Sharpe's Opinion

Thursday, 19th Feb, 2009

Comments

“Eventually this website will be a blank page…”

I don’t know why, but I cried with laughter at that para.

PS Zen or Whovian?

ladytizzy

February 19, 2009 at 2:26 pm

 

I like it a great deal. It annoyed me until I realised I could get rid of the footer!

If people want what it in the footer they can have access to it, otherwise they can get it out of the way.

I never paid much attention to design myself. I chose mine out of the basic blogger templates. I actually quite like the font that is used for my blog title, which is why I use it, as much as no one else agrees.

I do think it is good to have a sort of running tally of recently updated blogs, as Blogger has, because it is a good way to forward people on.

Anyway, I like your redisign. The message was always more important than the medium for me. The design should be like a windowpane (as Orwell said of good writing), simply letting people through to the ideas.

asquith

February 19, 2009 at 5:53 pm

 

Tiz, it’s funny because it’s true. Sadly.

Asquith, your thoughts echo mine. When I first put the footer at the bottom I loved the look of it, but I wasn’t sure it would work (vertical space is at a premium on the screen, horizontal space is not) but when I thought of letting people just hide it away, the whole idea made sense suddenly. I’ve also been working to reduce the height of the footer. Of note: if you turn javascript off in your browser you will not have the option to hide the footer.

There’s too much clutter on most blogs for my liking. People add widgets and doodads and adverts and banners because they can, not because they should. I’ll happily admit that Daring Fireball and Textism are the biggest influences behind the design of this site because they manage to be beautifully uncluttered and just let you focus on reading.

You are right, of course – it’s not the design that is important, it’s the ideas and the writing. I just like to firstly to fiddle, and secondly to create designs which get out the way as much as possible.

Stu

February 19, 2009 at 7:31 pm