Miracles Happen!
Mon, January 5, 2009
Filed under: Updates
Apparently, it only took me a little over a year to change a layout. Aren’t I amazing? :teeth:
Yeah, I still need to put up the RSS link, the search form, add the contact form… and finish re-styling the Q&A page, but COME ON: it’s a bloody new layout!
Yes, this means that I have most of the old (make that ancient) content up, again. It hasn’t been rewritten because… I’ll get to that soon enough, hopefully. Feel free to notify me of any inconsistencies and broken links. It’s quite possible I missed some stuff -_-;
Next time, I’ll try to reduce things to exactly one year. You know: baby steps and all that. 
P.S. Happy (somewhat belated) New Year 
Hey, it’s great to see that you put up a new layout! I like that you used colors that are much more vivid than the ones in the previous design.
It like you are still working on it, but I’m going to point out a few things.
- The link to the articles is “broken”
- The font I see everywhere is Times New Roman, but looking at your CSS, it’s supposed to be Verdana?
- The header image with the site name looks a little distorted / blurred around the edges. It would look a lot better if it were sharper.
- The edges around the little drawing at the top (shopping bags?) are also rather blurred, as if they were over-stretched and lost quality in the process.
- The little boxes on the background and a nice touch, but they look a tad to sharp, especially around the round corners.
And I feel like I should add some sort of conclusion to this comment but I can’t think of anything. I’ll comment later again if I think of something else.
Vera: Fixed the broken link and the font.
Yep, I still need to add some finishing touches to the drawings. I’m not very familiar with the pen tool (and GIMP) … so I kind of lost my patience quite a bit; same for the rounded rectangles.
Thanks for the input, Lene.
I like it!
Vera: Thank you
Aha, about time! My favourite part is the way you’ve done the navigation.
Vera: Finally found a graphics software which works (more or less) similar to PS
The navigation gave me the most head-aches. I’m still not entirely sure it’s “idiot proof”. :\
FINALLY! I like these colors sooo much better than the last ones you used _0_/
Vera: yeah… they’re starting to grow on me too. Next time I might just go all pink and glittery. XD
I really like the colours you’ve used!
Vera: Thank you
Anyhow, happy near year, and I hope you’ve had a great holiday!
I do like this layout a lot more than the previous. The colour is refreshing. I’m especially fond of the background which complements the header nicely. But I do agree with Lene that everything will come together more nicely once the drawing comes into more focus.
Vera: Oh, I’ll rename that “clear” then I guess. Yeah… artsy things are going to be the death of mine, although I love them so much
Yay, orange!! :dance: I love orange, and not enough designs feature it
Like Lene said, though, the header image and site name are blurry.
Vera: Thanks, I’ll work on the header image.
Happy New Year to you as well!
The header is indeed a bit blurry and also the background image (the squares intersecting one another) is not really that attractive…The navigation bar is nicely done though
Vera: yeah, I think I have a better version of the background somewhere… I just need to dig it up
Ohh…awesome.
The drawing you made with the pen tool is amazing. I can only come up with a decent pic if I first do a rough sketch of it with my tablet, otherwise I have trouble visualizing what I was looking for. XD
Vera: Thanks. It took me at least 10 tries, before I managed to understand how to properly use it.
Oh this is nice! I like it a lot better than the previous one. I’m not so sure about the rounded squares on the background, but they certainly add a touch.
In some pages, the lower left rounded corner disappears. Thought of letting you know. Also the blurry effect on the header, but everybody mentioned it already. I’m sure it’s a stretching problem like Lene mentioned. I also think I would’ve used a darker shade for the sublinks on the menu.
Other than that I like it a lot!!
Vera:
odd, which pages are that?Fixed (hopefully). It’s the hassle with getting stuff from offline to online (need to take out the localhost part)I love the colors, and the vectors you have up top.
The only thing I’m not liking is the background image. 
Vera: Yeah, I’m starting to dislike it too. Have a better version of it, but the background color’s slightly different
I wrote “string” instead of “starting” and couldn’t quite figure why that wasn’t right in this context XD
I don’t think I’ve seen an orange layout successfully pulled off in a while.
Vera: thank you
Whee, I love this – nice and neat. And the background intrigues!
And it seems like you love the orange/red colour combination a lot, eh?
Wishing you a Happy New Year 2009! Sorry I haven’t been popping around as much.
Vera: Happy New Year to you too, don’t fret. I’ve also been busy
I like orange, but not too much the current color combination. Still, everyone’s been telling me for ages how my colors are too “pale” so I figured I’d try my hand at something … sharper
Wow, you actually kept a layout for at least a year? That’s amazing. I can’t keep a layout for more than a handful of months.
Vera: I used to be like that while in uni. Now I’m so beat after work that I don’t really have any “creativity” left in me. So I basically kept it out of laziness.
yay! You finally found the time to revamp! And it’s orange! _0_/ Quite refreshing, and almost breezy in a way!
Since everyone else is leaving an opinion, I suppose I should too..
I honestly like the retro squared background image, though I think it’s color combination is a bit too distracting (or maybe it’s that I’m viewing in a dark room without my glasses?), I think if you were to take the lighter orange from the sub-links or maybe a shade darker) to use as the main background color, and the deeper red-orange to be used as the outlined squares, it would look a bit more crisp.
And the only other suggestion I have is to soften the edges of the site’s name. With the added drop shadow, you can see a rugged edge.
Aside that, I love it! Kudos to you for figuring out how to use the pen tool, because I never learned how the entire time I used Gimp!
Vera: well I tend to have problems viewing the PC in the dark, as a rule. But I’ll try to see how the squares look with lighter borders. Yeah, the text needs a bit of work. Mainly because I haven’t quite got the hang of how to properly edit it in GIMP
Yay for the new layout!
It looks really cool.
Vera: thank you