My New Design

Johnny,

Nice design, looks good. It’s minimal and focuses on the content. My only recommendation is make those light text colors slightly darker in the sidebar and footer.

The text is too light; I found myself trying to focus on the sidebars and straining my eyes…

Thanks!

Did you try mousing over the sidebar & footer, or is it something that you don’t think of when looking at the site?

I did mouse over the sidebar and footer. The text did darken as you expected.

I like the color scheme, the light text just is too light for me. Might be a sign I’m finally getting old ??

I agree with jdembowski its a nice touch with the roll over but the date, posted in, and more text is just a bit to light. Its has the opposite effect you want since the fist thing i did was try and figure out why i can’t read the text. In fact I’m writing this with out reading your blog.

So it seems that the faded text is distracting. Solution? Remove the distraction!

I used jQuery to hide the faded text as the document loads, so now it only appears when either it is moused over, (sidebar), or the post is moused over, (postmetadata).

This may be a bit extreme, let me know what you all think. I’ve left the footer kind of faded, but not so much as before, as I think it’s important to have the copyright notice visible by default, even if it’s difficult to read. Also, I don’t expect many people to read it.

We’ll see if everybody hates this or not ??

I dont care for that at all. As I scroll up and down the page, stuff appears and disappears. ugh. Why? Because it can?

Save the “look what I can do in JS” stuff for a page that isnt supposed to be read. ??

I have to agree with whoo on this. If you really must hide the info perhaps a expanding box with a link to collapse when not in use. The way you have it now some people might not even notice you have a sidebar.

Having the text disappear altogether is with out a doubt a step in the wrong direction. I understand that its something new and you want to incorporate it into your website but I just don’t think its appropriate for tags. I can say it sure stirred up allot of interest maybe if you use it on a AD banner or something of that nature you could use it as a way to draw attention to 1 item but having it attached to every post like that is a eyesore. Try a banner you might be surprised at the result.

I have to agree with whoo on this.

Well yes, Whoo is very wise…

Johnny, it’s really odd. When the text is not there at all it makes it look better. Really minimalist, kind of cool.

When I mouse over the text and that text fades in, it becomes, well, annoying… and distracts from your post.

Bet you didn’t think you’d get this amount of review? ??

I am getting a lot of feedback!

Now the question is: Is it the fact that the sidebar and Post Meta Data text is not there that’s annoying, or is it all of the fading in and out?

If it’s the fading in & out, would it be better if there was no fading, just instant on/off?

If it is the fact that the text is actually gone, do we have ideas on how I can still show the text, while maintaining the minimalist look? Perhaps if I only show the meta data on the single post page and leave it off of the index page? The sidebar is a bit tougher – maybe a “more” link or something like jeremyclark suggested is the way to go for the sidebar.

I agree that the fading as we scroll is pretty weird, and would like to to be different. I’ve created an interesting problem here.