The first and easiest thing on my list of goals is a new and streamlined look for this blog — something not so heavy and difficult to load, but at the same time attractive and clean.
I’ve had the same boxed blue look (K2-lite, if you liked it) since August 2006, when I started. A couple of times I changed it for a few hours, but didn’t like anything but the blue, and so I kept it. It’s grown a bit old these days, and it’s a new year, so I changed it. The new one is also a bit less vertical.
Some other changes were due. I trimmed off a lot of the extraneous links as well as the flash side box, mostly because it was causing slow load times for me. It didn’t do well to have a blog intended for older computers … that wasn’t courteous to older computers. 🙂
I’ve kept the two snapshots from a desktop and a game, mostly because those are very small pictures and easy to load. I’ve thought about using “more” tags to make the page load a little faster, but I’ve never liked those. I suppose it might be a good idea for some of the longer posts.
That’s about it. Goal No. 1, check. 🙂
Motho ke motho ka botho 
Can’t you get rid of the extra scroll bar? It doesn’t work with mouse scroll wheels and is a pita.
And the new theme isn’t user-friendly either. White on black is hard on the eyes and the title is too long for the header background.
Thanks.
I do like the new layout in terms of where things are, but I think the colors should be a bit lighter. I agree with srlinuxx
Still nice job 🙂
Now for the good news, your page loads as fast as Open Box.
I like the new look! Loads fast, distinctive, and almost University of Georgia colors, so thumbs up from me.
@srlinuxx: I don’t know how much I can change; WordPress.com charges for CSS editing, but I’ll look into it. They only allow preset themes on free accounts. …
But the double scrollbar thing. … Which browser are you using? Does it happen on other WordPress.com sites? I don’t get one with Kazehakase or Firefox. I’ll do what I can to look into it, but again, I don’t know how much I can change.
You’re right, that extra scroll bar isn’t there in Firefox – hmmm, weird. I use konqueror about 99.9% of the time. I’ve run into it maybe once or twice before on other wordpress sites, but mostly not – no. I’ve never worked with wordpress, so I figured it was a setting or an option. Well, not that bigga deal if it’s not anything you’ve enabled or something. But I do like the old theme better. 🙂
Hello, K.Mandla 🙂
I like it.
One problem though, as mentioned by srlinuxx, the blog title comes over “About” and “Howtos” page links, making them unclickable. My screen resolution is 1200×800, and I use Epiphany:
http://pix.nofrag.com/5/0/5/5564a03f0a143f31838e43397042e.html
Wow! That’s really odd. I wonder why it does that. Is it some sort of font encoding issue? I’m using straight Dejavu Serif on this side — does it look better if you change the font?
I like the new look. For a minute, I thought I was on the wrong blog 😛
Dr Small
Tested with Dejavu Serif (used Bitstream Vera system font in the screen shot) and same thing..
Strange. My only clue is that the page source calls for a CSS style that’s located elsewhere on the WordPress.com system. Perhaps someone with a CSS capture plugin can tell us what font it’s calling for, and see why it gets mangled (I like to think that it wants a Microsoft font — but I like to blame things on them 😛 ). Maybe I can look into this tomorrow, although I really don’t think I can do much about it. 😦
Hi K.Mandla,
I was quite surprised when I saw the new lay-out. At first I even thought that I got on the wrong site 🙂 I must say that I like the new lay-out. A dark team is much better for the eyes than a white one. 😉
Speaking of lay-out’s: I have a question for you: which theme did you use on the Audacious-app? (Like you show here)
I have tried to find any references to it in your entire blog but I even failed to find the search-function around here :s
Never the less, nice lay-out and I hope to hear from you soon.
Sincere greetings.
ShadowDragon.
@ShadowDragon: If I remember right, that theme is bundled with Audacious, and a GTK2 version is included. I used the Openbox Onyx theme which fit perfectly, and added tint (I had been playing with tint for a little bit, but I don’t like panels so it’s gone now). The wallpaper I scrounged from somewhere. Here it is, if you want it too. 🙂
not bad, but i know other blog with this theme 😀 then isn’t new to my eyes :< anyway it is cool
Yes it looks cool, and the layout seems nice, but I’m afraid I grew up on printed ink on paper and really find dark text on a light background easier on my eyes. I have to look right up close to the screen to figure out some of the links. Hey, how about supporting my old wetware!
(There are a lot of people who claim tp prefer the terminal-style white on black but I suppose they must be from a different planet…)
Oh yes, one more little thing: could we maybe have the two little arrows back on left and right at the top that linked to the previous and next posts? Quite useful with a blog as prolific as yours! 🙂
Hmm. It may be time to start investing in the blog. I can’t seem to manage minor points like the previous/next links, but I might if I pay for custom CSS (and again, maybe not). I’ll look into it further.