Happy new stuff

Thu Jan 01, 2009 16:02 (UTC -5)

Happy new year. It’s the last year of the 2000s or whatever we’re calling them. Notice anything different? That’s right: The World of Stuff has a new look.

First of all, if the layout looks like a garbled mess, press F5 to force a reload of everything. That should work in most browsers.

Now, you may be asking why I made this change, the fourth major update to the design of the site. The previous layout was introduced three years ago, on January 1, 2006. Back then, I said,

Bearing in mind some of the feedback I’ve gotten and some observations I’ve made, I’m going to record a general overview (for the me of the future and the you of today) on what to expect in TWoS 4.0: it’ll have the fun feel of TWoS 2.0 and the navigation design of TWoS 3.0 combined with the web standards adherence and universal accessibility of TWoS 5.0.

And that is what you see here today. Certain aspects of this design, such as the color scheme, are taken from the second layout (screenshot), which was in turn based on the first layout (tiny screenshots here). One of the things people missed the most from TWoS 2.0 was the random slogan displayed on each page. So I always intended to bring them back in the fourth layout, and here they are. I have most of the same ones to start with, but I would add new ones and remove old ones regularly.

Now. Why the change? Frankly, it’s long overdue. The first layout lasted a year and a half; the second was around for not much more than a year. The third layout persisted for a whole three years. In that time, computers and the Internet have changed. The third layout was fluid to accommodate small (less than 1024×768) resolutions. I realized that things wouldn’t look so great on bigger resolutions, but I thought it wouldn’t matter. I didn’t expect that wide screen resolutions would become the standard in only a few years. This layout is fixed-width to keep pages from being unreadably wide.

I also want to put this site on par with more popular blogs. This new design is modern and shiny, but you can see that it still has my own special “what-was-he-thinking-and-does-he-really-know-what-he’s-doing” touch. And because the design is so Web 2.0, I’ll say that this layout is in “beta.” Not because it’s not tested (oh, trust me, it’s tested) but because it’s open to suggestions for improvement. Think something needs to be placed somewhere else, or maybe some style doesn’t look quite right? Bring it to my attention, and I’ll weigh in on it.

One exception: the navigation bar is not open to criticism. You do not know how long it took me to test that thing. I do not know how long it took me to test that thing. But it was somewhere on the order of days. Days and days and days. In fact, I spent a ridiculous amount of time making sure everything looked perfect or at least pretty reasonable in every browser and on every OS that people are likely to use. You don’t know frustration until you’ve designed for Internet Explorer. (At this juncture, I would also like to give CrossBrowserTesting.com another plug. I should buy those guys a pizza.)

Since people lamented the loss of the random slogans last time, I suspect that some people will lament the loss of the photos this time. The photos had a good run, though. It’s the slogans’ turn to come back, and they’re always different. If you don’t like the new layout or if you find it hard to get used to, don’t worry. You will like it or get used to it soon enough.

Besides updating the design of the site, I’ve also tried to make it easier for you to follow along with the blog. For those of you who use a feed reader, your browser will now discover relevant feeds if you’re viewing an individual post or a category listing. If you don’t use a feed reader, I recommend signing up for e-mail updates. That way you’ll be notified instantly when there’s a new post! You can sign up under the “Subscribe” section on the sidebar. And of course, your e-mail address is safe with me.

So I guess that’s all I wanted to say. I hope you enjoy the new layout as much as I do, and I hope you’re having a great new year.