August 22nd, 2006
Redesign & Realign
So me and amon were talking about updating various sites we run today, when he mentioned the “Redesign and Realign” statement I had on the beta build of greyskies which I had read about last year on A List Apart and it got me thinking.
I have been designing websites for almost 10 years now and when I started I couldn’t design a nice looking layout for toffees, this of course changed over the years as I learned how to better use Photoshop and apply the knowledge gain at Art School to what I was working on. This combined with looking at website codes taking them apart and seeing how they work taught me how to create beautiful looking websites but with not much thought to semantic markup and user end interface.
Since making the change (for which I give amon credit for introducing me to Jeff Zeldman and Designing With Web Standards) I have found that I am more interested in making the site as pleasent and easy experience to the user than I am in having the site look pretty. Asthetics will always be a apart of it as I love to create its what I do its why I am an Artist. Take DJC for instance, I have worked on DJC since I was introduced to Myst back in 1998, when the site first went up it was on fortunecities (and we remember how nasty those sites looked) as I became more interested in designing features of the site myself instead of using masses of animated .gif’s and starfield backgrounds I started using MS Word (how could you I hear you cry, well I was new to this so give me a break). It was only when I started visiting RivenGuild that I learned about more complex coding and different programs to use (ie frontpage express), I had used WYSIWYG editors since then up to 2003/2004, it was only when I met Jen that I started working with CSS and divs and using notepad to code with (I used both notepad and WYSIWYG editors).
I am however now free of such devices, I only use Photoshop and Notepad++ for my websites and have felt better for doing so, I am at the stage where I know my code is valid XHTML before even validating it because I have written every fragment of the code and don’t have a WYSIWYG editor adding nonsense code, misreading tags and bloating my webpages up with items I do not need. This means its so much easier to go through my pages to change sections and has cut down the amount of server space used for a site. Not only that I find my sites working nicely on IE, FF and safari which means users aren’t met with;
“Site best viewed in Firefox at 1024×786 resolution.”
I know from my experience as a user of varous sites, if people are looking for information they want to find it quickly and easily, hiding information away behind “mystery meat” navigation and throwing adverts in the way is just not the way to go about it. Last thing I want to be doing is reading an article and having an advert smack bang in the middle of it (which is often the case when reading articles posted on Digg.
Although I still have alot to learn I think making the change has been very worthwhile, and if people find it alot easier to find what they are looking for on DJC then I have done what I was aiming for.
Blog Upgrade & npages
With the new update for WordPress released I figured it was about time I upgraded my blog to the new build, I have been meaning to upgrade for a while but haven’t had the time to do so. Think I might work on a new theme for the blog too, possibly incorperating it into the beta version of greyskies.
I have also been looking at npages, which is a CMS from amon. Its pretty nice little application, needs a few changes here an there obviously but its promising and for the most part very easy to use.