A facelift already? It’s only been around six months! Pickled Politics is in much more need a fresh look in my humble opinion…

Please make links change colour once they’ve been followed. It’s the default in HTML; I don’t know why people change it: losing the colour change invariably makes sites harder to navigate.

Have you made the fonts smaller? Smaller fonts is bad.

I preferred it the way it was, if this is the new look.

I wanted a more news coverage on here if possible, especially around the mayoral elections and other big events. And find a way to increase coverage what was happening on other blogs, while maintaining our own writing. Its a work in progress.

Yeah, PP is on the list next.

Susan – I think the colours may remain the same in Firefox, but not IE. I’m trying to find out why. I’ve made the fonts smaller by half a point!

QT – why?

Right, there’s still a bit of finishing to do, especially around the daily ‘casting the net’ section. Comments appreciated!

Like it.
Good idea to be able to have topical theme eg Mayor highlighted – though will there always be such an obvious theme around?
Good to be able to find the casting the net section quickly.
And just looks a little more interesting.

@Sunny: I don’t like the way it’s gone from a ‘blog’ look to a ‘magazine’ look.

In particular, I dislike the way the blog posts are squeezed up and in at the top with only one line below the header, so you have to make another click to find out what they’re really about.

Also, that grey box to the left of the blog post headers just looks wrong. Not being a graphic designer (though I’m sure the Devil will be along in a bit) I can’t quite explain why. To me it would look better if it was horizontal across the top below the ‘Liberal Conspiracy’ banner.

Yeah, PP is on the list next.

Damn straight!

Oh, can we not comment on Casting The Net any more?

As #8. That box is orphaned – by turning it into a horizontal list under the Liberal Conspiracy banner you’ll free up a bit more page width and give the site a cleaner look.

Also, you have a different heading style for each of the four boxes, labelled “Blog Latest”, “London Mayor Elections Coverage”, “Campaigns” and “Here And There”. Ideally these would all be in the same style and IMHO the “blog latest” / “Here and there” style is the nicest one going. Needless to say they should also all be the same colour.

What I presume is your “search” box does not actually indicate anywhere on it that it is a search box and not anything else. How about adding the word “search…” inside the box that vanishes when clicked on?

There is no indicator of the number of comments on the casting the net article, and no obvious link to click to get through to the comments page for it. The subheadings are deceptively underlined, when underlining traditionally means clickable links, and the headings of all articles, although clickable links themselves have no rollover effect to indicate that they are indeed clickable links.

The “Hot Topics” box is orphaned similar to the list mentioned by #8. I don’t really know where you should put it, but where it is is not where it should be!

I like the idea of having the mayoral coverage section, and it’s nice to see a picture associated with those articles, too. Something to be careful of is to make sure that you have a few pictures in rotation for that spot otherwise people will get bored of the one that is there.

Finally, I also thought that the old, plain, clean look was better and more appropriate than this new one – albeit that could have done with a bit of a nip and tuck too – because fundamentally this is still a blog, and it is not a sufficiently fast-moving blog to need lots of bells and whistles.

No.10

Hi Ian. Yeah. Just click on the title.

I have to be honest Sunny, I don’t think much of the new look, it really was ok the way it was. This sums up well my thoughts:

I also thought that the old, plain, clean look was better and more appropriate than this new one – albeit that could have done with a bit of a nip and tuck too – because fundamentally this is still a blog, and it is not a sufficiently fast-moving blog to need lots of bells and whistles.

The new looks needs a bit of clean up and consistency of course and I’m sure Robert is looking at this and crying inside (or outside) because of the lack of typographic consistency. That will be sorted out in due course.

I also need to sort out how the Daily Netcast section will work. You can click on the big headline and that will allow you to comment.

so you have to make another click to find out what they’re really about.

The thing is we do have a lot of articles here sometimes: between 3 to sometimes 6 a day. Which means I need to find a way so people can see what’s all been posted really quickly rather than missing out a good piece which was posted yesterday morning for example.

The nav bar on the left rather than the top is necessary because I’ll be extending it downwards. It was difficult to do that when it was going across.

And for people on lower resolution screens, I felt it was important to move the main text slightly more to the middle than have it on the left extreme.

There will be lots more fast-moving content on here, which is partly the reason why I wanted to do this you see. The older single-blog style is only good for having a single blog. But I want this more to be a left-of-centre hub without compromising what LC writers are publishing here and yet also flag up news of interest and link to other blogs more.

I reckon LC needed a facelift (erm it doesnt look much different right now though).

yep i like it. you can see so much more on the homepage and it looks heaps newsier (sp?). didn’t like the old one half as much.

do we still have a magazine section? am probably looking right at it…

I’m with #11 all the way; in particular I’d like to say that casting the net is my favourite bit (not just because it regularly features me) so I like that it’s been given greater prominence, but if that is at the expense of being shrunk and apparently commentless then that’s too high a price to pay. If you have to explain to people how to get to the comments then it’s not navigable enough.

The old style was clean and unfussy; the new is too cluttered and less easy to navigate. Why would you sacrifice usability for style? Style wins you prizes, usability gets you eyeballs. Eyeballs are worth more IMHO.

I had the (it seems vain) hope when you announced a revamp that you were going to get rid of the horrible pus ‘n’ blood colour scheme, but apparently that’s the only thing you’ve kept, after junking all the stuff that actually worked…

… Not that I’m negative or anything.

Yeah the colour scheme and fonts are a bit out of whack, I’ll fully admit that. The problem with Casting the Net is that its a huge undertaking for Aaron every morning, so I’m trying to find space so he can cut it down, while having a fixed spot for it, and space for news stuff that can be added along the day. Obviously that bit still needs more tinkering and clearing up.

If anyone has ideas or suggestions, feel free to send me mock-ups in photoshop by email.
Its still a work in progress! Well, the design elements that is. I think the new layout is much better though

I do the Who Daily newsletter on Livejournal once a week (it’s daily, but there’s more than just me doing it), which is a similar thing to casting the net. The work is in the reading, not the linking. It’d surely be harder to trim it down, because you have to take more decisions as to who to leave out…

Perhaps the answer to reducing Aaron’s workload is to get him a partner in crime? If he was only doing alternate days, or maybe even a week on and a week off…

Anyhoo, that’s for him to say, not me. I still think the new layout is definitely weaker than the old due to it’s cluttered confusion, but I see that you’re taken with it, so you feel free to take that retrograde step.

Sunny, I have a few ideas that I will try and work up into something.

In short, I’d do something like this:

http://pics.livejournal.com/lieutenanth/pic/00007rpe/

though with a neat background image involving a shadowy dark alley as a background.

looking at the picture again, actually, I meant to make the blog and ‘today’ sections have white backgrounds. anyway, it was clearly just a rough sketch!

Er, the section marked “latest” is meant to contain the three latest blogs. The “comments” section the most recent comments. The navbar is under the title. I think that’s all from me for now!

(Oh, and black is the new black on the web, dude)

I hate anything with a black background. Never, ever, ever believe it will catch on as the standard for backgrounds. Black text on white will remain the king
The structure looks interesting, I’ll have a think.

Black text on whit ebackground hurt my eyes. So many buggers go for it, though, that i have my browser set up to deal with it.

I hate anything with a black background. Never, ever, ever believe it will catch on as the standard for backgrounds.

Heh but you’re into the environment and black is a more energy friendly.:P

Sunny, one thing I really do like is the video box (I assume it will change when the election is over to focus on another key political climate) and accompanying links. It’s the thing that really draws me back here at the moment and is put to better effect than Iain Dales attempt. It’s fantastic!

I mostly agree with Jennie (anyone surprised) and the bikini bloke (sanbikiniwossname, is that LJ you’re image hosting on yours?)

Too much clutter, focal point a bit off, and hard to find what I’m looking for. I like the notional idea of bikini’s idea, but ultimately I prefer to know what the focal is.

And while I get that not always like white text on dark (I prefer white on dark gray, DK pointed me at a great colour that I’ve kept ever since from a design blog he likes), I’ll add a vote for something other than glaring white as a background, it really does hurt my eyes after a few minutes looking at it. A softer background, creme, orange or even a shade of gray?

Nosemonkey‘s new look is great, really like that (apart from the header font but that’s a taste thing), and I’ve seen a fair few other layouts recently that really grabbed my attention

Yeah, as I said, I meant to colour the bg for the middle column white. It is a bit stark, and so going for an off shade could be good. Also like I suggested, a dark alley background like this:

http://jonas.doublejay.be/wp-content/creepy.jpg

instead of the black. not so easy to render in Paint!