Designing in Daylight
I know, I’m supposed to do this in the dark, then spring it on everyone as a brand new birth, but that just didn’t seem right.
I mean we all are in need of the occasional redesign, aren’t we? And we can’t hide ourselves away until our metamorphosis is complete, can we?
All of us go through our days, slowing making changes to this or that part of ourselves, growing, changing, living. Why should my blog be any different? Isn’t it more honest to keep the process open, expose the flaws and fix them, while you watch?
Starting out with a minor bit of coding and a liberal application of Photoshop to a Great Master, I’ve plopped the mess in front of you, to watch it slouch its way into existence. Together we’ll explore the good, bad and ugly of this. What works and what doesn’t?
Well, I personally prefer to design in the dark, but not having your level of skill, I tend to make a bigger mess when I redesign. 😉 I like the new look. How’s it working for you? 😀
I’m finding issues as I go. Worst one at the moment is only visible when you view an individual post. If you’re reading this, look at where the left column ends, and where the page footer is. Oooops. (Of course, if you see nothing wrong, it just means I’ve probably managed to fix it by the time you’re reading this.)
Designing in Daylight requires discipline (you can’t walk away for the day because you’re tired without making sure the site is still visible) and a willingness to look a bit silly for brief moments. I’m trying to develop the first, and have always had the latter. It also forces me to think through changes more thoroughly (I’ve always been a “shoot from the hip” kind of guy) which is another trait I’m trying to develop.
I guess what I’m saying is it’s working out fairly well. More tweaks and features to come as I can manage to get the opportunity.
I see what you mean…there’s a gap in the border right about even with the meta materail and …it was on the other side as well, but now, as I was typing this it disappeared.
Oh, and I’ve got another bug for you to hunt down and kill. I’m getting weirdness with the comment box. As soon as I started typing the box went wide, over the right border and out of sight. The lines take forever and ever to wrap, so I can’t see about half my text as it goes out of sight on the right side. 🙁
Refreshing corrects the box, but it goes wild when I type again. Moving the cursor over any link will resize the box back to normal so I can see all my text and correct typos. 😉 Of course, once I start to type the box goes wide and off the right size again. 🙁 I’m using IE, btw. When I commented the other day I was using Firefox, so I can’t say if this is a new bug or just a browser specific bug. Thought you should know, though. Good luck.
Hmmm. Another IE/Win bug. I hate IE/Win.
It goes on the list, but not as high a priority as some others I can see.
Setting up for a relaunch of The Chessmill sometime soon. I’ve a lot of custom code behind it I have to rewrite, first, though. I like to use templates when I can, but the WP templating system was rather pathetic until recently. It still sucks (or maybe it’s just the documentation that sucks) but it’s starting to approach something I can make good use of there. I’d stopped updating it very often because it was such a drag to have to look at all the kludges I had to use to get something that wasn’t all that great, anyway. The new look is a few days away, yet, as I clean out the pipes and unstop the drains, getting the plumbing ready to handle some daylight work.
Having a big burst of design energy here. I had done some research in putting in for the USCF rework and it, plus the new MacBook, kick-started a few synapses, and the pot of my subconscious is now boiling nicely. I’m hoping to finish off a round dozen by the end of July.