Fresh
14 Aug 08
I admit it. I go through phases with maintaining and updating this site. There are times when I let it slide for a good long while, and then there are others, such as the past few weeks, where the drive to improve it and keep it moving forward really picks up some steam.
If you’ve been here before and are reading this in a browser, you’ll surely notice the new look. If you’re reading this in an feed reader, come on over for a look. On the surface, it’s a pretty radical departure from the previous design, but the underlying architecture is fairly intact.
Having been in place for a bit more than 2 years, I was never completely satisfied with the previous look and feel. For instance, I tried to get creative with the color scheme, but I don’t think it was entirely successful. There was this idea I had to change it seasonally which never materialized. I had also added features to the site which I thought it was supposed to have being a blog, such as tags, a link list (“Worth a Look”) and other useless ways to navigate the blog posts on the site. Do I really need “recent comments” links?
I’ve stripped these fatty bits from the site to better serve the content and conceived a design which I feel more accurately reflects my aesthetic sensibilities. The color palette is more elemental. The fluff is gone. The layout is now a single column. As an experiment, I’ve built the layout using an em-based elastic approach. If you’re unfamiliar with elastic layouts, try resizing your browser text to see the benefits they offer.
This new version also reflects a growing interest of mine in web typography and what is possible with it using only CSS. I’ve paid more attention to things like leading, vertical rhythm, scale and ornamental ampersands. There’s a certain degree of graded browser support built into the styling. This site looks best-or rather, as intended-in Safari if you happen to have Adobe Caslon Pro installed as an active font. If not, you’re probably reading this in either Garamond or Georgia, both fine typefaces in their own right.
One other note on graded browser support: to all you IE6 users out there, if you see something that doesn’t look right, I’m sorry, but I’m not concerned with making this site look flawless in your browser. You should be able to get the content just fine, but the level of effort necessary to fix every little layout bug that may be there just isn’t worth it for a 7-year old browser being used by only 5% of you.
There are surely a few rough spots here and there which I’ll be cleaning up as I find them. If you see something that doesn’t look right, email me and let me know about. Otherwise, enjoy the new digs. I’d be happy to know what you think.
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