More stuff, less fluff

destraynor

Monday, May 15. 2006

More stuff, less fluff

I've done a redesign of this web log for a few reasons. In short, it was cause the old one had soo much crap that I never used, let alone anyone else. Turns out you don't need to provide 5 types of feeds for each of the 5 categories, when everyone is just clicking on one of them. So that was 24 links gone. Ditto for crap like my administrative login, my PDF plugin, and much other stuff that was never clicked on in one year of blogging. So what inspired me to go all light on dark, and plain.
This design is what you get when you put the following things into a pot and stir for 2 weeks.
  1. This picture by Darragh Sherwin
    Pic of Dublin By Night
  2. The "Beauty is Simple" photo pool at flickr
    Pic of Flower
  3. My incompetence at graphical design
  4. The MacBookPro page at Apple
  5. The belief that the only thing that matters is content
  6. Update: I nearly forgot, a post by Jeff Atwood was also very influential. He wrote about how blogs these days have more stickers than NASCAR vehicles in his article "Excess Blog Flair".

I could expand this post into the motivations behind re-design, and I could throw in smart remarks about websites that have nothing but design. But it is no longer the weekend, and now I have real work to do. Plus, I much prefer writing posts that are interesting to read. The next time I'm free, I'll add a search box and some link to the archives, until then there is a link to go read previous entries at the bottom of the main page. All feedback and criticism is welcome. Even more welcome is CSS that makes the site nicer :-)
Please don't take offence if I don't follow your advice.

Linkage

  1. Darragh Sherwins photo sets (Flickr). Some fantastic photos here
  2. Beauty is Simple (Flickr). A photo pool of nice pics at Flickr
  3. MacBookPro You could call this blog a rip off of that design, but I'd say 2 things. 1) It's not easy to rip that design off, I wrote the CSS for this myself. 2) I don't really care to be honest.
  4. Excess Blog Flair A good article by Jeff Atwood, who runs an excellent blog titled "Coding Horror"
  5. LightOnDark A celebration of the growing popularity of light on dark websites.
Posted by Des Traynor at 06:16 | Comments (14) | Trackbacks (0)

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You spelt vehicles wrong.
#1 will on 2006-05-15 09:34 (Reply)
Fixed, cheers.
#2 Des (Homepage) on 2006-05-15 09:52 (Reply)
No atom feed? tsk tsk.

I like the look tho.
:-)
#3 murf (Homepage) on 2006-05-15 09:53 (Reply)
Okay, I'll add an atom feed for ya. It's on the list.
#4 Des (Homepage) on 2006-05-15 12:47 (Reply)
Cool!

One other thing, howcome some of the images are served as https instead of http?
#4.1 murf (Homepage) on 2006-05-15 14:14 (Reply)
A good question. That would definitely be a mistake. Fixing now. Cheers for the feedback.

(By the way, if there is anything else people would like, feel free to ask. I'll re-add things on a request basis)
#5 Des (Homepage) on 2006-05-15 14:21 (Reply)
Okay, ATOM is added, clicking Subscribe gives you a choice of the feeds now.
#6 Des Traynor (Homepage) on 2006-05-15 14:47 (Reply)
How about having the blog title link to the blog main page, I know you have the link in the side panel but most blogs link from the title too.
#7 drongo on 2006-05-15 17:52 (Reply)
Yeah, I wanted to do that but couldn't figure out how. Basically I am using LIR image replacement to put that graphic up there instead of the title/subtitle thing that s9y does. However I am losing the hyperlink as a result.

Does anyone know how to change the HTML output from serendipity?

Cheers.
#7.1 Des Traynor (Homepage) on 2006-05-16 06:06 (Reply)
I like the new look Des .... less is most certainly more (and not just at the Linux command prompt).

Excellent job!
#8 Bart B (Homepage) on 2006-05-16 05:02 (Reply)
Wow, I didn't think my photos would inspire people but that's great.

I really like the less is more idea, design should flow the content, people read websites, they don't look at pleasing webdesigns.
#9 Darragh Sherwin (Homepage) on 2006-06-06 11:06 (Reply)
To be more accurate, what inspired me about that picture in particular was that the picture made the bridge look really nice. But I've seen that bridge, in full daytime colour it is rank looking.

Basically by taking away a lot of the extra details the picture reveals the bridge itsself, and it looks far nicer.
#10 Des Traynor (Homepage) on 2006-06-13 17:38 (Reply)
Nice website and you're a decent writer as well. Very funny and thanks for the Maddox link, I had never heard of this guy before!
#11 Erwin Heiser (Homepage) on 2006-06-23 19:11 (Reply)
Thanks Erwin, It's good to hear feedback. Hope you enjoy Maddox :-)

Des
#12 Des Traynor (Homepage) on 2006-06-24 12:49 (Reply)

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About:

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This website is the online diary of me, Des Traynor, a User Experience Researcher in Dublin, Ireland. I work with Contrast.

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