking for something clean, simple, fast, and mobile-friendly.
It’s not 100% done yet, but it was close enough to roll out.
I hope you like it, and I hope Perry likes his new icon.
I was looking for something clean, simple, fast, and mobile-friendly.
It’s not 100% done yet, but it was close enough to roll out.
I hope you like it, and I hope Perry likes his new icon.
41 Comments
so, I typed out my comment about something, and then hit submit, and the very thing i was complaining/constructive criticisming/bugfinding about GOT ME AND MY POST DISSAPEARED!
aHEM,
The three entry boxes to the left are unlabeled (name, e-mail website)
The two check mark boxes below, the ‘subscribe to comments’ is unlabelled.
If you don’t have your e-mail address in the box and hit submit, it takes you to a new error page, dissapearing your comment forever.
I will prioritize fixing those issues. =] Thank you!
Hmmm.
The 3 boxes to the left with name/email/website ARE labelled for me.
But the two checkboxes underneath are not.
Oo
Oh, and I apparently need to hit the post comment button twice, once to drop the comment text window down to regular size again, then again to submit the actual comment.
Perry, I am equally unhappy with this double-submit business, and am trying to track down which of the eleventy billion js files in this theme are causing it so I can squish it. Wish me luck!
Also, I fixed the padding issue on mobile devices.
On the comment button situation. I am still tracking it down, but it’s worth noting that if you tab out of the comment box FIRST, the Post button only needs to be used once. It’s the activity of the text box losing focus that’s causing the problem with the first Post click.
Kristen, the boxes on the left are all labeled for me (both above and inside the box) and when I try to submit without an email, it sends me to an error page that I can hit the back button from and the form is still filled out.
I fixed the missing label issue. =]
Ah, now they are labeled. THis is excellent. my cookies still don’t remember my e-mail. And it doesn’t have that helpful note that my e-mail address won’t be displayed and used for evil purposes.
The comment nesting looks disjoined. the reply threads comments aren’t distinct enough for easy reading. fix that… somehow? Also, nobody has cute icon pictures anymore!
Name, email, and link should all now be properly remembered.
I also added a note indicating that I will never abuse emails supplied. If anyone’s curious, the only thing I’ve used them for in the past is privately contacting giveaway winners.
Cute icon pictures have reappeared!
Well, I will mourn the old web-page — but I understand I’m a minority. I hate ‘the River’, the web-page style everyone uses these days to cater to cell phones. A thin squirt of data down the center of the page, surrounded by huge swathes of nothing. I understand why people do it and, unfortunately, I don’t have a phone-friendly easy alternative. But right now, 65%-70% of my screen is grey space; at best, on the ‘fullest’ pages, that drops to ‘only’ 50% wasted space.
So I like the old page much better.
I know what you mean, but it’s definitely the direction the internet is heading. I’m working on trying to modify this theme to drop the left sidebar when viewing full blog entries (much like it does when viewing a page) but I did extensive research on variable width vs static width designs and there’s zero doubt in the designer community that static is the preference.
And I was still getting reports of people not liking how busy the background was on the old design.
Hopefully with some tweaking, I’ll be able to get it a little more traditional-internet friendly. =]
I never did cotton to the background on the previous theme, and I’m not super-crazy about the background color here. But otherwise, it’s looking pretty good. :) (Haven’t tried to view it on the phone or Nexus 7 yet, though.)
Also, that “0 of 36″ by Choose? Yeah . . . NEXT WEEK THAT CHANGES!
Okay, weird smart quotes on my previous reply . . . I think because I ended the bit in quotes with a number, it defaulted to the “inches” mark. (We’ll see what happens with this reply.)
(Oh, and I’m having to re-enter my email & website data on this reply—but it knew my name. Odd.)
For what it’s worth, on comments: Left side, I think I’d prefer to see the commenter’s name first, before the date & time. And the time is EST . . . I’m in MST, and you’re in CST, so . . . huh?
I will add those to the list of suggestions.
The background color was chosen because half the internet hates white backgrounds and the other half hates colored backgrounds. This was a neutral tone that I thought might fit in the middle somewhere.
Yay for possible Choose updates incoming!
Because EST is the obvious standard for the civilized world!
Time was only EST because I’d chosen the GMT- custom override instead of “Chicago” and I didn’t bother to update for time changes and all that nonsense. From this point forward, times should be correct. =]
Looking pretty dang good now! :)
Woot! Just a few more things to solve and it should be pretty close to finished (minus the tweaking that never stops).
I see what Tami’s reading, and what Perry’s reading . . . what’s Steven reading?
Yay! The check boxes underneath are labelled again.
But It’s not remembering me and having to re-enter email each time.
And yes, curiosity regarding what Steven is reading as well!
Steven is mostly reading Reddit. ;)
This is true as well.
Very little and very slowly most often. I tend to either read through a lot at once, or just not much at all.
Right now I’m on the first book of the series Tami just finished.
Would it be Alera by any chance? =D
No, the Underland Chronicles.
And I’ll see what I can do about the emails not getting remembered.
I have nothing helpful to offer that others have not already noted.
But, I like the theme! Now, if you could just make it look like something official, so it’s not so suspicious when I get caught reading it at work!
Thanks, Willy! I’m glad to hear you like it!
Hey, at least I got rid of the busy background. Surely this is at least moderately more businesslike. *grin*
Change. I will take some time to make adjustments. And then I will totally forget what it once was and accept it as it now is. I am sure Charles Darwin would have little appreciation for this functionality of my brain, but people tend to love it. In my head, you never were young, or skinny or had a head full of hair. THIS is how you have always looked and it is wonderful.
<3 Anne
Works for me. :)
Thanks!
Testing the timestamp
Another timestamp test
Tami, the background of the commenter name/gravatar/time info isn’t quite the same as the theme background. Is that intentional? Also, given the size of that box, any chance you can embiggen the gravatar a smidge?
(And lol @ auto-spellcheck with that last line!)
And done! I still need to fix a few things with this expando comments box, but I am slowly ticking things off the ToDo list.
Where did “Best of the Blog” go? Can we have that back? Or a search bar?
This is something that I think also happened on the old theme, but while I’m making suggestions, perhaps “Artist Sketchbook” should open in a new tab/window as it’s offsite?
I actually liked the old theme but I understand all the motivations behind the switch. And my blog is orange, so who am I to complain? ;)
Oooh, that’s interesting. I didn’t realize anyone even knew I had a Best of the Blog page, so I was going to let it quietly fade away. How did you use it? What did you like about it?
I could possibly integrate it into the About Us page or something, if it was mostly just used to find the link to the NaNo prep stuff, but if it was the big list that you liked, I can resurrect the page. =]
Also, I apparently can’t set a menu link to open in a new window, which seems odd, but is definitely true. I’d have to yank at wordpress innards to get that to work, which I try not to do
And I love orange. Ain’t nuffin wrong with that. *grin*
I liked the big list! There were multiple posts in there – including the NaNo posts – that I liked to reference often, and I liked being able to find them without having to hunt :)
Actually, I discovered that the page still exists, there just isn’t a link to it. But if I type in the url for the page it still comes up. So unless you were planning on deleting it…
Ah, I wasn’t aware that new windows required yanking of innards. I am completely in support of your decision not to do that.
The funny thing about orange is that *I* don’t like it that much. Which is why I was surprised when I picked it for my blog. And I like it as the blog color. But at any other time in my life and for any other purpose I would probably tell you it was my least favorite color….sometimes my thought processes are terribly confusing to me ;)
Definitely not planning on getting rid of the page. I may add a little sidebar blip to it, then, to keep the header area fairly clean. =]
And orange is actually a very effective blog color. It’s warm AND exciting, without being alarming or busy (depending on how it’s used). Traditional blog design research supports your gut decision to pick the orange!
Yay! Go subconcious! ;)