ยป New Theme: Photon
We’ve got a new minimalist, light-colored theme. Refresh the page a couple of times to get the new stylez.
I’m working on an actual WP theme for us, but rather than continue to torture our readers with baddazz hellfirez until it’s done I’m just going minimalist.
Search is now an expandy-box in the lop-left, and I’ve re-ordered the sidebar in what I consider to be the order-of-usefulness. Let me know if you [dis]agree. I’ve tested the RSS, and the layout on iPhone/iPad — but no browsers other than Safari [update: Fox, Chrome, and Opera on Snow Leopard check out, as does IE8 on Vista]. Also let me know if your milage varies.
I was inspired to finally change (after months of complaints) while digging through the Wayback Machine archive of MPF looking for a Hunter Thompson quote I was storing on our now-defunct wiki and seeing one of our old, nicer themes.
Todo: [update: Done!]
Add per-post [edit] links for admins on the index (dammit!),Add post authors (dammit!), andRemove useless categories.
[Also fixed the bug where WP wouldn't display the date beside every post on a particular day (thx Ryley).]
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MentalPolyphonics » Google’s Worst Design Decision…
16 Mar 10 at 3:32 pm
The search box is a new interface. Do not invent new interfaces. People are looking for a textbox. It’s not even obvious that the magnifying glass is clickable. (It took me about 60 seconds to find it, and I had a good idea what I was looking for.)
I think you’re exactly wrong on the order of things on the sidebar. The tag cloud is to give new readers a sense of the site and encourage non-linear browsing. The RSS links are unnecessary if you’re using a newsreader that parses a page for them (like Google Reader).
It works in Chrome on Linux but I feel like the sidebar is too narrow and there’s a lot of wasted whitespace.
There’s a bunch of whitespace above the comments on the individual post page.
Other than that it’s very nice.
Jared
16 Mar 10 at 6:38 pm
Oh, gross whitespace above, 2right.
I had the same thought about the columnular whitespace as well.
Good points all-round.
Jack
16 Mar 10 at 6:43 pm
Okay, the search box is always open now. And the magnifying glass executes the search (as does “enter”). Good link, I need to read all of useit.
Jack
16 Mar 10 at 7:05 pm
Fixed the comment whitespace problem by turning off (commenting out) the MyCSS stylesheet — but perhaps introduced other issues? I think our layered stylesheets are currently too messy, conflicting, and confusing.
Jack
16 Mar 10 at 7:26 pm
Widened sidebar to 300px and reordered widgets.
Jack
16 Mar 10 at 7:30 pm
Okay, maybe it needs more whitespace. Or less stark colours. For whatever reason, it’s very unreadable today.
Jared
18 Mar 10 at 1:00 pm
Turned the link red down… Might go to blue or something? Feel free to play in MyCSS.
Also added a horizontal rule at the end of posts in the index. Should help with visual clumping.
Jack
18 Mar 10 at 1:29 pm