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writer and occasional bum Eli James. More...

Monday, March 10, 2008

Eli James 4.0: The Redesign

It's a move back into green.

Eli James: The Blog is now officially version 4.0, with a few big differences. It's not a 3 hour job like the last time ... this version's clocked in about 6-7 hours, mostly due to dicky Photoshop skills and no prior knowledge of javascript.

Look Ma ... No Sidebars!

This version is one column (as you can all so clearly see), and it's constructed so as to highlight the writing on the blog, as opposed to pictures. When I started this redesign I wanted to test how far I could push the Blogger platform; to see if I could make this look like a Wordpress blog. I think I've succeeded, though I'm still playing around with the usability aspect of this design.

Peekaboo! I See You!

The peekaboo slider at the top of the blog is powered by jQuery. In simple language it's a write less code, do more fancy shwag Javascript library that condenses what might take over 50 lines to 5 lines. Learning the code for the slider took me 4 hours, and in the process I just about pissed off everyone who was chatting with me in WLM. For that I'm very sorry, and I reward you with ... a goat.

Okay not really.

This redesign is hardly finished ... I've to iron out little bits and pieces like a non-existent navigation and a link list. Taking down the sidebar has forced me to put things in very weird places, and the usability of this blog will suffer for the first few weeks.

Have patience, tell me what you think, and enjoy.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Stumbled in and just wanted to say hi. I think you've done a great job, will you only be able to see one post at a time?

I would like to invite you to leave a comment on my blog. At my blog I ask people to tell me about their day in seven words or less. Just leave me a comment with your seven words, you can do it anonymously. If you'd rather not, then have a nice day.

http://todayinseven.blogspot.com

Eli James said...

Hrmm. Spammy comment. Not a very good start for a redesign, no?

el said...

I actually think it is pretttty awesome!Clever idea.

I looovee it :D Can't wait to see it when it's done :)

Zhang BeiHai said...

A blog reincarnation...into a goat. Whaddidcha do in your past life?

Sam said...

You know what me thinks. BUT...One post per pg will get a bit...troublesome/annoying/weird since theres almost LITERALLY only One post per page???

Eli James said...

@esther: thanks! Glad you like it. ^.^

@Paul: err. I think I was a cat. I like cats. You were probably Hitler. Kekekekeke.

@Sam: I was afraid to lose the header+footer effect. I'll tinker around with it and see if I should go with more.

Anonymous said...

nice work

Eli James said...

Thanks, Max!

Astrea said...

A goat!! Hahahaha. Great design. Can't wait to see what you'll make for me =) Love the peekaboo!!! And btw... I HATE green! ;)

Astrea said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Astrea said...

Oh... umm are the links n tagboard n archive supposed to be offcenter? If it is... that's what I dont like about it. If it isnt...obviously something's wrong lol.

Eli James said...

@Audrey: thanks for the compliment! =) Green rocks. I don't care what you say otherwise. It rocks it rocks it rocks.

*sticks tongue out and runs in circles*

Urm, what do you mean off-center? You mean the headings for the footer elements? Hrmm ... Puzzling, this is.

Anonymous said...

Hey fellow designer! Loving the minimalism of your redesign. I totally dig that elegant header of yours. Now serif fonts ain't that bad either eh? =P

I have your site bookmarked. Whether you like it or not. Bwahaha. =D

Eli James said...

@Ember: thanks, man! Your site is amazing.

@Audrey: Well I've fixed it. Turned out to be a positioning error that only effected IE. Stupid, but no matter.

Astrea said...

Heh. My bad for not returning to check the comments for this post.

Haha yeah I was using IE at the time...

Until now... I still love the slider.

Dixon said...

Greeat designs.

learning php?
wow.