The Hickensian

25.02.08

Fiddling

Over the weekend I started implementing a new design.

It’s a work in progress, but I had to make it live, otherwise it’ll just sit on some testing domain and gather dust. It’s almost a year old as it is! At first I didn’t want to post about it as I didn’t want any emails, opinions or bug reports about it. However, being live, some people are starting to notice changes and commenting. The journal section is how I want it to be (try making the window smaller – thanks to Stuart Colville for his drop column idea), and the rest will follow soonish.

The biggest stumbling block for me is fonts. If you happen to have P22 Underground installed, then great, you’re seeing it how I’d like you to see it. If not, you may have Gill Sans (in which case you’re getting ugly bold headings, but Gill is the closest match to Johnston Underground) or Helvetica/Arial (which isn’t so bad). More on this later, but basically I didn’t feel like going the route of SIFR or dynamic image replacement – this felt like the best compromise.

Anyway, that’s all. Carry on!

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No.1

Zach Inglis said 495 days ago:

I like it.

I’ve not seen fixed borders on a page before and I like how it still carries the brand from the last iteration.

What’s the colour bar about? Is that a design choice or a development thing?

I love the bottom image.

No.2

Elliot Jay Stocks said 495 days ago:

Ooh, very nice indeed, sir. It looks lovely. And I have to say that, in the source, I particularly love “The deliberately annoy Norm section”. ;)

No.3

Dave Redfern said 495 days ago:

I like the new design jon,nice work :)

although i must say it is a bit wishy washy at the moment and there isn’t any real wow factor to the site like the old one although i am sure you will do something amazing once it has finished.

No.4

David Barrett said 495 days ago:

Looks good, but I still miss the tree :(

No.5

Piers said 495 days ago:

Nice layout. Nice colours. The font hurts my eyes though.

No.6

Andy Croll said 495 days ago:

Liking it a lot although there is a lot of vertical space before you get to any content. Particularly on the homepage.

Haven’t you heard of the fold? Kidding.

Glad to see you finally got to use that illustration you’ve been wanting to use for ages!

Now all that remains is for me to pull my finger out and deliver my own redesign, although I’m migrating to EE from TXP so it’s taking me a little longer to adjust my thinking!

No.7

Brad C said 494 days ago:

I’m checking this out this morning on a Windows machine. and the fonts are pretty tough to read especially the small bolds. Also the Rissington and Hicksmade banners don’t alias well on a PC and are looking pretty bad when resized on the page. Just my 2 cents, the design as a whole looks great and I’ll have to take a look on a Mac later today.

No.8

chris said 494 days ago:

I find the frame a bit odd, but moreso the change in font in the sub nav. It goes from Gil Condensed in grey to Bold in Red. Very jarring. No P22 for me…

No.9

Rob Goodlatte said 494 days ago:

Looks fantastic Jon. Love the border around the window—it’s an effect you don’t see often and frames the site nicely.

No.10

Laura said 494 days ago:

Oh – that is great! Underground is one of my favorite fonts. I love that you’ve specced it (and it looks great here). Do you know if there are any downsides to adding a lot of font choices into your CSS stack? I mean, does it slow down page rendering or anything to have a mess of them?

No.11

Olly said 494 days ago:

Hi Jon,

Gill Sans isn’t rendering on this Windows machine I’m using although that font is present — you might need to add “Gill Sans MT” to your font-family declaration

No.12

Dustin Wilson said 494 days ago:

Too bad P22 Johnston doesn’t allow embedding. Otherwise you can embed it and alter some permissions and whatnot to keep people from downloading the typeface from your website.

I like the redesign for the most part. I don’t really know what to make of the border because it’s kind of new to me, but I bet it’ll grow on me. It does look quite bad on Windows machines due to ClearType, but in my opinion just about anything with any type in it does.

I was going to mention something about Gill Sans MT, but Olly beat me to it. Usually it’s installed with Office products. Appears to me by looking at it that it’s the same except the hinting values were changed, perhaps to make it work better with ClearType.

Keep up the good work, Jon.

No.13

Jared Christensen said 494 days ago:

That sidebar is so hot. Nicely gridded as well!

No.14

Darice de Cuba said 494 days ago:

I like the body border, the color used for it is just right. It’s not too noticeable and creates a nice effect.

No.15

Scott Nellé said 494 days ago:

Wow, cool affect on the side columns. I’ve noticed that the scaling images never quite get up to full size even at maximum width, so they’re always a little grainy. Resizing the actual image files to 333 pixels wide would help, unless you’re eventually planning to boost the overall site width by 26%. In that case you should leave the images as they are. :-)

No.16

Mike D. said 494 days ago:

Looks great! Have you looked at sIFR 3 yet though? It’s a pretty big upgrade to the version that’s been out for a couple of years now. Looks and works a lot nicer. And easier to set up.

No.17

Louije said 494 days ago:

I really like the overall border. And the drop-column thing. And the colours.

Just one quick note : the P22 Underground I bought is just called “P22 Underground” (that was before the release of the Pro version, I guess). It would be great if you could include this family name in the style sheet.

No.18

Paul Lloyd said 494 days ago:

Ooh, I like the sidebar trickery, very clever!

Must say I’m not sure about the overall design, but I’ve said that before and end up liking it, so just ignore me. The journal definitely has a better layout, and I love the arrows! I expect to hear the whistle of an approaching steam train any minute! Looking forward to seeing your little place on the web evolve before our eyes!

No.19

Rob Mason said 494 days ago:

Lush!

No.20

Rob Mason said 494 days ago:

You’re just trying to show Oxton up aren’t you?

No.21

Max Wheeler said 494 days ago:

Very nicely put together. I think I need to buy Underground now just so I can see things the way you meant them to be.

No.22

Marko said 494 days ago:

Spanking stuff Sir!!

No.23

Chris J. Davis said 494 days ago:

You just couldn’t let me bask in the coolness of my redesign could you? Oh no you had to come out with something that made my redesign look like a cheap knock-off of what a proper redesign should be.

jerk.

No.24

Ward said 494 days ago:

I second Olly – “Gill Sans MT” on this windows box, and secondly, I second what Max said – could we see a screen shot with the proper font in full effect?

No.25

Luke said 494 days ago:

The redesign has a certain playfulness about it that’s not often seen. The page border, use of whitespace, and attention to detail — the different vertical arrow and background-color of the Contact hover, for example — are just yum.

p.s. The fonts render fine on my Windows box at the moment and are lookin’ splendid.

No.26

Peter Marquis-Kyle said 494 days ago:

The body text font is unpleasantly hard to read for me — I don’t have Lucida Grande or Helvetica Neue, so my Windows machine is using Helvetica. 11px is too small for me (21” Trinitron @ 1280×1024).