Fresh paint

If you’re reading this in a browser you’ve no doubt noticed that the site looks different. If you’re reading this in a news reader, then you probably don’t care what the site looks like. The previous design has been hanging around for nearly four years, although the details have changed over time.

Many times over the last few years I’ve wanted to redesign this site and several times I’ve actually started on a new design. Each time something has kept me from completing the design and putting it online. Instead, I’ve nursed the old design along, changing elements here and there, refactoring the site and evolving the design.

This time, I didn’t set out to redesign the site. I simply wanted to continue the progression of small improvements. Something I’ve always felt about the design of this site is that the logo wasn’t strongly tied into the rest of the site. The orange hexagons weren’t reflected anywhere but the logo. My plan was to simply add some orange and some angles into the design. Before I knew it, I had completely changed the design of the site.

Although there were some technical problems with the layout and some things about the new design I didn’t like, but overall things seemed to be working pretty well. So I dumped the old stylesheet, tweaked my templates and uploaded the new files. Now I have a new point from which to start my refactoring.

Some of the technical problems have now been solved, but others remain. A portion of the banner at the top overlaps the menu in Opera. That particular problem was introduced after a workaround of an IE/Win CSS bug. Given the numbers of people using Opera on this site, I’m not going to spend much effort fixing the Opera problem.

One problem I’d like to fix is in Safari. The search field and the graphic at the right of the banner both are positioned about 100 pixels too low — but only on pages within my blog…

The CSS is the same as the rest of the site, so there must be something in the HTML that’s fouling things up. I’ll hunt it down when I get a chance. Safari also won’t let me style the form buttons. I don’t really want to use an image for the submit button for a variety of reasons, so I’ll have to live with the unstyled button.

Poke around the site and let me know if you find anything terribly wrong. If you come across a page with the logo sitting on a white background, it’s using the old template with the new CSS and will be updated eventually. Constructive criticism and suggestions on the design are more than welcome.