Dean's World

Looks great to this Safari user.

It seems weird, though, to have the "Posted by Dean | Permalink | 0 Comments | 0 Trackbacks" part displayed in a larger font than the body of the messages. Usually it's smaller, or so I'm led to expect...

Loads faster, letters are sharper, otherwise I can't see much different from previous versions. Maybe you need to gussy up the graphics some.

Its a lot easier on the eyes and seems more user friendly.

Here is a blogger I really like reading. Never seems to be mentioned elsewhere. Kind of a private, independent sort living in the UK and has some good american insights with a UK flair...

http://expatyank.blogspot.com/

Looks good in Safari, now. The center column is in the proper place, the Google search bar fits in its container, and links don't change size when I mouse over them.

I like the color and font choices, too. Enough to be distinctive without being distracting.

Very nice.

test log in

Title's still in an fortunate font on my computer, but that might be trouble on my end.

My computer's little more than an old See N Say with a pentium chip.

IE6 - Logo all pixelated liek space invaders

Leading still too tight between headlines and first line of text

Alright, you asked for comments, so here they come! Sorry in advance for the negativity. Main browser is Opera 7.x on Windows, though I looked at it with IE6 and Firefox .8 too.

I think the new look sucks compared to the old look, and it's not a general "change is bad" sort of thing.

The fonts are too big all the way around, and hard to read. Comments are especially hard to read because the letters are thin black against a white background.

I think the left column is too wide, and the font is too big there, too. I don't come here to read your blogroll, don't care about it, but it sure takes up a lot of space.

I've been reading your site for a long time, but probably wouldn't have stuck around had it looked this way before. It just doesn't "feel" right and sort of makes my eyes seize up.

Oh, PS - don't know if it makes a difference, but I use IE6.

And Dean, a positive note: you're still awesome, and I'll stop by QOAE every day even if I have to cross my eyes and stand on my head to read the new format.

I'm against change except the change in my pocket. But I have noticed a couple of improvements:

1) I mentioned this before, but my comments don't take nearly as long to post now. Thank you.

2) A problem I had with your old site for a while was that, when it was time to say good-bye to Dean's World for a while, when I hit the back button on my brouser (Netscape 6), it wouldn't go back to my home page (Up With Beauty), but instead I had to hit the little arrow and go back several levels to get back there. I don't have to do that any more. I can just exit normally now. Not that I want to exit, I love being here, but sometimes I do want to visit other blogs on my blogroll or do something else. Now, it's easier for me to do that. Thank you.

looks good to me - - and now I have an account so I can comment - - aren't you excited? *heh*

I came back to see what's going on. Mr. Snyder, that's toooo funny! Giggle giggle
I think ole' Dean needed that!!!

Yeah, it's technically working now, everything's where it's supposed to be in Safari. But I have to agree with several commenters that I liked the old look better. The title isn't nearly big enough and doesn't look as good as it used to, and it would be nice if the area I used the most, the main posting area, was on the left instead of that huge blogroll that I rarely want to look at.

A couple of things come to mind. Before I get going, all of these are subjective and not a single one is a deal breaker or of any particular importance. But you did ask :)

I think the content (the center) is overpowered by the sidebars. I would consider reducing their size both in terms of width and in font size. It may help to keep the focus on your entries. I realise that you may be bound by the width of the ad for the right side, but you can certainly adjust the left. That would also allow you to align the buttons left.

Lose the borders for a:hover. The page jumps around too much. I would keep it with just a bottom line (text-decoration:underline) for text links and remove it from image links entirely. The line height keeps the div spacing intact for text links, but it gets jumpy on images.

Too many dang boxes. You got boxes in boxes in boxes. The borders on the buttons look like boxes (maybe make them 1px and black, we know they're links) and the Google ads just look silly. The metadata boxes you could lose entirely and use the different font-size and alignment to differentiate them — you could even change the color. Right now IMO those boxes are a distraction and break up my reading flow from one entry to the next.

I don't like the way you have the titles, entries and metadata (posted by, permalink, etc.) structured. It's conventional to mark the title up as a header with the body text below slightly smaller and the metadata smallest of all — this gives the reader an intuitive grasp of what's important. This also applies to the sidebar, where again, the text is larger than the header. It just looks 'off'.

To be real nitpicky, I'd knock the header over a few pixels so it lines up with the rest of the page and pump it up a few notches in size. It looks a little lonely hanging off the edge.

On the upside the site functions very well. Registration was as painless as any I've come across and it's easy to navigate. There is certainly nothing wrong with the structure of your site. I know this was the shortest paragraph of this treatise, but in the most important sense it's the one that matters. The sucker works, and it works well.

hehe...premature submitalation.....the contact dean on the left sidebar does not work either. I'm using IE6 - there does not appear to be a link for it at all - it's just acting like static text.

So, I posted my comment and logged in at the same time. Then it gave me another window that said, "Site not found." But, when I hit the magic refresh button, my post had been posted. Then when I tried to post this post, I had to log in again. So, is it mine, or yours?

James,

Yeah, Dean chose not to make that a link to anything.

Chris:

I'm sure you are working very, very hard. Is it possible to have only two columns rather than three ? Three makes it very commercial and lacks the personal flavor of the prior set-up. Its seems to be an impact thing, like the reader is secondary or
perhaps now rather tertiary. I haven't thought it through but I feel more like a mere spectator rather than one who can participate. I can read the newspapers if I'd choose to go that route. No offense, these are only ideas running through me brain at present. Your efforts are very commendable, even that you allow us to comment following your post. I'm sure in a short time frame all this will work itself out. Thanks.

Chris, wow, fast work. Maybe it's time to take a look at Powerblogs :)

I see your point about breaking up the posts, but stand by my opinion (and you know what they say about them) that's it's obtrusive. If you think just the text isn't enough maybe an image of some sort or even an hr?

Now that I've actually looked at the source, I have another question. Why not use h2 for the post titles? It doesn't seem to be used elsewhere and might even get you some extra Google juice.

Catch,

Yeah, I am working quite hard, but then what's the point of life if not to do good work? And how can one do good work without working very hard? :-)

As for 2 vs. 3 columns, that's not my call, it's what Dean wanted and was actually going to do even if he hadn't moved to powerblogs (someone was working on it for him, though apparently she ran out of time and wasn't able to finish it). I just finished the adjustment/redesign for him.

LOL, since I'm on such a roll... where are the p tags in entries? Ssince the entry font size seems to be an issue, this would have the advantage of making user stylesheets more useful as paragraph tags are a commonly modified element among those who go to the trouble of making a custom stylesheet.

As far as the headers go, H1 for the banner makes perfect sense, but I would use H2 for the post titles and H3 for dates and sidebar headings. It's a little more semantic that way and it's my understanding that Google cares. This would give the post titles more weight than the relatively unimportant dates.

I'll be leaving you alone now and I'm sorry for being a pest. This is what I do and it's almost impossible for me to resist.

Al,

P tags in entries is up to Dean. It's one of the options for how posts should be auto-formatted.

As for google, I'm curious what your source is. I was under the impression that google keeps a fairly tight lid on what they consider important so that it won't just be horribly abused.

Besides which, it's not like Dean's titles are often all that descriptive, anyhow. I mean, how would you know when searching about Michael Moore to look for "It's Official"?

And there is the logical semantics of it; the day header is a group in which each post resides. That's the idea behind the different header levels, after all. :-)

Thanks for the feedback!

YEEEE-HAAAAWW!!!! WOOOO-HOOOO!!!! ARCHIVES!!!! Thank you, Dean! HAIL TO THE KING!!!!

And I love the new font for your headers. Big, bold, and sans serif. _Much_ better. Thank you. The "O's" are now rounder instead of so flat. I like that _much_ better. You're making Dean's World better all the time. Thank you.

Still had to hit refresh and still got the page not found for the comments section only. The web page itself didn't reload automatically. Oh well, I'll get used to it. I like the idea for getting rid of the white space. Good job on the page...As always.

Chris:

Well, once again, Dean's World is looking even better this morning. Now looking very, very nice indeed!

And BTW... thank you, thank you, thank you, for putting the titles of posts in <h3>!!! To most visitors, this change won't even be visible. But to those such as myself who occasionally switch in a custom stylesheet as a concession to aging middle-aged eyes, it makes a big difference.

Here's a screenshot [83K] of how Dean's World now looks under said custom stylesheet. Note how the titles of posts stand out.

And for those who are interested, here are slightly more technical diagrammatic screenshots of before and after. (All effects produced via the Opera browser's user-stylesheet feature.)

Paul,

You're welcome. I'm glad that you like it.

Chris,
Thanks for the correction. Javascript, it is--sorry. I am using Internet Explorer.

2-columns 3-columns.

Here's the quick way to tell that 3 columns is overkill. Scroll down. The right column ends anfter two page lengths... about 10% of the length of the page. The left column lasts another 15 page lengths (about 50% of the length of the page). After that, the content column is being squished without reason. I don't think there is much need for 3 columns.

So here's my wishlist:

- 2 columns
- smaller font on the side column, especially for the blogroll
- Change the Google Adsense ads to blend in a little better... the white background doesn't really fit
- kill the overline (border-top) on a:hover, especially on images. Blogads mouseover makes the page jump around

Aimee,

I'm glad that you like it.