dooce^® 6.1

It’s live, people. Shift-refresh.

Change can be hard sometimes. Give it a chance.

Report bugs in the comments.

UPDATE: I’ve replaced the nav and “I’m Heather B. …” graphics with sharper images. You should notice a difference if you shift-refresh. We’ve heard the masses and are working on solution for you “Daily …” junkies! Just be patient and we’ll have a solution as soon as we can. Also, just a quick note to thank you all for your kind words, your time and your readership. You are changing our lives and I mean that very seriously. THANK YOU!

catherine

It looks great – what’s the section title typeface?

I did like the fact that Daily Style and Daily Photo had their own areas in the previous layout – not sure I like seeing them squooshed on the main page but I’m sure I’ll get over it.

One wee thing – if you’re on any of the About/Contact/Archive pages, the navigation points to Older/Newer, might be better to relabel to each of the page titles if that’s possible.

http://blurbomat.com blurb

Myriad Pro (for those who have it installed).

Thanks for the bug report on the pages. I’m going to fix that now.

UPDATE: That fix is going to have to wait, but it’s on the list.

catherine

Ah, Myriad is awesome. Thanks for the update… keep up the great work!
http://kristanhoffman.com/ Kristan

I’m on a Myriad kick myself, so that’s awesome! Can I recommend a backup font for people who might not have it, though? Corbel (which comes with the new Microsoft Office suite) looks rather similar. Just something to consider for the CSS specifications.

http://kristanhoffman.com/ Kristan

I too love the typeface!

Is the line with brackets on each end missing from the top of the posts? (The thing that caps off the shading?) I still see it on the sidebar… Although even in the sidebar it’s cut off on the left side.

Using Firefox 3 on a Mac Mini with OS 10.5 if that matters.

http://blurbomat.com blurb

You’ll probably want to empty your cache & hold the down the shift key and click the refresh button a few times. Firefox can be fesity (as can Safari).

http://www.elegantlyrandom.typepad.com sarie26

Hi! Longtime fan and reader of both of your sites – and I know I shouldn’t judge after just one day, but I’m really sorry, I don’t dig this new site. I have dug all the other site changes but not this one. I feel like it’s too minimal, and honestly, I’ve felt like it’s become a little too corporate. I’m not going to stop reading Dooce – but I’m just giving some honest feedback. I thought the last design was the best so far, and it was the easiest to read and navigate. This one is almost TOO simple in its format. Also – some of the font (dates, categories below blog entries) is really tough to read – and I have a great monitor.

Perhaps in a week I’ll love it and then I’ll come back and eat my words. But no worries – I’m there for the writing, not the layout, so I’ll still be a visitor.
http://whoahgirl.myopenid.com/ whoahgirl.myopenid.com/

I for one really like the new look of the website. It is a lot cleaner and more straight forward without having making the users have to leave the website (such as looking the daily photos, etc etc). It also looks like it will be a lot easier for you guys to maintain… especially for when the new baby comes. It’s again cleaner, simpler, and more straight forward which I heartily approve of.

Overall I give it two thumbs way up.
rose

Hi, love the pink, it’s really cheery and bright. I did like the way the daily photo and daily style had their own section too, it was like clicking on little treats. (You can tell I am so well-versed in geekspeak, can’t you? ‘cheery’ and ‘treats’). I do like how the page looks, but as a recent discoverer of the site, I have to say that the former ‘search’ and ‘categories’ were really incredibly useful in me getting to know the whole history and character of dooce. I don’t know if I’d have waded through all the content otherwise. Maybe those options are there somewhere and I’m just missing them. Anyway, love the pink and the masthead design.

http://blurbomat.com blurb

We’re getting there. Give us a bit more time. Heather is revamping her archives page(s).

rose

Ah, cool. One more thing, I forgot to say also that it’s good to know (from the bottom) that the site is powered by Drupal. Had wondered about that.

http://lifeasitcomes.com/ Kevin T Driver

I like it! I prefer it over the most recent design.

ColleenS6

Looks good! Great job guys.

Though I too will admit I miss the daily photos at the top of the page.

JennJ

I love the way it looks!
I’ll miss the search function in the archives…I’ve been reading my way through from the beginning and the archives are a little cunbersome without the option to search for something specific to get back to where I left off.

http://blurbomat.com blurb

We are tackling the archives next. Heather has a whole new deal working.

In the meantime, I recommend using a browser with tabs and opening pages you want to read that way. We’re working on a “remember where I was” solution and hopefully we’ll have something in the coming weeks.

JennJ

yea!

bengar

Very clean. How much do you think it reduced the average page weight and load time? Probably helps with bandwidth costs!
Sarah

I was looking forward to seeing February’s masthead and have to say that I prefer the ones with more of an artistic flair. And I always enjoyed trying to figure out what cool quote Heather would put up. I love the color though:).

I personally prefered the photo’s being in their own space too .. or maybe they could be down the right side? Ads to me would be better under that.

Anyway, change is always good I guess, gets us talking!
http://www.geekforcefive.com ChrisClark

Looks great to me. There are a few things that I’ll miss, most of which have been pointed out above (the daily style and daily photo having their own little places in the design; the headers), but I like so much of what’s going on in this new design that I don’t think I’ll miss anything from the old one for that long.
http://blog.ahles.nl/ Patrick

Hi Jon, looks great, except the navigation menu on top. The letters are rather blurry…
jamie

I like the look, but I will miss the “Daily Chuck”, “Daily Photo” and “Daily Style” sections, like a lot of the other commenters. Also, will there not be a monthly masthead? Just wondering. I realize it was probably a burden to keep up with, but it was nice to see a bit of artistic flair on the site.

http://blurbomat.com blurb

Those sections still exist!

http://dooce.com/archives/daily_photo
http://dooce.com/archives/daily_chuck
http://dooce.com/archives/daily_style

I believe Heather still will do a monthly masthead.

jamie

Thanks for responding. I see how it works now.

http://greatdayinmaine.blogspot.com leesavee

I was wondering the same thing as Jamie. The monthly mastheads were so much fun…and I miss the Daily Chuck/Daily Photo/Daily Style being so easily accessible. I just liked being able to quickly pop onto the site to see if a new photo had been posted…

But I *suppose* I can deal with the changes, difficult though it will be!

http://irishembi.blogspot.com/ irishembi

I like it! I think it’s easier to navigate and looks modern and clean. I do miss the monthly quote on the masthead, but I’m sure I can adjust.
hal8991

Love the site! It’s so bright and fun! But does this mean I can’t look through all of the Daily Chucks at once? My toddler loves sitting on my lap as we click back through all the “doggie” pictures. Other than that I love it! Keep up the good work, Blurb and Dooce!

http://blurbomat.com blurb

http://dooce.com/archives/daily_photo
http://dooce.com/archives/daily_chuck
http://dooce.com/archives/daily_style

If you click the thumbnail of whatever one you want to see, it takes you to the larger image. From there you can click “Older Photo” or “Newer Photo” to navigate through that section. That works for any of the “Daily” content types.

Hope this helps. Let me know if it’s still not clear.

hal8991

Woo-hoo! That’s it! Thanks, Jon!
(Like I mentioned, my 2 year old loves looking at the Chuck and Coco pictures. My mom was babysitting him a couple of weeks ago and when I went to pick him up I noticed on the computer that my mom had googled “dog pictures”. Evidently he was asking her for them too.)

hockeybrad

Looks good. Only “bug” is that the navigation font/text at the top is fuzzy.
http://passion.squirrelism.net/ natalija

I actually really like getting to see photos on the front page, as they’re posted. Something that might be nice as well (for an idea) is a photo gallery of sorts that’s not necessarily off-site (but perhaps instead incorporates the off-site images into itself–I use a Facebook photo plugin called Fotobook on my Worpress website that functions in that way). Being an extremely visual person, I know I’d definitely enjoy seeing all the photos in one place on the site, since there’s no longer a “daily” section.

Another thing for me is that while the ads and the content are still clearly very separate from one another, the layout makes them feel a bit too… together? Blended? I don’t really know. I think what I mean is I’d have preferred a bar of some sort perhaps dividing the content from the ads in the sidebar–though I also know that that bar would look ugly and out of place with the current layout.

I dunno… maybe scooching the ads bar down slightly so that it starts a bit lower on the page than the content would fix this feeling? Just a feeling I had, anyway.
cereals

The new site looks great, but mark me down as another who prefers the daily pic and the style pic to have its own section at the top. That way I can easily check (which I do about 50,000 times per day while at work) to see if these have been updated without having to scroll down.
pizzocalabro

Love it. Very clean and functional.

I have no problem with the Daily Style, Daily Photo and Daily Chuck categories being mixed in with the regular content, but it would be nice to have a category list to choose from in the archives.

Also, the image in the current first post (“22 weeks”) looks kinda funky from being resized from 830×1235 to 450×675.
lacylouwho

* First off — Been reading it (and this site) for years. But I rarely actually visit the website. I keep up via my rss reader … so most of this isn’t really important to me personally.

* That said … I actually like the daily photos being within the main site …. because a lot of people probably missed that content just being in its own section; but – maybe there could be a link to those specific sections up in the nav so that those who like to quickly get to the daily sections can get there … (also like the longer “preview” images for the dailies – as opposed to the squares)

* if comments are closed on an entry … have a little if/then action going and just don’t show “comments closed”. would look better since 99% of entries have comments closed. That way when comments aren’t closed – it will stand out more.

* I’ve always wished the mastheads section had thumbnails The mastheads are hilarious!!! And classic dooce!

* It’s mainly just that top ad that is annoying… the side ones don’t seem as obtrusive. but you have to to ads. so there you go.

* second the commenter above that said the nav text in the header and footer is blurry

* the third ad section on the right — google ads – it looks like there is supposed to be another column there? Half the space is blank – and the other half has a tower google-text ads.

* be cool of the archives were a little tighter … with more entries listed per page.
http://kristanhoffman.com/ Kristan

What’s the font of the “I’m Heather B. Armstrong and this…” (and other) text?

masande

‘tarzana wide’ by emigre.

lucastalbot

As soon as I saw the changes on dooce.com I zoomed over here to get the behind-the-scenes scoop.

Really like the smaller banner space, and am glad to read that Heather will continue to redesign the masthead on a monthly basis. Although I usually keep track of posts in NetNewsWire, I still make a point of checking in via Safari to see how things are looking.

As someone who’s getting my sea legs in Drupal and preparing to transition a few sites I manage from Movable Type to Drupal, I’d love to hear any details you care to share about whether and how your/Heather’s use of Drupal has evolved.

Cheers and congrats on all the great news coming out of Armstrong Media!
megant8

Where is the navigation when you are looking at daily/chuck photos? It makes it really difficult to get to other parts of the site without links to each on the top. Maybe I am just missing them.
http://surfmonkey89.myopenid.com/ Paul Lukinich

I like the shorter masthead – it’s nice for those with smaller monitors (like mine on my laptop).

That said:
1. This is possibly the worst masthead I’ve seen to date. It’s probably the pink, which I’m sick to death of, but it’s probably also the shade of pink. Way to bright.
2. I miss the quote. It adds a lot to the “feel” site imo.

Love having the pics in the post stream. The new size also gives more of a sneaky peak. You guys must have been going crazy getting the right content in that little square to convey intent while not giving too much away.

I’m a big fan of minimalism, but you might’ve gone overboard this time. Maybe it’s the combination of the eye-splitting pink (Did I mention I’m sick of the color pink? What can I say – I’m a guy ) with all the white, or maybe you need a little duller shade of white, I don’t know. But there really is a ton of white space.

Please don’t take these comments as not liking the redesign. I generally do. It’s just that you asked for feedback so you’re going to get a lot of suggestions. “Nice job” is assumed

http://blurbomat.com blurb

Paul, I hope that your eyeballs recover soon.

I didn’t actually ask for feedback. I asked for bug reports. But I figured we’d get a lot of both sides; people digging on it, people not digging on it.

Give it time. Every time Heather has done a redesign we get similar comments at first.

Thanks for taking the time to comment and for the kind words.

http://surfmonkey89.myopenid.com/ Paul Lukinich

I don’t mind it at all. I hope it didn’t come across that way.

I guess it’s unsolicited feedback then

One interesting thing is that the whole negative space thing isn’t an issue on my laptop with it’s smaller screen. It looks way better. And even the pink it bearable! I guess it’s time to check the old brightness level on my desktop monitor

Joanne

Jon,
I found Dooce late in the blog game. I’ve been reading her (and then you) only for about 7 or 8 months and I’m not liking the new design. I’m in no way computer design savvy but it just feels so nondescript; doesn’t reflect the creative, original dooce i’ve come to adore. I agree with “cereal”. I liked that daily style/chuck/photo had their own section, btw.

I’ll be a reader for life. And I’m secretly hoping some network picks up Dooce for a sitcom. To be aired right after 30 Rock. Or The New Adv. of Old Christine.

Until then, this design just isn’t doing much for me in the way of access to a daily giggle. (Did that make sense?)

Hope this feedback is OK to give. Dooce still rocks.

http://blurbomat.com blurb

Thanks for taking the time. And thanks for the kind words.

http://vwbusnut.wordpress.com/ vwbusnut

I just did the clear cache and refresh thing Jon and like I said to you on Twitter today, sometimes you open your mouth and words come out that I do not understand. How in God’s name do you know all this stuff? And is there any room left in your brain?! I can hardly remember to floss, change the oil and put the garbage out!

http://blurbomat.com blurb

Yeah. Not so good over here with the flossing.

This is our business and it’s my job to know all this stuff. And no, there isn’t much room left.

BLURBOMAT

Photos, music, politics, hair & pants.

dooce^® 6.1