New Skin
April 20th, 2006I’ve made some changes to the layout of the site. If it looks screwy, click your refresh button a lot.
Heather asked me a couple of weeks ago if she could take a crack at redesigning blurbomat. She did some awesome work to make the site three columns. I didn’t want to move too far away from the last iteration so this isn’t as much a redesign as it is an incremental design. Yes. I know. Very Web 2.0. Still, the fonts are larger and hopefully more readable. She’s an awesome designer and a blast to work with. Yes, I’m saying that to get in her pants, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Thank you, Heather!
I’m still working on some of the colors and spacing, so over the next few days you’ll probably see some minor tweaks here and there. The site is designed for at least a 1024×768 monitor resolution. Apologies if your screen size is below that.
I also took the opportunity to make some of the code a little more semantic. I’ve still got some work to do, so code nerds beware. I haven’t yet tried to validate, following a long tradition of seat of the pants live recoding. I’ll get to the archive pages after I publish this, so hopefully most of you won’t have to live through the pain of shite static pages.
As always, the site looks best in FIrefox and Safari, with IE 6 lagging in some of the CSS support.
This quick project was a welcome respite from awaiting news from plumbing contractors and wondering how in the hell we’re going to pay for a new sewer line without going into debt. More on the Sewer Nightmare™ later. o
April 21st, 2006 at 1:37 am
I noticed that one of the google ads blatently says “You will die broke.” There’s no question mark or anything, they seem to be demanding it. I was like pffft fuck you google, I have atleast $7 in my bank account.
I’m getting worried that this is off topic, uhh, I was meaning in relation to the pipe bussiness…
April 21st, 2006 at 2:44 am
Totally Nu Skin! I like it! Simple, clean–and love the three columns–ads all to the left. I can get to them if I want to, but doesn’t get in the way of enjoying the blurb.
The one thing you may want to look at again is the blurbomat logo–the drop down “L” makes me read it biurb or bjurb. Something to think about…..s/z
April 21st, 2006 at 3:08 am
The site looks great. I really like the little blurbs in the sidebar. And, well, yes, the paranoid section made me laugh.
April 21st, 2006 at 3:33 am
Hey looks good!
Hope all is going well with the sewer nightmare!
Chin up!!
April 21st, 2006 at 3:43 am
Love the new 3-columned look! Hope the sewer problem gets sorted soon and isn’t too expensive… It’s one of the drawbacks of being a home-owner I guess but I wouldn’t go back to renting!
April 21st, 2006 at 4:16 am
Love the layout! It’s clean and friendly while being easy on the eyes. I particularly like those little “blurb nodules” that break up the elements on the side bar, they sort of draw you along to investigate.
April 21st, 2006 at 5:40 am
The site looks good, Jon. Making your site validate should make the IE6 problems go away for the most part. Making the site Accessible also seems to help. Using Silktide’s SiteScore can really help out throughout the process. And besides, it really gets your OCD going, when you try to get the best possible score. Don’t believe me? Plug in the URL of my site into SiteScore for the proof. Anyway, like I said the site looks great, and keep up the good work.
April 21st, 2006 at 5:59 am
It’s very good.
April 21st, 2006 at 6:54 am
Heather really is dabomb and I don’t even want in her pants…love the new design!
April 21st, 2006 at 6:56 am
looks very cool - you two make a great team. good luck with the pipes, maybe you could auction off a weekend with chuck to raise money for the driveway excavation.
April 21st, 2006 at 7:16 am
I really like the three-column layout with the main text in the first column. It’s a very natural flow.
April 21st, 2006 at 7:37 am
Our last big repair was the replacement of our boiler in January of ‘03. We converted to natural gas at the same time - all in all it cost us about $5K. We used the HELOC route, and it’s been paid off for a while. It’s also nice to be able to deduct the interest you pay on the loan.
Three suggestions for financing repairs:
-Home equity line of credit (lower rate, esp if you can pay it off fairly quickly);
-Talk to your insurance company;
-Talk to your parents. They’re good for stuff like that. I am gleefully preparing to accept the gift of a repaired half-bath from my folks (they offered - first time for that in 12 years of homeownership) and I know they’re glad to help.
April 21st, 2006 at 7:38 am
Looks good. Lots of creamy white space goodness.
Best of luck with the sewer situation. That kind of thing makes me want to curl up in the fetal position.
April 21st, 2006 at 7:55 am
I like it, as well, but it does sort of look like biurbomat.
April 21st, 2006 at 8:03 am
I like.
But I have a question… people often say that things look better in Firefox and Safari, but other than a few subtleties, I don’t usually see much of a difference between Firefox and IE. Am I missing something?
April 21st, 2006 at 8:28 am
Well, it seemed to be a bit incongruous at the moment and since I have come to rely on you and heather to set the standard for all things cool and blogworthy than I have to say I am a bit surprised.
But it is easy to read, and sometimes you have to choose function over fashion.
Good luck with the sewer - we need an update!
April 21st, 2006 at 8:48 am
Lovin’ the new layout. Much easier to read with the bigger font. Thank you for not making me strain my already strained eyes!
April 21st, 2006 at 9:04 am
I like it. (as of now, i suppose…) I like that the ads are off to the right, so while i keep my bookmark tab open, i am not losing any content off the side of my screen. (not that i care at all about ads, dont misunderstand me. Add more if you want, i will still read!) I like the larger font.
Again- looks good!
April 21st, 2006 at 9:11 am
Heather did a great job Jon. I like the new design. I think the three columns are working. Way to go Heather.
April 21st, 2006 at 9:12 am
I like the new layout. I was wondering why the latest headlines weren’t showing up on “My Google”. Messing around with things is probably why. The old RSS feed wasn’t showing the last few updates but as of this morning everything is back to normal again.
Nice work Heather!
April 21st, 2006 at 9:16 am
I said everything was back to normal. That’s ALMOST true. In “My Google” (www.google.com/ig) this post shows and the next one that shows before this is “Not Looking Good”. “Worst Case Scenario” and “Sotto Voce” do not show.
April 21st, 2006 at 9:35 am
Not to offer up an unsolicited critique, but I personally could use a little bit more white space as it seems to be pretty thick and congested up top.
I appreciate the geriatric typefaces, but maybe they could come down a point or two?
I’ll shut up now.
April 21st, 2006 at 9:51 am
Patatomic, geriatric? Ouch. Bite me.
Donny, HTML is not allowed in comments.
April 21st, 2006 at 10:01 am
Yeah, dude! Pretty clean look. Being self- diagnosed OCPD, I personally would like to see more space between the ads and links on the right (perhaps a right- side border mirroring the left), and maybe a little more column breadth in the body, less on the right two, like a 2:1:1 ratio, if that makes sense. I’d like to see your better half adopt the same concept on her site as well. I just think that ads on left and right are a little distracting, and more “weight” on the body will make the site like a thick-ass slab o’ prime rib, with just a little fat on the outside.
And my heart goes out to your plumbing issues. I rented and old house in Fargo, ND (pronounced Farrr-goaah) where roots shattered the main going out to the street. Every time the toilet was flushed, raw sewage seeped up in the basement. Oh, yeah, AND everytime you used the shower, drained the dish water, etc… Being that it was spring, and the windows were usually open, I never really noticed any smell. When it got really hot one day, the reek hit me, and realized that about 3 days of sewage had produced a 2″ lake of sewage in the basement. Mind you, this was a small house, and being a bachelor, and not really needing to go downstairs to do laundry every day, I wasn’t really aware of this issue. So, the mattresses that the owner kept downstairs, along with empty cardboard boxes (he was a pack-rat recycle freak), old newspapers (did I mention he was a freak?), and anything else that had a tendency to sop up liquids of any nature, had to be cleaned up after the fact. Pretty nasty work. Financially, I was exempt from any obligation, but I did know the guy, and without question, aided in the nasty clean- up.
For what it is worth, God doesn’t bring us to it if he can’t bring us through it… or some thing like that…
April 21st, 2006 at 10:04 am
Works even in Opera9/Win32.