Thursday, July 27, 2006

Changes to the Blog Format

I have been playing around with the Blog design this morning, which is a very dangerous thing to do with my limited knowledge of HTML. I have removed the entire right hand column and moved the links, Podcast Archive etc to the left hand column. I've also widened the central text column.

It seems to all work fine on IE6 and Firefox but I'd be grateful if anyone could alert me to any problems they have. The whole thing should load a lot more quickly and be easier to navigate, if a little less 'pretty'!

32 comments:

Iain Dale said...

Better now?

Jonathan Sheppard said...

On mine its still starting below all the left hadn links

Anonymous said...

Iain, I'm curious about something, why are you resistent to the idea of switching software? Also what role does Google play in that decision?

Jonathan Sheppard said...

seems ok now

Anonymous said...

On Mac/Safari the left and main columns are wider than the top banner. If you want I can send some screen grabs to you.

Iain Dale said...

Leon, My only resistance is because of the upheaval it would entail. I have no attachment to Google or Blogger beyond being concerned that it would all be desperately complicated to change. If Google are upgrading Blogger it seems sensible to hang on in there for the time being.

Sam, yes please do email me screengrabs. I think I may have to resize the top banner.

Machiavelli's Understudy said...

My problem is the same as Andrew Woodman's.

Perhaps you should be looking at the CSS rather than the HTML, Iain?

Machiavelli's Understudy said...

Ahh... Sorted!

Anonymous said...

I didn't have problems before and I don't have them now. I'm baffled why there seem to be problems.

Those with IE6 may want to consider upgrading to IE7. Opera 9 or Firefox also seem to work well with me.

As for the new look I preferred the old one but if people are experiencing problems I understand the changes and it does load a little bit quicker now.

Still I see red is so yesterday.

Anonymous said...

Looking good, Iain; the new layout is far less cluttered too.

dizzy said...

for anyone interested in the techie aspect of the problems. It all stemmed from the use of either px width defintion or % width deifnitions.

Michael Rock said...

Formatting is fine but I'm still having problems with your RSS feed (it links all posts to your archive).

Anonymous said...

much better loads a lot quicker too.

David Todd said...

The "reshuffle" is looking better.

I think you've too many posts on the page, on the pc I'm using now, even with broadband etc etc, it's a bit slow loading up.

Anonymous said...

Aaargh! It's Ducky-egg blue!!! After a week of Kameeweeeon-Woss Wedd. Get back to your true colours m'boy!

Anonymous said...

Iain, understood although I would point out that moving would have to be that much effort. In wordpress you can integrate all your posts from here in under two minutes. I have done the same on another test blog of mine and it worked fine.

Anonymous said...

I Like the masthead colour - Manchester City Blue.

Anonymous said...

Sorry to be a missie guts, but I prefered the narrower column - seemed to be easier to read (I know: no pleasing everyone!). PS - have not had any download problems recently, and visit at least once a day.

Anonymous said...

At last! Mine's fine now, too! And the Comments are back to normal.

Anonymous said...

Never had a problem with old format.Ntl broadband. Prefer old format. New too wide so format precludes viewing ads etc whilst reading text. Can,t please etc

Prodicus said...

Now it doesn't resize in my newsreader's browser window. It did, before.

Anonymous said...

It's fine for me now - first I lost the text completely, then it loaded on the left-hand side below everything else. Now seems to be back where it belongs.

Mind, I liked the flags showing who else was online and where from, that seems to have vanished.

I'm IE6 with XP - I've also lost Guido's right hand column, but as that is just ads, don't really mind.

Anonymous said...

How can I tell which number IE I've got? If it's 5, how do I get six, please?

Anonymous said...

verity,

Go to www.firefox.com or www.opera.com. ;)

If you must, though, go to Help... About in Internet Explorer and the version is listed at the bottom.

If it's not 6, run up Windows Update, or alternatively, visit http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie6/default.mspx.

Anonymous said...

Using Opera v9.00. Too damn wide! Previously [I assume] it would format to fit. No longer. I'm having to scrroll horizontally - which is very unpleasant.

Regards, Bart.

David Todd said...

Working better now - Gr8!

Even the word verification is interesting - this time it's "qwhugh"

ian said...

I think the slowness is nothing to do with blogger (which is down a lot less than typepad in my experience) but to do with the third party includes : eg, the advertising, the amazon stuff. You can tell this by loooking at the status bar in your browser and seeing what is displayed when things slow down on the display front. For me it's uretopiaadvertising.com or something like that

Anonymous said...

Go Mozilla Firefox...

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't touch Firefox with a ten foot barge pole. I hate it. But Tim Almond, thanks for the link to Microsoft.

Iain, I too find the text column too wide and not comfortable to read. I liked it better the old way. Also, I liked the icons down the side. It was all very stylish looking.

MANTEX said...

I don't like the wider column width Iain - stick to a more newspaper-like narrow column.

I do like the rotating masthead colours though.

James Higham said...

Vastly better.

Anonymous said...

Nothing bad ... just an unusual browser envirionment. Just got back from a weeks hols to see your changes to the blog format. It seems to work well using Mozilla 1.7 for Sun Java on a Solaris 10 machine and X-Deep/32 X windows....... Just something different I suppose ....