Is that why you haven’t posted for so long? I like the new design.

My eyes hurt.

I like it, cannot imagine where you dreamed up the colour scheme though )

Not a fan, myself. I liked the clean lines of the old style. Content, not packaging, it said to me.

I find this a bit garish and attention grabbing-a good thing in an ambo, less good on a page. Also, I agree that the font is defaulting too small.

I’ll put my hand up for a larger font size too

Title banner is great; but the green and gold below that is REALLY bright, and with the offset of the alternating colors behind the right column it’s kind of dizzy-making. Maybe some smaller squares would help?

Hello Mark- I’m a long-time Australian lurker.

I find the new look too bright and a bit distracting – perhaps a smaller pattern would help, or could the contrast be toned down a bit?

The text going right to the edge of the comment boxes looks a bit jammed in – could a margin be incorporated?

I also like a bigger font, and I can recommend using ‘ control + ‘ – I use it to enlarge most things.

A bit bright for me – especially first thing in the morning!

Like it, but like other before me – - the font is a bit wee (plus the bright colours draw the eyes in – especially those ofthe boss when I’m lurking at work!!)

Font bigger, margin in comment boxes

I love the graphic at the top of the page. The little blue-light icon in the address bar is cute. But for the love of [god, kittens, chocolate cake], turn down the brightness of the checkerboard background.

the checkerboard bit can be taken down a couple levels in brightness with a bit of work on the old photoshop, just a bit of greyscaling.

Love the idea though :

A bit bright, but I suppose I’ll get used to it.

Observations –

1] the only way to get out of the comments page (if you don’t want to leave a comment) is to use the “go back” facility in your web browser;

2] don’t know about Internet Explorer, but in Firefox 3 (which I use) if you have your bookmarks sidebar open then you have to scroll to the right to see the full page. Looking at the css fr the page, it’s clear this is because all the widths are stated in px instead of %. If the guy whose done the site design could do the css in % then you would get a fluid layout which would automatically adapt to any screen resolution and/or the presence of sidebars. Similarly if the font was in % instead of px, then the users own font preferences would automatically come through

Jools – Made a back to posts link under the comment form (the header image also takes you back to the main page).

I did originally design the theme with fluid Css (in fact i just put that css file back up on my test blog http://iwantyourtshirt.co.uk/BLOG/ but i disguarded it because of the fixed width title banner (anyone viewing on a widescreen will see gaps either side of the banner and under 1024×768 would lose the edges of the banner) and i did not want the banner to be resizable. I am toying with the idea of scooting the title in a bit and having a “sacrificial” section of the banner at the edge so you can never run out of image.

Thanks to everyone for all the feedback/tweaks. It all helps! – and obviously I want this to be as good as it can be!

Love the content; the banner is attractive in a televisual sort of way.

The brightness and contrast ofthe background, though is harsh on the eye, and very, very distracting. My peripheral vision is constantly poked at when I want to be reading text. The yellow is so intense it seems painful to look at, which – as my eyes are led to it all the time – is Truly Wrong.

So: usability: 6/10. Content: 10/10.

A background featuring pictures of the control room would be more appropriate than all those vans, methinks. Nice and bright, though. Keep up the good work.

Have you checked the design in Firefox? The font is huge. The layout doesn’t really look right. What’s with the black and olive stripes? And, for instance, the comment box I’m typing in extends past the right border of its parent box. As for the colors . . . I’m with the folks whose eyes hurt.

So, no, I can’t say I like it. But, hey, I come here for your experiences. You do exactly what you like!

I reallay like it but would love a bigger font size as I love your blog but suffer from visual problems. I love the clarity of the font though, just a bigger size would be good

Keep up the good work

Shiny!

change the font – makes it hard to read in this one.
love the subtle background though…

I’d like to see Verdana font 10 point used. Times Roman was designed for print and Verdana is easier on the eye on the screen.

Morning Mark

The new site is 21st Century and as far as i’m concerned is just great as it i.

Regards
TM

I like the look – very professional, but find the font hard to read – not the size (I regulary view blogs on 150% with my old eyes), but it’s kind of squished together.

Judging by other comments, there’s definitely something odd about how it displays on my system. I have Firefox 3 running under Ubuntu 8.04. Javascript is on. On my system, the background is anything but subtle. It’s a huge chessboard-y pattern of black and army-green squares. The font is a sans-serif, today it’s bold (!), and at a guess I’d say the point size is about 14. Huge, in other words. IE displays fonts rather differently from FF, and it can be a bit of a pain getting things legible on both. (I do have MS fonts installed, including Arial Narrow, but it doesn’t seem to be accessing that.)

However, the comment box is inside its parent div today! Having fought with these issues on my own blog, I know all too well how many hours, days, weeks! it can take to deal with it. Don’t lose hope!

Wow, I really appreciate the time you’re all spending helping us out with this! I’ll have a play with the new colours and see what I like best (if only I could rig up some way of doing a poll, like on Livejournal!)

At home I have the latest version of Firefox and it looks pretty much exactly the same as it does on IE at work. It’s definitely not a bold font and there is no army green involved so not sure what is going on there!

I’m still a Slimelighter! Occasionally, when I get a day off…

Drat – forget that html coding wouldn’t come through in a post. Eddie – I’ll email you offlist. Jools

Looking good now!

Please change the nappy colour to another shade of yellow

Looks like the bloomin SP catalogue!
OK though

3 – MM – “I’m just too tired to construct proper sentences right now!”

How about some ‘improper’ ones?

New shade of dark green looks good, the “yellow” doesn’t look yellow though.

Been watching the changes since you first switched to this new layout – I think it’s much easier on the eye now with the duller checks and bigger rounder text

Well, as stated before, I love the new layout. I’m not one for being bothered too much by loud or bright – but I do hate dark text on a black background, so this is very nice.

Good work!

The whole thing just says

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/audio/2008/jul/11/ambulance.sirens.birdsong

Just came back to read your latest post, and think the new design now looks good, while being readable (didn’t comment at the time of this post because a load of people had already complained about the text size and it seemed a bit redundant to add to that…).

The logo banner at the top is a bit of a distraction for my taste. Have you considered purchasing a premade WordPress theme? There are tons of really well made themes available for $20 – $50. Just a thought.