September 24, 2005
Webpage design.
Have you ever stopped reading a webpage because the design changed? I used to check Memeorandum several times a day. It was my favorite place to go to see what news stories people were blogging about. Now, I have to force myself to go there, and I feel frustrated as soon as I see it. I mourn the loss of the old design. That page, to me, used to look like the conversation about the news. Now, I feel that I might be able to get a sense of the conversation if I studied the page for a while. But I can't stand to look at it, because it just rubs it in how much I miss the old Memeorandum.
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I like it better. The software is open to many more blogs. Heh! It's more inclusive. And to my eyes, it looks very much like a conversation is going on. More than the old one did.
I'm afraid that I'm very opinionated about what does and does not constitute good web design. And sadly, the internet is soaked through with the latter, at least in part because the mentality has taken hold that web design is art, and that the primary goal of a website is to look good. To me, a great design is simple, striking, information-driven and light on graphics.
Well, my web pages are blessed with simplicity and a dearth of graphics---but only because I code them by hand :) I don't really have a good web page design tool. And maybe that's a good thing.
Simon: That reminds me of how I am always thinking I should have a more personal template on this blog, but I've gotten so used to the calm Minima template.
The main thing I care about is how easy a website is to read, the way a book with good white paper, dark black ink, and a solid font is readable. There is no better way to do a paper page of text. Similarly, there was something perfect about the old Memeorandum. It was easy to look at and easy to see.
(I think some of the younger people who do the designing don't realize that a lot of people don't see that well.)
My partner does web design and recommends this book: "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug. The philosophy is that web pages should not require users to do much to find what they want. It should be intuitive, familiar (we're used to certain arrangments of text based on what we expect from books and other publications), and free of clutter.
I find myself using it less as well.
Aiden: I'm using a standard Blogger template called "Minima" designed by Douglas Bowman. I did tweak it a little, mostly to make the type black instead of gray.
Gabe: Thanks for coming by. All I can say is that the old design had me and the new design lost me. It's an intuitive thing. I like the idea of doing more, but there is something about the new design!
Have you ever stopped reading a webpage because the design changed?
Hmmm. There were a lot of protests when the Command Post went to a fancy new Sekimori design, and I suspect it lost most of its readership. I personally stopped reading it - it was just too much of a pain, a tiny narrow little column of news surrounded by kewl graphics on both sides. And I noticed I saw many, many fewer links to it.
I agree with Simon - too many "redesigned" blogs were clearly redesigned to look good, not to render fast and be easily readable. It's gotten to where when a blogger I read announces that there's a new design coming - especially a Sekimori design - I mentally cringe. I read blogs to read. If I want to look at pretty layouts, I have a shelf full of design books to wallow in.
The problem with Minima as a blogger template is that it is, IMHO, the best looking one. When Ann went to it, I figured I had to change. But after trying a bunch of different ones, went back. But I will remember that tweak you did.
I am very much of purest, esp. after designing a web site for my law practice. I would suggest that the vast majority of the sites I visit are frankly horrible.
One special pet peeve is the use of moving video and the like. I also don't like the fact that when you use a lot of graphics and images, spacing gets screwed up real fast if your screen doesn't match that of the designer.
Oh, and audio, that is even worse. There is a talking woman over at Register.com (where I have my email). I didn't realize she actually talked until I switched computers to one with speakers attached. Currently, I have the speakers disabled on this computer just because of her.
Part of my purism is that HTML, etc. was designed to work almost universally. Things scale up and down nicely.
And I miss the old SPLOID
Ann, I should add that although I love your layout, the recent addition of your pictures is causing a constant update by flickr.com of the status bar. I get a constant "Read static.flickr.com" there whenever I am on your main page.
Not to be picky - but it is distracting. Probably just a result of using Mozilla instead of IE.
ann: yours is a reading site. it needs to be simple.
if you want to see complex blogs that are wonderfully full of graphics but hard to read go to blogexplosion.com and do battle of the blogs.
I've got a cold today and needed something light and breazy to do. I saw some nice graphically outlayed blogs. I wouldn't look at them twice though.
For serious discussion blogs, it's good to keep it simple.
Although Memeorandum maybe a more simplistic design, it seems harsh, and looks like a google search page.
I had my programmer help me update my blog to a look that I like a little more. I was drowning in the CSS that blogger gives in the template.
Although I liked the blogger templates, I am pretty picky and wanted something different and unique. Doing a few tweaks to the blogger template gave me more of what I wanted look wise.
Does anybody here know that blogger DOES NOT use keyword or description meta tags in their templates? In the world of webpages, these meta tags are paramount.
I added these meta tags to my blog a few days ago and am looking for the results in search engine visits.
Anybody else have experience with meta tags and their blogs?
I agree with Simon - too many "redesigned" blogs were clearly redesigned to look good, not to render fast and be easily readable.
Oh, it isn't just blogs - it's web pages in general. Web design is NOT art. If it looks good, great - if you can fit some cool graphics into your design, great. But never let it detract from the purpose of a web site or blog, which is to convey information.
For the sake of shameless plugs, whatever else may be wrong with the Snowe '08 site, my blog or Ninoville, I don't feel that they suffer from overdesign; I don't feel that the lack a flash animation spoils the picture. I wish I could share with you the site that I'm building for the county GOP, but I'm under contract to keep it private for now.
When I think of great web deisgn, I think of a site like IBM, or the pre-Oracle buyout Peoplesoft site, or the British Parliament, or the Clerk of the U.S. House, and sites of this nature - it's not that they eschew graphics, they do no such thing. Its that they allow all concerns of "prettiness" to be subordinated to the conveyance of information, and that's a mark of a great website design, IMO.
Simon: webdesign and blog design are often two different things.
Web sites are designed to be static information tools, and blogs are meant to be dynamic conversation tools.
the sites you're talking about are nice, but they're not blogs.
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