Last Sunday, March 13, we tried to launch a site redesign that had looked just fine on a test server. Well, some problems cropped up, but things are looking pretty good right now.
First of all, a huge thanks to Sebastian Patting for the weeks he put into updating our design for a cleaner look and faster loading – and then a lot of time last week tweaking problems that cropped up once we went live with the updated look.
The refreshed design uses the same logo we’ve had for years, showing that we cover the earliest Macs through today’s iOS devices. And the basic layout is comfortable and familiar – but fresher.
The biggest change from my perspective is the typeface. For ages we’ve tried to choose fonts that are generally installed on Macs and Windows computers. We’ve used Geneva as our first choice in some designs, Microsoft’s Verdana in others, and so on. With our new design, we’ve standardized on Droid Sans, a free typeface that downloads quickly from the Web and looks good at a wide range of sizes.
Whether you’re reading Low End Mac on a computer monitor, a tablet, or a smartphone, it should be easy to read. We will work on developing a true mobile theme as time permits – right now we’re using the Jetpack module for WordPress to display mobile friendly content on your iPhones, Droids, etc.
Instead of text links to Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus, we have icons you can click on.
An important part of the redesign is the Donation section. Ad income has not been enough to keep Low End Mac solvent for years. We depend on support from the community – and now you’ll be able to see our progress toward our monthly goal. (Thank you to so many for putting us well past it this month!)
A Big Oops Fixed
We didn’t anticipate one problem. In our menu bar, the text is white on a blue backdrop, and the home page looks just fine. The problem we ran into was that the headers within articles were also showing up as white – or, more precisely, not showing up because they were white text on a white page. That’s been fixed now.
The solution was separate styles for our index pages and articles. That’s fixed a few little things that worked but didn’t look quite right when we first launched the new design.
Thank you for bearing with us over the past week.
If you have any thoughts to share on the updated design, please share them in the comments. Thanks!
Keywords: #redesign
Short link: http://goo.gl/przffW
