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Sometimes a little redesign is necessary

27 March 2006 - 1:34am — Laura Scott

I just went and did it: a little css reboot. I just couldn't take the drab look of this place any more. Really, the old theme was an embarrassment. My apologies are offered in advance to those of you on dial-up for whom this page will take some 40 seconds or so to load fully. The graphics should all be there by the time you finish reading this post -- Evelyn Wood graduates excepted.

The theme is powered by phpTemplate. (I'm still running Drupal 4.6 here.) The photograph is mine, shot in Colorado. There are more where that came from on my photoblog.

CSS Reboot Spring 2006 Lucky for me there's an occasion for this. I saw the CSS Reboot happening last year, but it was a total coincidence that this little redesign is coinciding with the current "event."

Alas, this site is not validating right now. Grrr! Part of the problem -- most of it -- is because I blog using ecto, which doesn't quite generate valid strict xhtml -- or at least it doesn't with the settings I'm using. But I'm sure one or two of the errors are in my Drupal theme template files themselves. (If I were a petty soul, I'd be gratified that I'm getting fewer errors than the CSS Reboot site itself. But I'm only petty enough to mention it without any joy.) I'll try to clean things up before the May 1 deadline. Because even though I did this for myself, the site really should validate.

But it's late. I'm tired. I have work to do tomorrow, and for many tomorrows after that. Hopefully I'll find some time before tomorrow is yesterday.

(Okay, dial-up visitors. By now the background images should have loaded by now. Do you like it?)

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Laura Scott is a web designer and developer.

Comments

27 March 2006 - 10:19pm — charlie (not verified)

I like the see through

Great design. I like the see through background underneath the main content and sidebar for it's cool factor, but it's a little hard to read the text in the main blog. Seems to muddle the type a little. Have you considered trying it with the background only showing through the sidebar? Block content is meant more to scan than to read closely and you are using a lot of bold there, so the see through background is not as disruptive. Could be about as cool with the change and easier to read :)

27 March 2006 - 10:29pm — Laura Scott

I wonder if I'm too Mac biased

Fair points. I wonder if the problem you describe is because of your platform. Windows will render this site a touch darker, I believe. And while my normal design process involves checking and re-checking with every browser and platform I can get a hold of -- usually, Win IE, Win FF, Mac Safari and Mac FF -- I didn't do more than a cursory check of how winderz saw the snow.

Thanks for the feedback! I'll look at modifications to soften the bg a bit.

7 April 2006 - 10:49pm — charlie (not verified)

windows view

Yep. I'm viewing it on Firefox in Windows (I'm partial to building my own machines, so I'm not a Mac fan--yet). It's not bad, it's just the noise that it adds to your text does make it just a little harder to read. I tend to notice these things 'cause I read too much online. (lol)