SF Signal 3.0!
By John DeNardo |
Sunday, August 10th, 2008 at
12:05 am
The look and feel of the website has been updated.
Let us know what you think!
Related posts:
- SFSignal Version 2.0!
- Don’t Drop Your Bookmark in the Shower
- SF Signal Site Update
- Top 10 SF Signal Posts for June 2008
- SF Signal: What works for you?
Filed under: Meta
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My first impression was a little claustrophobic, but I’m already over that.
Overall, I like the clean, orderly feel! I see some new features, like comment hilights and the wysisyg editor… very cool too!
I like the new look. The site is very well organized, quick to load, and easy to read. SF Signal 3.0 is fine!
The black margins are mismatched and too large.
The left column font is too small to read comfortably.
The thumbnail images in the posts are too small to see easily. They also need to be bigger because the blue/black/gray color scheme is cold and bland, and the thumbnails are the only relief.
Masthead logo has a lot of blank space for no good reason.
Right column advertisements are not aligned with the layout.
The gray post header do help to set off each individual post more clearly.
The new comment composition options are nice.
It looks…retro!!!!
Don’t like it at all…sorry! The left hand column is way too narrow and the font too small.
I would guess that most people these days are working with wide(ish) screens so i don’t understand why you’d want to squish everything into the middle of the screen.
I think the old look was much more reader-friendly…and there’s been more than one blog I’ve stopped reading due to changes like the ones that have been made here.
It sure looks better, but it’s all way too narrow. The left column, the central white column and even the horizontal strip under the logo. The logo on the other hand is too big. Try to balance the sizes and it’s perfect! Keep the good work, you rock
))
Not sure why everything is all squished to the center. Too much dead space on the left and right.
First thing that struck me is the narrowness. Too narrow. It also isn’t quite centered in Firefox.
Thanks, all, for the comments.
The thinking behind the narrowness was to accommodate the 30% of our readers who are coming in at 1024×768 resolutions. Our content area is 700 pixels wide (of which 550 pixels is used for main content) and our vertical add strip allows for 200px. With margins, that provided a nice layout at that minimum resolution.
I look at other sites and they use similar widths, though whether or not they have ads varies. For example, Scalzi’s Whatever blog is just 900 pixels wide with only about 540 pixels for content. Boing Boing is about 920 pixels wide with about a 550 pixel width content area. Do those sites suffer from the same issue, then?
Even so, I have messed with our style sheets and addressed these issues. Now, we’ll see if the folks at 1024 resolution speak more loudly than you do!
looks nice!
I like it, looks way more organized. The other version always seemed a little chaotic.
Though, I am wondering if you can somehow make the Book Review section searchable? I find it hard to find past reviews.
Other than that, looks great..
I don’t like the overlapped ads on the top right.
@Mike: We have a Book Review index if you’re looking for a specific title. If you are looking for text you might have seen in one of our posts, your best bet is Google. (Remember they have a web search and a blog search.)
I like it, very user friendly.
I’m technically at 1024/768 on the PC I’m using now at work (actually, it’s dual monitor, but I only have my browser opened on one monitor at 1024/768). I’m on IE6 (work sucks!) so take that into consideration.
Comments:
The advert at the top isn’t centered over the rest of the body of the webpage, it appears to be left-aligned. Also, can you put that top banner ad under the header logo/banner? I’d rather see that at the top of the page than an ad. Or is it’s placement part of the hosting package/advertisement package?
The left-hand column is too “thin” and butts up to the main body/center column to closely for my taste. Needs some padding.
The left column could use a little more space between the end of one section and the start of another. They appear to be crammed together.
The right-hand column, for advertisements, blows goats (at least in IE6). It’s overlapping about 20% of the center column.
That RSS logo over the left column has got to go. It’s HUGE!
I like the right-aligned footers of each post: the Share links, the comments links and the Posted by, etc. That looks really nice.
I personally would rather see the thumbnails on the left-hand of the post with the text wrapping around it, rather than over on the right-hand side.
The right-hand ads start at the “top”, where the main site logo is too. Can those be moved down to align with the rest of the body of the website?
-Again – these comments are from viewing the website in IE6 (suck!!) at work. I’d bet at least some of these issues are moot if I were viewing this website in Firefox.
Good luck!
–Kev
Overall, it looks great!
The layout is clean and I agree the right-aligned footers work very well – the eye tracks nicely across the articles.
Couple of suggestions though…
I agree with the previous comment that the thumbnails in the articles are too small – same goes with the cover thumbnails of the section showing what’s on your respective shelves. Waaay too small to make out much detail.
Also, and maybe it’s just the way it’s coming up on my screen, but the text in this comment box is far too small when I’m typing in my comment. Any way to increase the font size? Makes it harder to spot when I’ve made I typo as I’m going along – and I need all the help I can get!
That being said, 3.0 is a good facelift.
I never really like it when layouts change, but this is allllright. There’s too much room in the margins, though.
Thanks for the suggestions, folks. Keep ‘em coming!
More of these issues have been addressed, specifically: the comment widget font size is larger; the book images in the shelves is larger; the font size in the left column is larger; the left content has extra padding. And there will probably be more tweaks in the coming days. Again, thanks for the feedback!
I really like the new site—much cleaner and easier to read!
It will take some getting used to, as I do not like change in things I like (why fix it if it is not broke) but I am sure when i do get used to it i will love it.
I WOULD PREFER IF YOUR PAGE SCALED FOR WIDESCREEN MONITORS….BUT THEN AGAIN NO WEB PAGE EVER SEEMS TO DO THAT…..GRRRRR
Hi!
At 1024×768 resolution, the right sidebar overlaps on the main text area of the site. That’s really bad.
On a higher resolution it’s OK, but still you’ve got to fix this, because 1024×768 is usually considered the norm.
Other than that, it’s fine. Maybe a few minor graphical things could be better, but that’s a subjective matter anyway.
I truly love the stuff you put here from all over the Internet, guys. Good work. Keep it up!
All,
I’ve made another update to address the 1024 screen resolution issue. If you browse in using 1024×768, the pages will load a new style sheet that accommodates that lower resolution so there is no overlap. To those users who are using 1024, please try it out and let us know. You may have to Shift-Refresh your browser — that is, hold down the SHIFT key while clicking the browser refresh button.
Users who browse in at higher resolutions will see the wider content area.
This is cool!
Love & blessings
Richard