Extreme makeover
As you ought to have noticed, buytaert.net got redesigned. The previous incarnation was getting a little boring so Michael Angeles of urlgreyhot created me a new theme. Michael is a world-class information architect, user experience design consultant and long time Drupal evangelist. Thanks Michael!
First reaction?
It's nice and clean (I love whitespace). Some minor issues which I couldn't help but notice. The navigation is poor though; the "About" is a misnomer there (I expected it to be a link, not the title of the navigation), the active menu isn't highlighted and the click target is confined to the text (hint: set the link to display:block in the CSS). It's also too bad that page title's (the h1) don't line up with the menu. Otherwise, very nice!
March 17, 2006 - 18:24Jeroen, thanks for the constructive feedback. I renamed the 'About' block to 'Navigation' and made sure the titles align horizontally. I'll look into the link problems shortly.
March 17, 2006 - 20:01Yes, I suppose we can tighten that up a little.
March 17, 2006 - 22:59I'm on a Win PC, and the only issue I have is the font, it's not really legible (both in Firefox 1.5 and IE7, 1400 by 1050 pixels).
In general I like Michael's designs very much, and I'm a bit surprised he hasn't chosen a bigger header (image), so the header text is at least as big as the posting titles (like some other designs of him ).
Or was it Dries' modesty that didn't allow a bigger header :-) ?
March 17, 2006 - 18:35The goal was a minimal design, thus the simple header. It's a bit difficult to make everyone happy. Ultimately I was looking for something that gave Dries balance and a good deal of white space around the blog entries.
Not sure why it's not legible for you. My resolution is 1680x1050 and it appears to be ok. Font size is done in ems, so it's definitely scalable upwards and downwards.
March 17, 2006 - 22:58Hi Michael,
OK, forget the remarks on esthetics, I'm afraid it has to do with taste indeed.
On the font: I'm Dutch-speaking like Dries, and "not really legible" was a bad translation of my feeling that I found the font harder to read than run-of-the-mill boring Verdana.
I've uploaded my IE and Firefox screenshots at
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=113864907&size=o (Firefox) and http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=113864901&size=o (IE7).
That's probably more helpful than describing what I think I see.
Keep posting on Information Architecture on Urlgreyhot, I really enjoy it!
March 18, 2006 - 00:04Wow, that looks pretty awful. Looks like you have font smoothing on and browser font size is at least +1. But even with that setting on my Windows machine it doesn't look like that. Strange.
March 18, 2006 - 01:55Font smoothing: didn't know it existed :-)
March 18, 2006 - 11:21Browser font size: no, the default setting. Maybe it's a css bug (IE7 is still in beta, should not have complained :-)
You'll also want the Microsoft PowerToys (download ).
March 19, 2006 - 23:54As per Michael's suggestion, I made a small change to the stylesheet. Did this fix the font problem? (You might want to clear your browser's cache.)
March 20, 2006 - 10:29The funky font shapes from my IE screenshot have disappeared, but that's probably by upgrading to IE7 Beta preview 2 :-)
Oh, and happy honeymoon!!
March 25, 2006 - 21:47I like it Dries. Clean and crisp. Great color choice too btw;-)
FYI. The skiing in Whistler just keeps getting better!!!
March 17, 2006 - 22:22Thanks Andre! Did I tell you that they might be using this picture of you in the visitor's guide for Tourism Vancouver? I got an e-mail from their publisher asking for permission to use it in print.
March 17, 2006 - 22:45Nice facelift, but lose the orange! Just personal taste I guess.
March 17, 2006 - 23:45Refined, understated, and right in the moment. It suits.
March 18, 2006 - 03:44I think the huge amount of white and orange was the big clue as to it's origins. :)
Nice if you like lots of whitespace.
March 20, 2006 - 00:04Hey Dries,
Nice make-over. I like the simplicity and overal feel of the layout. I have to agree with Pascal though that the font seems way too large in Firefox. I uploaded the screenshots to compare:
Buytaert.net in Firefox 1.5
Buytaert.net in IE 6
Michael prefers to use larger fonts but this seems to be a small bug. Apart from that: great work.
March 22, 2006 - 13:00In Win2K and WinXP I see this:
So from the looks of it, you have screen smoothing with ClearType off.
1) Right click on the desktop and click Properties
2) Click Appearance tab
3) Click Effects button
Is the checkbox unchecked next to "Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts"? If it is checked, do you have "Standard" selected or "ClearType"? If you have ClearType selected things should look like above. If you have Standard or nothing selected, you get the chunky aliased text.
I've asked Dries to modify the font to see if it makes a difference to users with these settings. Other option would be to bump down the font size on the headings. We'll see what happens.
March 22, 2006 - 19:16Hey Michael,
I had indeed the 'standard' option selected. Did you change something because now it all looks normal. The font is still a tad larger in FF than in IE, but it looks nice now. Could you tell me what you changed?
March 30, 2006 - 10:52Post new comment