Revamping the Blog - xanghe v2.0
This blog has always been an experiment. Every time I learned something new, I would try to implement it. Well, I did it again.
This new design was inspired by the Web 2.0 sites I frequent (eBay, Facebook, Trulia, etc), some sites that try to break the Web 2.0 look (W3 <MARKUP/>, a Wordpress theme, Cameron Moll's site), and of course the magic of jQuery. I don't hold a candle to those masters, but by meager imitation I hope to achieve something that is appealing to me and functional for the readers (if any).
I'm caught between contemporary design and grunge, between straight lines and organic forms, so I end up with geometric shapes with shifting opacity, all superimposed over color-rich backgrounds. I love interaction (hence the really-useless dragging in the old blog) so I've attempted to encourage visitors (even force them) to interact with the site to initiate anything - even just reading. The icon in the bottom right opens the Background Picker, which... well... picks the background. The great part about the "picker" is that it is populated live from a google spreadsheet rss feed (didn't use an AJAX call because my database is on another domain and I don't like proxies - thank goodness for JSON!), so as soon as I add more background options, the menu will repopulate on the next click without even reloading the page!!! Ok, maybe the exclamation marks are too much, but I think it's cool.
Bedtime. Now that I enjoy seeing my own blog again I should probably start posting more. Or maybe I'll just play with the sidebar tabs.
3 comments:
Your blog is awesome! I don't know about half the jargon you used in this post but it's some pretty fancy stuff! Don't judge my simple minded ways...I do live in the South now!
Well, you always knew I was a nerd. The funny thing is that I don't understand most of it, either!
Ok, I have to say, although I love the vision, and unique-ness of your blog, your transparency in the blog post column is really starting to bug me.
Every time the mouse leaves the blog post column, your column goes transparent and I cannot read it. This is a major headache since I typically am surfing from a laptop and do not have a scrollwheel on a mouse.
When I want to scroll down the page, I move my mouse over to the scrollbar on the right side of the screen, causing my reading field to go transparent, and then must move the mouse back over the reading field to continue.
I suggest aligning your blog column on the right side of the screen, to make it easy for people to read and scroll.
those are my two cents.
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