Explicit Design
Posted on Friday, August 5th, 2005 at 16:56.
Introducing the blog design. No, Internet Explorer cannot properly render this valid XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Nor do I care.
70% of my traffic is from my XML feed. Thus, I decided that my new design would break away from traditional blog metaphors. Speaking of XML, I killed off my RSS feed because, let’s face it, Atom is superior in every way. Are you loving my digital activism yet? ;-)
Many new features are not yet implemented into the design, as I wasn’t planning on being explicit until after my college graduation.
To be continued…
Brilliant!
I really love the design itself… the colors are vibrant and the layout is very creative! Cute photo too. ;)
However, I’m not a huge fan of the new site when it comes to usability. The new format renders scrollwheels useless and it takes a while to scroll through longer posts to read new comments (such is the case with the Explicitly Me post). But I guess these downsides are necessary for such a unique layout.
Glad to see the Atom support. Good job! :-)
It looks awesome! This is the best WordPress theme I’ve ever seen – the first one that doesn’t look like a variation of Kubrick (I’ll admit, I’m guilty myself :).
If you get a lot of hits to your feed, I highly recommend FeedBurner. It can convert your feed to different formats, make it look nice if someone tries to view it with a dumb browser, and can put ads in your feed if you want to go that way.
You are SO HOT! :)
Kevin: Yes, I totally understand the frustration with no scroll wheel support. I am addressing this in two ways.
One will be an alternate version of the design that uses a scroll bar for content overflow, similar to an iframe (but obviously not with an iframe since they don’t validate).
The second is a theme switcher that will be appearing soon. If you don’t like this theme, just switch to another. I will be including Curiously Jeremiah and probably a lightweight theme.
Do you plan to make this theme available in one of the WordPress theme collections?
I love the new theme… I wish I could do something this cool!
Adios
OK, this is weird: Your new design works better on my BIll Gates Evil Empire Browser than it does on my Mozilla (I’m the one with the ancient iMac that doesn’t support OS X or Firefox). Using Mozilla, the text renders in the scrollbox for a brief time and then “escapes” down to the orange field below, at which point I can’t access the comments field or read any text past the point where I would’ve needed to scroll down. Pretty odd, no?
mike3k: I may release my theme to the WordPress collection at some point, however, I cannot redistribute the JavaScript used for the scroll action. The script is licensed by Dynamic Web Coding. It’s also encrypted so that it’s not usable except on licensed domains.
Scroll is pretty, but not wheel- or keyboard-friendly. Otherwise, it’s a very nice facelift!
I’ve done some more research. There is no way in JavaScript to capture scrollbar input. I will address the keyboard issue.
This new layout is hott!
[...] Version 2 of Explicitly Me is the layout that I wanted from its inception. I am working on a brand new theme (especially now that my hair is buzzed), but couldn’t leave this theme undone. [...]