i needs your ideas, honey
And who says squeezing out half hearted blog entries doesn’t pay off? Thanks to NaBloPoMo, I am the proud recipient of Jessica from Kerflop‘s design services for a blog makeover!
Here’s where you come in: tell me what you want in a blog. Tell me what you despise about blogs. I’m talking about interface and layout — basically, how the content is available and presented to you. For example, the current size and font of this paragraph you are reading makes my eyes hurt. [Content is something else entirely — this is the Hambox Empire and the Tsarina can write whatever she likes.]
For another example, Regina would like to see pull-down menus for a blogroll (a list of favorite links). Excellent idea, Reg! I think this points to my biggest peeve about the evolution of blog — do we really need so much stuff on the sidebars? Must we have a calendar, a list of recent links, and lists of archive by dates on every page? Do you need them at all? If I put my blogroll on a actual separate page, would anyone click?
And the main content — why an endlessly long and annoyingly narrow strip of column? Wouldn’t it be nicer to have a variable-width (shrink/expand proportionate to your window size) column?
And commenting on posts? Anything that can be improved there?
My goal is to create a rocksolid layout and CSS (overall text/type format). Simple and clean and accessible design. Then I can change the look and feel much more easily in the future.
Thanks in advance! Now here’s a bunny.
Our first run in with bunnies (06/2005), originally uploaded by greefus groinks. Thanks for letting me use it!
I love the bunny! So cute, it almost looks like a mouse with slightly large ears.
I am a fan of light backgrounds and darker text. While I like this color (kind of aqua) to me it does not provide enough contrast with the black text.
Oooh! I just got sidetracked and saw you have a kathy griffin link in your the-ay-ter link. Fun!
I agree, text a bit larger, but I like the leading between the sentences (1.5 spaces or double space — nice).
Um, I also like to have access to the comments right up there under the title. So if I come back to see if you returned a comment it would be nice to click just under the title, instead of scrolling all the way down. I’m a lazy SOB, I know.
And I love that you are the Tsarina! Priceless.
eeeeeeeeeeee! baby bunny! π
I hate how my blog is SO visually busy. But I like having access to the stuff there… Like, *I* use my blogroll links, etc. It would be great to have a cleaner appearance though. Like the drop down I mentioned… I’d use one for the blogroll, archives, and categories.
Also, I’d like a box to opt-in to subscribe to comments on a particular post. There are widgets out there, but the highly touted one I found for WordPress seems to want to keep putting it waaaay down at the bottom of my page, where no one is likely to see it. And I currently don’t have time to delve into the CSS structure of it. I, personally, like being able to subscribe to comments. (Blogger seems to do this one right.)
Other things I like: a box to see the most recent comments. It appeals to my inner voyeur.
I personally like calendars. But I’ve always been a calendar freak. This is the time of year I start narrowing down the list I’ll purchase… and I always purchase at least 6-7 calendars, all for me. I hang ’em all over the place.
I know these are things in relation to *MY* blog, but, well, they are things I WOULD like, and that’s what you asked for, n’est-ce pas? π
Also, I did a quick peek at the Bloggers Choice Awards 2008 and saw this stuff I like:
http://www.tysonandjulia.com/blog/
I like the scrolling Comments box.
http://philsproof.com/index.php?page_id=3
I like his separate Archive page which includes the date and title of posts.
http://kentuckygurl.com/
oooh… check out her dropdown menus in the left column. Yeah, that’s what we want!
http://www.formykountry.com/
If you’re going to keep on keepin’ on with your podcasts, maybe you’d want something like this guy’s podcast player?
What I DON’T like:
*sites that automatically load sound/music
*SNAP (when scrolling over a link, it pops up a little image of the site)
*mile-long ribbons of icons for de.li.cious, rss, stumble it, digg this, etc.
* not being able to scroll/have a link to the “previous” or “next” entry from a page. (Like your current winter template. Your previous template had at the top of each new post links at the top to go to the previous or subsequent post.)
Okay, I’ve thrown in waaaay more than 2 cents here. That’ll teach you to ask me anything! π
Becky,
Your blog is one of three that I frequent. I tend to adapt to whatever the creator of each blog has chosen whenever they re-decorate. I never pay much attention to the side line. I like the font to be easy to read and yes, the size of your blog right now is wee-bitty on my laptop. The high-lighted names of the folks commenting and the links you provide in the body are currently snow white and difficult for me to see as well. I like a minimal page. Your blog, your latest pictures from flickr, a link to a profile about you, a shmattering of your favorite links (pull-down) as well as archives (pull-down). I also like the content that allows me to see way-back-when where I don’t have to click a “next page” or archive, I just scroll down and get tons of you. I will continue to watch and read regardless of your changing faces. I have not redecorated in over 10 years. Love Grandpa
I tried to comment on this before – but my internet connection has been so wobbly lately, and everything froze…. which gives me such a lovely transfer to the subject here, as the frozen winter beauty is really nice. Just one thing though, I must admit I don’t care for the font too much.It doesn’t really “flow” if you know what I mean, and the font’s spacing is sort of off as well..? But that’s all π The contrast is not bothering me (maybe having an old fashioned screen pays off?), and like Andy says, I adapt to whatever the blogger would like to feature π Hope this helps girl! So many words. I’ll just shut up now!
My drop down menus…do you mean the On-Click? It’s just an easy little javascript code that you can put into your sidebar code. π