Comments on: New Clothes

By: mcsteen

mcsteen — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 19:39:31 +0000

Brad,

I like the abbreviated articles (read more format). I believe that’s how most people read. If I think you give an indication of how the article will end, “I like this, I don’t like this, etc.) I will skip the rest because I have the general idea of the subject, the characters and the plot. In other words, I don’t need to know all your exact words about the topic but your opinion, feeling, emotion, instinct of the subject. That is how I get to know you, not by memorizing your words.

Kevin, great job. The page loads MUCH faster then before. Whatever you did, keep it up!

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 16:40:57 +0000

I think this is a overall improvement. It is definitely moving in the right direction, but seems a bit cluttered. You may want to have a mouseover effect on your main menu words. I agree with having full posts (up to a certain length) shown on the homepage as clicking “read more” for a short post isnt helpful. I think the added shadows, fonts, and graphics look great but the header image could use some refreshing. If you have the original background you could also get a designer to add the font without it being distorted around each letter. Nice sidebar widgets now too!

Also – I use cocomments to track my blog comments and I wanted to let you know its working on your site.

By: Don

Don — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 12:19:52 +0000

Since you’re abolishing “read more”, I think it looks great. Although the color scheme did remind me of the Colorado Avalanche which is probably not what you were going for.

By: Rick

Rick — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 06:05:52 +0000

I love the bubbles for the comments, and the triangle at the title of the post.

By: alek

alek — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 05:45:16 +0000

I like it … a LOT. The indented highlighting of the post titles and “thought ballon arrow” from the posted comments is a very nice touch.

How ’bout considering a fully liquid display – i.e. on my 1280×1024 screen, I’m seeing fairly wide grey bars on the left/right – looks like it was designed for 1024×768 (I’m too lazy/budy to grope around the HTML source to confirm exactly what was done … although I should to check out the nifty CSS being done).

Ditto other comments on “Read More” – just give us the content w/o the click-thru … and with a more liquid design, wider screens should have less vertical space for your stuff.

Overall darn impressive – I’d love to have Kevin provide a few pointers on my “halloween celiac charity” page that I mentioned to you earlier. Along those lines, maybe have Kevin do a “guest post” (or provide a pointer to a writeup on his site) of what he did “under the covers” – would not ony be interesting, but a good/appropriate attaboy if nothingn else.

By: Brad Feld

Brad Feld — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 05:01:03 +0000

“Read more” appears to be unanimously hated. I will abolish it shortly.

By: Dan Dunn

Dan Dunn — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 04:48:42 +0000

I like the fast load with the badges/widgets/stuff on the right.

I dislike (pretty strongly) the “read more” stuff. Maybe set the “read more” threshold higher? I don’t want to click 5 times to read your day’s worth of writing.

By: Kevin Cawley

Kevin Cawley — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 04:00:59 +0000

Like the new look, but I have to be honest, I never actually go to your site. I use an aggregator… NewsGator of course. Only reason I came to the site was to see the new look.

Fred talks about this, but in a different context.

For new visitors, it is certainly a great first impression but for us loyal subscribers we won’t get to enjoy Kevin’s fine work

By: Jessica

Jessica — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 01:49:34 +0000

Nice, very nice. The post titles seem a bit large to me. I love the colors.

By: alan shimel

alan shimel — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 01:30:37 +0000

Brad I like the colors and look, don’t like the read more stuff though. I often will not read more and leave an article with that kind of stuff. I don’t like it in my RSS feed and certainly don’t like it on the blog itself. Otherwise it is pleasing to the eye. From a functional prospective though, what did you gain?