A Realign, or Whatever
The time has come for a refresh. Something new and different. I’ve always wanted to use this site to try new ideas, so here we go. This new design ventures a bit from the traditional ‘blog’, but I felt it was necessary.
I always try to tell my clients that traditional methods aren’t always the best, so I felt it was time to practice what I preach.
Let me know what you think. Try the search box, there’s some new functionality there. If you can, try viewing the site in Safari. There are a few text effects that only Safari supports that make things look even better. Tell me if you find any bugs, but if it’s in a browser that gets less than 1% usage in my Mint stats, it may not be a priority. I hope you enjoy.
Wow, very hot. I LOVE that Ajax search on the front. Very sexy. Great looking use of text-shadow, too. I always like your last one a lot, but this trumps it big time. Way to go!
Oh man, this is nice. Wicked nice, even! So simple and clean and well organized. A beautiful job on all fronts.
The search field is sick… just sick.
I’m liking this comment preview as well. Don’t think I’ve seen one that showed the username. Be neat if you could fetch the Gravatar while the user was typing the comment.
Time to go take a good look around…
This is ultimate goodstuff! This is the reason I beg to differ with Cameron on the redesign-issue. Because, let’s face it – your target hasn’t really changed, now has it? Hence, this is a good, oldfashioned redesign, not a realign.
And you are a great designer!
Good work – keep it up!
Beautiful! I love the subtle effects (although the design reminds me wee-bit of my own).
Wow, I love the curved menu at the top, how’d you do it? Oh wait, that was a few versions ago. ;)
I like this design a whole lot too. It looks very clean, and the darker colors accentuate the brighter things very nicely. I agree though, this is an old-school re-design. Word.
I loved the old design and I’m loving the new “refresh” even more. Nicely done and the search is awesome!
Lookin’ good! That green you’re using is one of my new favorite colors. Very striking visually against the dark grays.
I’m noticing in Firefox that the comment preview font size is smaller than the real comment font size. You could also use some simple javascript to dynamically update the gravatar in the preview too, on defocus of the email form field. Might be a nice touch on an already rich experience!
Oh! i think your realing it’s great, i like it so much!!
There is a big change between this desing and the other one.
I like it, it’s different but very fresh!
Congratulations!
and thanks for WP tiger theme, brilliant too!
It seems too me that bigger type is becoming a new trend. I really like your realign, redesign, refresh whatever. Very nice indeed.
Oh, that search is sick. And the larger font size for the article feels so comfortable. And gray on green… I think I’m obligated to like it. :) my only complaint is the contrast for the “say it” and “new” buttons. It’s a little hard to read. Well done.
Oh man, this is slick. Nice work man.
One word: Wow. Those grayscale hues combined with that green and blue are really nice. Great job!
Beautiful. I’m not sure I’ve seen any search that slick. I love the little spinner. Your new design is good, but I miss some of the color of your CMYK design. That’s ok, the overall feel of this page is very sweet.
Ok, so I’ve added the updating gravatar to the comment preview, and upped its font size a tad to match the regular comment string. Johnathan, I see what you mean about the buttons. I’ll see if I can figure anything out. Thanks for all the kind words everyone.
Steve….
Love that you’re bringing things full ciecle with the new technologies that your learning and liking. Love the search, love the live preview, the simple layout is sweet. Great usage of what is almost a monochromatic site and then BAM, a splash of Green. I also like the enlarged fonts, makes things more personal I think, no squinting either. One thing I’m not crazy about is the rounded edges on the photos… they don’t seem to fit with the grid you’ve developed, no biggie there though.
nice stuff.
Steve
One other quick thing: you currently have the live preview updating on keyup (or keypress, either way). But, for example, I use auto-complete and tab out of the box, it doesn’t update the live preview right away. How about adding the update to onblur as well?
Looks fantastic! Great attention to detail and nice subtle effects. Good job!
Jonathan: Done. I’m such a pushover.
While you’re listening to everything I say, just adjust the logo to look a little more like this. :)
The best one this year, definitely. Awesome! An example that shows that black is beautiful, however.
I’ll be honest. Your website is absolute wicked :) I like! It would be amazing if you designed themes for people to download for free too. Any chance? hehe :)
Beautiful. That AJAX search is awesome…
VERY Slick! I like it. I like it a lot. It’s great that you kept the same green and blue from the last design. They sorta work as branding elements for you.
Cool design. I always love design that differ from the tradition, and as they say, you hit the nail on the head. Of course, I guess you could say I might be a little biased.
This is a fantastic design Steve. You’ve done a fantastic job of taking care of all the details, including the very little ones. I love how you’ve done your search and it would be great to see how you went about to doing it in a future post.
Nima: I plan to do just that. It’s a little custom unobtrusive script that uses prototype and scriptaculous. It was fun to get working.
You realign more than most folks. It’s pretty nice Steve. Hope you’re enjoying your new book I sent ya. You have guts going light on dark. I’m a big wuss and would fail miserably trying to do that. The fonts are easy to read and you’ve pulled it off well.
oooOO. And look a this nice “Say it” button ;)
Oh, and good job on keeping the search work without JavaScript… I find it ironic that you kept the Ajax entirely unobtrusive but left the ‘onfocus’ eventHandler on the text field… so close.
Dustin: I think that leftover onFocus was from when I was just starting to make the search. I think I just forgot about it. All is right now in the world of unobtrusivness. Or something like that.
…yea. that unobtrusive realignment thing seems to be going…okay… ’er, yea, like that.
Cool design… Nice work…
Such an inspiration to me… Thanks…
Wish you all the best… Greetings from Jakarta, Indonesia.
I just wanted to be yet ANOTHER person to congratulate you on a great re-design. It’s so classy and the large text is very comforting. I think too many other sites are using 7pt fonts that just hurt my eyes. Everything is just so….clean.
Another fantastic looking design Steve. I’m going to assume, since its such a radical shift from your last couple of designs, you needed to rework the HTML for this one?
Al.
Very slick. I really like it.
Alistair: Yes, some of the XHTML was massaged, but not much. The basic blocks are still the same.
Very nice… Seems as though great designers do redesign ;-). Good job, Steve!
I love it.
Dark sites are usually a turn off but this is really nicely done. The text effects in Safari give it that nice extra crispness. And the Ajax search si wonderful.
Good job!
Wow, this is absolutely beautiful. Your previous design was amazing, but this one’s just as good — maybe even better! Great work!
Just wanted to drop a line to tell you the site design is awesome. I recently started a site using Wordpress too
and you Tiger Admin Paneland just started to create my own template this weekend.You showed me there’s quite something to achieve!
Regards, M
i don’t know about new vs. old design because i just found out about your site, via wp tiger admin.
i really, really love the look. really. it’s one of the coolest i’ve seen. simple. cool.
the effects (like this preview i see bellow me) are just amazing and it makes browsing a pleasure.
your wp admin UI is also very cool to use and has made administration a bit friendlier and beautiful.
thanks a lot.
regards,
maique madeira
Bravo on the wonderful redesign. I liked the previous version as well, but I think this “realign” is better organized as far as your content goes. I find myself able to locate everything I’m looking for fairly easily.
The search portion is very, very slick. The effects are cool and all, but I like the fact that when I search for something, the recent posts are replaced by my search results, and then return when I clear the search. Great use of space.
Looks really great Steve. A well executed example of using darker colors on a site where content it king. I’m digging the live preview of comments and the way you mapped out the home page ;-).
I love the home page layout, and the colour scheme works incredibly well!
Did you draw those icons yourself?
I love it, Steve. Very nice design and added functionality all around.
I loved the look of the previous design, but this is stunning! well done
Wow. Fantastic redesign Steve. I especially like the larger font sizes – makes reading and navigating super easy…
Wow, this is incredibly nice. Very damn sleak, I love it. Beautiful.
I love it! It’s beautiful………great job!
Awful! This website looks so clearly.
Regards, Tom S. Weber
It’s really, really gorgeous.
css thesis’d it.
Veracon: I noticed that yesterday, thanks for the publicity.
Wow, Steve. This site is devastatingly beautiful. Kudos.
i like it so much
Wow. I’ve seen a lot of designs, blog or otherwise, and this is without a doubt one of the most impressive I’ve seen in a LONG time. Way to go!
Very sweet the site. \
Nice redesign, congratulation. :)
Wow! This is great; I albolutely love it. Very unique. :)
Very nice, I love the color scheme and the simplicity of the design.
Very nice and elegant.
Congrats!
How the hell did I miss this one? Bravo Steve, this is awesome.
The larger font size is just spot on. Nice work.