It’s been about one year since BloggerDesign launched and today we are celebrating with a brand new design & logo.
The new design is aimed at showcasing the content and cleaning up the interface a bit. This is especially noticeable on individual post pages. Overall we’ve gone from a three column to a two column design and have added more options in the same, if not less, space.
Design is always fun in the fact that getting all browsers to show the same thing isn’t that easy. However, the only area I’m seeing minor issues in is IE6 which only about 15% of the visitors use. I’ll continue to dig into IE6’s issues, but since it wasn’t a big one, I wasn’t going to hold up the launch.
As you browse around BloggerDesign, keep your eyes open for any problem areas. If you find one, post it below and I’ll take a look into a fix. Of course, you can post feedback in general, it doesn’t have to be bugs. 😉
Here are some things I’d personally change.
Your search box isn’t recogniseable and the footer text is almost illegible.
I think your blogroll should be placed in a drop-down, rather than the categories (which are more important and shouldn’t be hidden).
I preferred the older theme although perhaps this will grow on me.
Thanks for the comments David. I think the footer colors get darker on a PC so things are showing up harder to read. I’ll get those updated.
I’ll also work on the search. I think my search plugin didn’t make it over to the new design so search a bit more mysterious.
And with the categories, I’ll consider other options. Since the sidebar as getting so long on individual pages, I opted to put them in a drop down.
I think you’re right to opt for a drop-down in some form, but suggest placing the blogroll inside one to keep the focus of your site on your own content, and not that of third parties.
I thought the other theme was elegant, so far I like the other one better for the icons and simplicity. But I’m hoping that the things that I am seeing that don’t look good are because I am looking at the site in IE6, and as you said, things show up differently in IE6.
In IE6, the whole thing is really dark, I can’t find the search box (I assume it’s the white bar on the bottom, but I can’t click in it) comments and blogroll are hard to read (too dark) and the way the sidebar is overlapping about 10 px of the main column doesn’t look correct. I like the logo, though!
You might want to think about going with less gray and black and more color.
Thanks for the feedback. There is a world of difference between what shows on my Mac and most PCs. Eek! However, I changed the comments text color, added a new searchbox to the right hand column. I still have to consider other suggestions, but I’m trying to get the easy ones updated quickly. 🙂 (need to fix smilies somehow)
Square One: Spell Check your header and likely the whole site, based on the header. (Great irony, the words and the spelling.) And reverse type is impossible to read.
“reverse type is impossible to read” – What’s that one mean?
Man…I’m suprised I haven’t come across this site before, but I haven’t. I can’t say whether you’re new design is better or not, because I never saw the old one, but I like how you’ve branded the comments section with the logo in the background; a very nice touch.
Thanks Armen. I think the header needs to be re-done, but with the help of the folks above, I’m getting everything else to snap into place. 🙂