Pure Danger TechAlex Miller’s technical blog

1. nitinpai Nov 27 2007 / 12am

   Hi Alex,

   I had commented on your previous update to the Mac OS theme and now I want to comment on this theme too.

   Honestly speaking, it doesn’t hold a spark for a first time visitor and I am not a fan of the sidebar items lying way down below in the footer. When I have interacted with the less tech savy friends they always seem to miss the bottom part and try to search links on the more obvious sidebar.

   Till now I have always kept my site on the 2 layout right sidebar format because in terms of usability they reflect a more obvious surfer behavior. And also I feel the content area if under 600 px makes for a better reading and not the large area that this theme implies. The color scheme is also bland.

   These are just my thoughts. I would suggest you to get a professional makeover for your blog and don’t rely on free themes. You are a Java professional, and your blog contains very important content for a Java reader. So I would be happy to see this site do a paid makeover from a designer.

   Cheers!
2. CodeToJoy Nov 27 2007 / 12am

   Nice! I liked the old look but this is really sharp as well. Really clean

   For one, I’d like a histogram of overhauls over time. I think this is overhaul #2 since I’ve been onboard.
3. daniel Nov 27 2007 / 3am

   Hi Alex!

   I like your new blog look & feel.

   And I do like very large content areas. It would even be better if it could get larger when I maximize my browser - instead of adding blank padding on both side of he window. I didn’t buy a large screen for nothing after all ;-)

   The ‘other posts with this tag’ is also a nice idea.
   Cheers,
   – daniel
4. Stefan Schulz Nov 27 2007 / 9am

   Suprising change in look and feel. Much cleaner. Quite like the style.
   Btw., daniel’s comment proofs nitinpai’s comment on navigation elements put to the bottom: the “other posts with this tag” has always been there, but below the comment section. Having a wide screen monitor, this is really a waste of space. Two columns, uncentered and the content one stretching, would serve better.
5. Alex Nov 27 2007 / 10am

   I absolutely have a preference towards fluid content and smaller margins. It’s remarkably hard to find fluid themes that will expand with the browser size, minimize margins, and don’t look like crap. Most themes seem to be “optimized” for 800×600 but my blog stats show that 100% of visitors are using bigger screens than 800×600. Although I find that stat also misleading because it is screen size, not browser size and I often use a much smaller browser window than my screen. My dad (who is a human factors expert) claims that his research shows most people browse at nearly full screen, but I don’t buy that with my developer audience.

   I hope to spend a little time tweaking this CSS to see if I can get a little more content area out of it without wrecking the general feel. I think even as is, it gives a wider content area than the previous 3-column layout.

   BTW, this theme is based on the Hemingway theme which has the general bottom sidebar feel to it. I used to dislike it, but it’s grown on me a lot. If you search, you can find some other very interesting variations on the original Hemingway (which is kind of stark). I liked the color scheme and some of the tweaks like the page nav bar a bit better on this variation. The bottom side bar also caused me to drop a lot of junk that I’d previously had on the former side bars which I think was a good thing.

   If I didn’t totally suck at CSS and web design, I’d try to make my own theme, but there’s no way that’s worth the time I’d have to put into it.
6. Alex Nov 27 2007 / 10am

   @Nitin, I’d love to do a professional makeover of my theme! If you PayPal me a few hundred dollars, I’ll make it happen. :) Paid themes aren’t cheap - I’ve investigated a few and while I would love to, I just don’t have the money to spend on it.
7. nitinpai Nov 27 2007 / 11pm

   Alex,

   If I had those few 100 dollars to paypal you then I would have done that to my blog a long ago. Anyways I am not into product development so I don’t contribute much to development issues in my blog. I thought you did, so I put my 2 cents of advice.

   I am trying to learn some theme development myself. Let’s see if I am able to get through it or not.
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