If I’m going to reboot this site, I’m going to do it right. Since Reboot sign-ups start in August, and the actual reboot is on the 1st of November, this leaves me a good three months of working on it. Hopefully, I won’t be too late.
So where to start?
Rethinking The Obvious
Designing a blog is a challenge, not because it has to be beautiful, but because it also has to be functional, readable and easy on the eye. To hit that sweet balance I need to rethink, from ground’s up, what’s essential and what’s not.
So before I go on destroying things here, I’m going to take a look at what I think is good about the current design. Bare with me though, I’m on my own here, I’m not going to conduct usability studies or group therapy, these are my own speculations.
This iteration got a few things right from the previous one. The semantic structure is much cleaner, I’ve paid more attention to details, and the stylesheets are relatively organized. What I like most about this design is the archives page, I’ve tried my best to steer away from regular archives, and super extended live ajaxy archives, although the latter might be a good compact alternative in a thick footer.
Here’s how my current archives look like:
At the bottom of each entry there’s a fuzzy date and a permanent link to each entry. I stopped using the word “permalink” because it sort of confused non-bloggers, so I’m going to keep with that tradition.
Individual entry pages have links to the next and previous entry, they have a lighter color than the content, but they take a block space so they’re still distinguished. I think it might be a good idea to keep that too.
Comment entries are minimalistic, you can see that below. I’ve pushed the time and date to the bottom of each comment because they shouldn’t stay in the way of those keeping up with discussions. I might add Gravatar support by extending a comment’s left margin, sort of like Veerle. My personal comments will always have a slightly different look than the rest. Yes, I’ve got the bragging rights here.
I think I’m going to push the “What I read” sidebar some where else. It might be interesting to some people, but I think it should only be on a single page, instead of spraying it on each entry; makes me look like a link spammer. Better yet, I think I’ll publish my whole OPML file somewhere near. (I don’t keep up with porn, so I should be fine in case I run for elections.)
I’m not very sure whether to keep “About this entry” block or not. It was cool when I implemented it the first, took me some time to consider all the possibilities and put different wording depending on the date and number of comments, but it’s growing old on me, now it reminds me of Clippy’s fake human-like greetings.
I’m removing the tag cloud. The hell with tags clouds, ok! Just like “What I read”, it’s nice but it doesn’t belong here. And honestly, how many have clicked on the lighter shade of gray? I know I never did. The only way I’m allowing tag clouds here is if I do it ala Binary Bonsai. We’ll see about that.
Starting Over - Going Retro
Remember CSS Zen Garden? When Dave Shae came up with a structured XHTML file and challenged designers to be creative with only a stylesheet and few images? Well that’s exactly how I’m going to do my redesign, I’ll find clean up the current page structure, and do everything else with CSS, that should give me a lot of flexibility.
I’ve already made a few steps in this area. I’ve discussed and decided which to use <h1> headers for post titles, though I’m going to drop the site title’s <h1> and use a simple <p>. I made an exception last time, but after reading a few articles from mid-90s, I think I might have made the wrong decision.
With proper structure it will be easy to print a page without the unnecessary noise, though visitors will still have to download the graphics even when they only intend to print an article. Older browsers will have to follow a /print URL.
For a readable minimalistic blog design, liquid layouts seem like a bad idea, and they’re more difficult to design. I’d rather spend my time on refining the details instead of banging my head against browser wars, err, walls. I’m going to stick with a fix-width layout, and if I get more time I’ll go elastic.
Integrating a Wiki
Well, my wiki of choice seems a little rigid to easily integrate within WordPress. It’s not a matter of writing a plugin for WordPress that replaces [[wiki words]] or CamelCase, that’s half the work. I want to integrate wiki pages in search results, I want both WordPress and DokuWiki to be able to retrieve each other’s data for quoting and referencing, I want DokuPress, or WordWiki.
I’m running an acronym replacer plugin for WordPress, so most common acronyms are already being replaced by their definitions, you can see them when you hover over the text (try it here: XHTML).
But what I really want to do is to have a plugin check wiki pages first a definition, take the first sentence or paragraph and show it as a tooltip. If there are no wiki pages, then the regular acronym replacer does the work. Maybe I can do both, put <acronym> inside links, but that might look ugly (kind of like: XHTML), and the browser might confuse <acronym> title with <a> title, although Firefox seems to favor the title of the inner-most tag.
I’m happy I’m the only author on this blog because I don’t have to worry about authentication and permissions, I’m just going to have a read-only wiki.
Getting Rid of Sideborg
The thing I really hate about sidebars is that they’re never consistent with the content. It’s ugly enough when the content is longer than the sidebar, and it gets worse when there’s not enough content. Check out the error page and you’ll know what I mean:
A sidebar is inherently content and context-dependent, otherwise it’ll be just a useless repetition (like my own tag cloud). Dependency is bad, and difficult to manage. I’d also rather have my visitors focus on the content instead of being distracted, I’d rather be sure that my readers are enjoying their five-minute stay.
I think the only useful information that a sidebar can contain is a post’s information, the rest just isn’t essential. I’m also starting to like the idea of a thick footer, which was started by Derek Powazek as far as I remember. That footer can contain additional methods of navigation, related posts, clueless tidbits and whatnot.
Next: Content Structure
If I’m going to keep writing this, I’ll turn it into a whole article instead of just a jot-down. I’m going to discuss content structure in my next Reboot post. I’m still drafting, so bare with me.