Andy’s renovation of Desipio‘s front page made me jealous, so I messed with the look of HJE. Rather than hiding the Shoutbox, I gave it its own page (the popout function still obviously works). I think the new design looks cleaner and less cluttered, but there are probably still things I need to iron out, so bear with me.
Let me know what you guys think. I probably won’t listen, but it might make you feel better.
I don’t see it on the drag down menu
It’s now a tab at the top, if you haven’t noticed it yet.
Looks like crap with IE 6. The typical fixed navigation items (Links, recent posts, blogroll, etc…) all are pushed way down under the post.
I’m at work so IE is what I get. Could be different with Firefox but…there you go.
People actually still use IE? Thanks for the tip. I’ll check it out.
Should be pretty much fixed now.
Holy shit, there’s an actual site attached this Shoutbox?
Whatever you did made the site not work with Google Reader anymore. That makes JayBandit angry!
That’s odd. It looks fine to me, and I use Google Reader.
Who’s the genius that decided these replies should only contain an opening quote and not a closing one? That’s so incredibly annoying.
Also, the “Popular Tags” fonts are all black, making them nearly unreadable with the charcoal background.
A design suggestion: Maybe try using shades of blue rather than gray for the backgrounds… might seem more like a Cubs site.
Yeah, I was meaning to screw with the colors last night, but decided to go to sleep instead. I’ll mess with them more tonight.
I like it a lot more. Less cluttered. Ok…where’s the banner? I’d also drop the “recent posts” box a bit lower. Like Andy said, changing to blue might not be a bad idea. Maybe even go with the pinstripes if it isn’t extremely distracting.
I think that blue is a little too neon, it’s making my eyes ache. Try using this site: http://kuler.adobe.com/ and search “corporate blew”. I think those colors would work well. There are 6 colors total… the hex #s are: 00305A, 00448D, 0074D9, 4192D9, 7ABAF2. Also, I think that condensed font on the titles seems out of place. Maybe just a bold sans serif? That is all.
I like those. I think I might eventually see what it looks like to do the header in a darker blue (like the body background is right now) and do the body background in a lighter blue. Those hex #s are great, though (although that site wouldn’t load for me).
Layout is nicely organized. You should change it every time the cubs have to stop a losing streak (not that that will happen again this year).
Since you asked (or maybe you didn’t):
Popular Tags font color needs a little adjustment – I like the larger font for “special people”. And the HIRE JIM ESSIAN logo looks a little funky. Might be the background color or something.
Looks fine in IE 7 – I still use it because it seems to irritate people.
Also the podcast was pretty good – you guys are already better than most of the sports radio morons on last time I listened to that crap.
Thanks for the input. Yeah, I’ll figure out how to get the “Popular Tags” font color to override the hyperlink color later tonight. And I plan on changing the header color, which will necessarily change the logo and make it look better (hopefully).
Definitely liking the new layout. Last layout was pretty good but this has a more modern feel, I guess. I also like that it loads better on my mobile browser (Opera) and the SBox works there too.
Our new massive header made you retreat in shame.
WIN!
Seriously though. Nice fresh look and I’m sure you didn’t have 7 other writers for your site nitpicking every god damn thing!
muttering Ungrateful assholes…