Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Changes afoot........

Over the next few days there will be changes afoot on this site. I've been beavering away on a redesign. No doubt you'll all hate it and complain in the comments to let me know. If you do then I can only give you a patented Dizzy response of "bugger off".

It's been over two and half years since this blog was set up. It was done on a whim, the design was hacked on the back of a fag packet. You'll be glad to hear that the new look has been hacked on the back of a fag packet as well.

Thankfully, as this is my site, I don't need to make changes to it under a process of change*, I don't need to open a ticket, and I don't really have to care about user experience. All you need to know is that if anything looks odd it's because I'm playing around.

All the posts will remain, things might just occasionally go a bit screwy as I move stuff around. C'est la vie, this transition will however be fraught with problems I'm sure, but you can guarantee that I won't send you all an email telling you what a roaring success it was!**
* Missus will be amused by that. Go on, admit it, it made you smile right?
** Email me if you spot anything iffy in certain browsers, resolutions etc.. no guarantees though!

32 comments:

Stu said...

Looking pretty good so far (though, of course, nothing on mine :-D )

Slightly strange having the fixed-width header sat atop a fixed-width content section that's a different width to the header... but that's nothing to worry about.

Love the new masthead and logo etc - combines the technological with the political. Very you.

Kid Eternity said...

It doesn't look that great, lacks character and now just looks like a boring Tory blog.

Your other design was nicely simple and the pic of you fitted it better than it does here too...

John M Ward said...

No judgments yet. To be fair, it'll take me (and others, no doubt) a little while to grow accustomed to the new design, and I think it only right that we all allow ourselves that space before firing our salvoes :-)

Nich Starling said...

I like the redesign.

Anonymous said...

Redesign? Didn't notice 'cos too busy writing an 'article' to prove that you're really a Tory-front / spokesperson / reactionary who exists solely to anger me.

Anonymous said...

Seems a bit like bloody Tescos. Just when you think you know your way around they move the bacon to where the cheese should be and the cheese.......oh sod it I'll get a ploughman's at the pub.

All this change is done solely to confuse the elderly. Keeps them on the move and stops them blocking the aisles chatting to each other.

"If it ain't broke don't fix it" as somebody or other used to say to me.

Anonymous said...

If your picture is accurate, you haven't aged a day in two and a half years. What's your secret? Are you bathing in the blood of virgins? Is there a portrait of you in a loft somewhere that's 75 years old?

Unknown said...

Maybe the links column which could do with being more to the right

but the links you choose aren't really a design issue

Being serious for a moment, I do like it. The cartoon of you should maybe be bluer to fit in better with the rest of the header and the blue behind "Dizzy reads" and "not lefties" etc should be darker, but that's just detail.

Anonymous said...

Nice beaver.

Anonymous said...

It'd be good if you made your feeds more complete rather than cut off after a few words in Google Reader.. Reading at work is banned so having to pick the quality posts to read by starring them and coming back later is pretty tough and, sometimes, not worth it. I suspect a ton of people miss out on good stuff because of this.

Anonymous said...

"wonderfulforhisage said...
Seems a bit like bloody Tescos. Just when you think you know your way around they move the bacon to where the cheese should be and the cheese.......oh sod it I'll get a ploughman's at the pub."

I can see plenty of cheese all around here.

Barnacle Bill said...

The header could do with being lighter I feel, it looks a tad gloomy, also being fixed width looks a bit odd.
I hope you are not going to become like Iain Dale who has seemed to morph into Mrs. Dale's diary since his web site relaunch.
Anyway good luck with it Dizzy.

dizzy said...

The fixed width stuff is there because I am going to put some adverts in the white space

nought.point.zero said...

Outrageous! I demand my money back! Er... hang on...

bonetired said...

Blimey ... you will be having sed in the header soon!

s/NuLab/Tory/g

Liam Murray said...

I like it.

A couple of petty observations:

(1) the links column is all formatted hard left. I'll forego the obvious gag and just say a margin of a few px would make the heading blocks look a bit better.

(2) As I think someone else commented your cartoon / pic is a little tight and could do with more space. Would probably also look a bit better in a more sympathetic hue - a light blue perhaps...

dizzy said...

ok.. cartoon thingy is easy to fix. Margins and padding is being tinkered with and I know what you mean, IE looks worse that Firefox on that point. As for the blue, I might lighten up the navbar

Anonymous said...

Stop worrying about the presentation and focus on the content. That's what we come to see

Anonymous said...

Like the redesign. It looks cleaner and clearer. Well done.

Ray Griffin

Anonymous said...

think it is fab but it looks a wee bit like the telegraph redesign which is interesting. coincidence i am sure but it shows that in july 2008 people of a certain mindset are working in a certain direction...

Anonymous said...

I would suggest making the padding-left on the H2 element in the LinkList2 div an extra 5 pixels. The same for the LI elements in the .widget-content classes. Just gives it that extra bit of breathing space and avoids it looking a bit gash with the H2 text pressed right up to the side of the div.

Viewing in IE7 and FF3 on Windows 1400 x 1050 looks good.

On 1024 x 768 on FF3 on Windows it looks like you could do with padding the left of the contentleft div so that there's an "invisible line" going vertically from the edge of the H in Home along down the side of the content in that div. This is less noticable in higher resolutions.

IE6 on 1024 x 768 looks good, except for the navbar div - there's something odd where the navbar on FF is only as high as the text within, but on IE6 and IE7 the height is increased by about two thirds. Looks plush on FF, but loose on IE, which fucks up the mouseover effect.

Will try testing on some Macs later this week.

On the whole, a very nice design. Colours match, layout is broadly good and the post-title font is just the right proportion to the size of the post body, which is what I often struggle with.

We really should get a beer soon. I'm back in the smoke next week. Will drop you a line.

Anonymous said...

Just to add that I think you should drop the Houses of Parliament from your header image and just have it as a plain blue - it makes it look, as LG Test Blog at 22:12 said, like a boring Tory blog. Drop that and it'll help I think. Just my humble opinion of course.

Anonymous said...

I liked the amusing Guido quote at the top of the old site.
It is a nice look though.

dizzy said...

quotes will return. just have to find the time to do it

AloneMan said...

Sorry to disappoint you but you can't tell me to b***** off cos I quite like it too. Agree a bit of left-hand-side indentation wouldn't go amiss.

Anonymous said...

Are you going to do the quotes using some JavaScript/AJAX/Scriptaculous? It would be cool to see them changing live... Maybe too flash?

Anonymous said...

I like it, but why have you culled so many others from your blog roll? (Hint...)

Unknown said...

Dizzy,

just a quick question:-

Does this count as an unauthorized change?
or have you moved to transition (the enemy)

or do you just not care anymore

????

Anonymous said...

Un-authorised change I think...

Anonymous said...

I genuinely like the changes. Very much.
Nice work.

:)

Baldwin said...

I like the new look and do not see any problems.

As often as not I find website or magazine redesigns are for the worst, even after one's got used to them.

Anonymous said...

Your picture need to be larger and on a white background. It's just a jumble as it is now.