New Face on ThoughtSparks
Posted on September 19, 2007
If you are a regular reader, you’ll notice much has changed here at ThoughtSparks.net. The most obvious and encompassing aspect is the new template. There are several reasons that led me to apply a new design.
- I’m a perfectionist and just wasn’t happy with the last one.
- The old design had too many plug-ins and was becoming unwieldy to customize.
- The new design affords more space with an extra column.
- With the launch of TechFires.com, I wanted a site that had some similar feel to it while still maintaining its own look and feel.
- The logo works so much better against black.
- What the heck, it’s just fun to change.
- The top navigation was a bit cramped.
- I wanted a slightly more minimalist, clean look.
- It’s a cathartic experience to let go of an old design.
- The new design just feels more professional.
I will undoubtedly execute further tweaks, but here she is for better or worse. So what do you think? Thumbs up or thumbs down?
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Filed Under Just for Fun, design |
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Comments
10 Responses to “New Face on ThoughtSparks”
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Site looks great Phil! Lots of white space, no cramping. Terrific job.
Mike Thanks. I appreciate your comment. I think it’s a keeper.
It looks great!
Random Thanks! I appreciate your thumbs up. The more I massage it, the more I like it. Glad you do too.
Wow! You’ve been busy! I agree that it is very sharp and very professional looking. I enjoy my additional column, too, but I haven’t done much with it. I need to do some housecleaning as well, but have to wait for that project I’m dragging on forever is done. I can’t wait to check out your new site!
Thanks for the comments Kelly. I think it has taken me a while to find my stride/focus. Besides the two blogs I’ve been able to use the platform for some microsites at work which has afforded me the opportunity to pick-up a few more bells and whistles as of late. After going live with TechFires, I realized how tired I had become w/ the old template and saw the number of benefits to be gained by transitioning. I decided to drop a couple features like the translation and voice in favor of a faster loading page. It’s always a trade-off, but at least for now I’m siding towards light-loading pages.
I’ve got some more site tweaks, but I’m most excited about the content I’m going to be generating with tutorials done in slides, video/audio etc.
TechFires is a hoot and having a co-author has been a great addition.
Hi Phil,
Your new blog design is nice and neat. Well done!
BTW, I find that a lot of blog templates don’t use up all the space (1024×768) to cater for those that are still using (800×600) resolution. I checked from Google Analytic for my blog and I do find some are still using (800×600) resolution. Phil, is it easy to use CSS to resize dynamically all the columns for different resolution?
Best Wishes
Let’s Acquire Wisdom and Live with Passion
Sam, Yes you can definitely resize in CSS. What I recommend typically is creating fixed-width sidebar columns with the main column in percentage. Check out http://www.mycelly.com/ for some different options. Notice in your stats as well Sam that the number of browsers with much larger resolutions is growing as well.
Phil,
You are right more and more people are using larger resolutions. Thanks for the CSS templates link. I will check that out and see whether I could use it in my blog.
BTW I noticed that your blog new design don’t have a way to notify readers when new comments are posted. I think that was a cool feature that blogspot has left out. I wonder why you had it remove?
Best Wishes
Let’s Acquire Wisdom and Live with Passion
Sam, that’s a plug-in I haven’t yet re-applied. I’ll do so. It takes a while to add back-in all the tweaks. Your the second one who has mentioned it.