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Re-design announcement!

Posted by Andrew Faulkner on October 21st, 2005.

Andrew Faulkner is the admin at fadtastic. Andrew prides himself on standards-based, accessible web design in the city of Nottingham, UK. He believes in aesthetically pleasing accessible design and that 'standards compliant does not equal boring.'

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fadtastic are currently redesigning ready for CSS Reboot. Nothing major - don’t worry. Your usual fadtastic won’t be harmed in the process.

As we’re generally open with our audience, we have one preview page at:

Preview

Basically, we’re aiming for (wait for it) a 1024×768 resolution and ‘fixed commenting.’ This is work in progress and currently:

- IE doesn’t support the fixed commenting column.
- We’re not valid yet.

Please shout/praise appropriately (using the fixed comments?)

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( 19 so far )

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19 Responses to Re-design announcement!

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Looking good… the logo looks like it was compressed a little too much (dithering)

Colm
October 21st, 2005
#

Cheers for the feedback Colm. I’ll clean up the logo ready for the final version.

Andrew Faulkner
October 21st, 2005
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I don’t know if its just me but is the sidebar really encroaching on the content? It looks like its almost a third of the width. Theres alot of white space there which is really bugging me. Maybe having a livesearch would fix this.

Chris Lloyd
October 21st, 2005
#

Narrowed the sidebar a tad. Without making the font unreadably small I don’t think I can get any more content space.

The content is actually pretty much the same size as it was before.

How would livesearch improve this? I’m unfamiliar with ‘livesearch.’

Andrew Faulkner
October 21st, 2005
#

Hey andrew.

I think you need to boost the width your your content container and perhaps play about with the typography.

The box on the right for feedback looks plain and needs some design juice injecting…

Header is great though!

Michael Hay
October 21st, 2005
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Cheers for the suggestions.

perhaps play about with the typography.

Are you having trouble reading it? Please go on, Mike.

Andrew Faulkner
October 21st, 2005
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It looks pretty good, however, I’d have an option to turn the comment sitebar scrolling off - on older computers (like this one), it makes the scrolling extremely slow.

Veracon
October 21st, 2005
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Veracon,

Many thanks. I didn’t realise slow scrolling was an issue with fixed columns. The final version will have the option of the old and new themes and so this could be overcome.

Also jazzed up the comments column.

Andrew Faulkner
October 21st, 2005
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Typography wise…

I think the padding on the right and left isnt equal. Also i don’t think justification works on the web (just my opinion mind..). Especially with your large font and narrow contet container.

Michael Hay
October 21st, 2005
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Oh and i just noticed u juiced up the form on the right hand side! Nice! Liking That! Maybe a border on it, it will help it stand out when scrolling at the top?

Michael Hay
October 21st, 2005
#

Thanks Michael,

I think I’ll work on the content area somewhat as that’s getting the most criticism. I’m going to make changes to font sizes, justification, spacing etc.

Andrew Faulkner
October 21st, 2005
#

ooooooh
me likee.

Phil Renaud
October 21st, 2005
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Nice additions to the comment box, as before I checked it didn’t have the roset, just gives it that little bit more spark!

Gavin
October 21st, 2005
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not much of a change.

It just got a little more cramped

test
October 21st, 2005
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I have a request. Could you make the comment box fields (input and textarea) something other than white? The white in the comment box is really loud, and when I’m trying to focus on the content on the left, also distracting. If you make it something that blends in, it will be more pleasing, at least to me. You could also implement something where if I actually start typing in the box, the background of the fields turns white.

Also, could we put the labels on their own lines? The fact that “E-mail (will not be published)” falls to the next line looks bad. If you put the labels before the fields, and break the lines, it might look nice. Then you could style the labels more too.

C Montoya
October 21st, 2005
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Could you make the comment box fields (input and textarea) something other than white?

Done. Also working on the labels. Good spot!

Andrew Faulkner
October 22nd, 2005
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The comments are a little ‘liney’. That is, there are a lot of lines there…maybe take the lines off of the ‘comment by’ section?

Other than that, it looks fadtastic. :D

Site-Reference.com
October 22nd, 2005
#

Thanks SR,

I’ll rethink the comments - they’ll probably end up fairly simple.

Andrew Faulkner
October 22nd, 2005
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I really miss the rounded corner on the top left over the main content section. I think that is what helped alleviate the “cramped” feeling that people are having.

Mike
October 24th, 2005
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