Hari's Corner

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My reviews site redesigned

Filed under: Site management by Hari
Posted on Wed, Dec 20, 2006 at 13:24 IST (last updated: Wed, Sep 26, 2007 @ 15:21 IST)

I have redesigned the look and feel of my reviews site using a different approach - minimal styling and a fixed width font. I personally think this new style looks quite good.

I have also added a very simple "changelog" in the main page to help regular visitors find any new reviews posted on the site etc. etc. Please do leave your feedback on the reviews site content as well as the design. In particular I'd like to know how the fixed width font works for you.

14 comment(s)

  1. Yeah it is more readable, but I guess the dense effect of looking at something and understanding that it is a blob of text: that's missing.BTW saw that site for the first time!

    Comment by Sudipta Chatterjee (visitor) on Thu, Dec 21, 2006 @ 15:25 IST #
  2. Sudipta, thanks. What font shows up for you? I have specified in the CSS - 'Bitstream Vera Sans Mono' then 'Andale Mono' and 'Monospace' and finally the generic monospace font as specified by the browser.By the way, what do you mean by the "dense effect"?

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Thu, Dec 21, 2006 @ 15:45 IST #
  3. Okay, then: I'm not sure a mono font is ideally-suited to such content: It's not very easy on the eyes. It also means you can't justify the text, which detracts from the appearance a little.I'd suggest a slightly thicker margin be used on the right side: The text gets uncomfortably near the edge of the screen at its currently size. Also, you might want to define your own colors for links: My "Visted link" default color blends in a bit too well with your background color!There seems to be a problem with the images you have at the start of each review: I always get the "alt" text instead. Could just be a permissions error, but I can't tell for sure.Other than that, looks pretty good to me!

    Comment by Dominic (visitor) on Thu, Dec 21, 2006 @ 19:45 IST #
  4. Dominic, thanks a lot for your review. About the fixed width font - yes, I know it's not widely used, but I wanted to see how it looked on a design such as this. I tried different combinations of serif and sans serif fonts, but none really worked for me. If you have any good fonts in mind, do let me know.Also about the images - I am able to view them fine - is anybody else having this issue? They are stored on the same server, so surely you should not be having any problems? Could you try and post what exact message you get from Apache when you directly try and access the image URL?Thanks a lot for your help!

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Thu, Dec 21, 2006 @ 20:21 IST #
  5. The error I get is:ForbiddenYou don't have permission to access /images/the-hound.jpg on this server.Apache/1.3.37 Server at www.harishankar.org Port 80

    Comment by Dominic (visitor) on Thu, Dec 21, 2006 @ 22:15 IST #
  6. Strange! :? It works for me all right... All images work for me all right. Maybe a DNS issue? Or caching issue? Did you try refreshing the page after clearing the cache?There are no problems for me on my ISP... Oh, and I changed the font too...

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Thu, Dec 21, 2006 @ 22:33 IST #
  7. Not a DNS issue, images work fine for me across the site.No errors in the logs on the server either.. :)

    Comment by drew (visitor) on Thu, Dec 21, 2006 @ 23:42 IST #
  8. Drew, thanks for the confirmation. Probably it's an ISP issue.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Fri, Dec 22, 2006 @ 07:33 IST #
  9. Hmm.. it's an odd one: The pix work fine from home, but can't be accessed from my work PC. That would seem to indicate it's the ISP, except that a direct access (as above) gets an error message from your Apache, not a failure notice from my ISP.Ah well. . The new font looks better, by the way :)

    Comment by Dominic (visitor) on Fri, Dec 22, 2006 @ 15:51 IST #
  10. Dominic, I'm glad you like the new font. Although I think it's a bit plain. Somehow, a fixed width font appeals to my sense of aesthetics, particularly for that kind of design. Anyway, let's see. Verdana is a pretty decent font for web pages and it's quite common too.What fixed width font did you see, by the way? Some fixed width fonts look horried, but there are a few good ones like Andale Mono and Bitstream Vera Sans Mono.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Fri, Dec 22, 2006 @ 16:50 IST #
  11. That's strange Dominic. The error your getting would appear to come from the server but there are no logs indicating the error you are recieving. The permissions on the image(s) are all ok. I'd say it's either a problem with your work connection or the PC perhaps.

    Comment by drew (visitor) on Fri, Dec 22, 2006 @ 20:33 IST #
  12. Drew, I think so too. Maybe there is a proxy issue at work here? I don't know.Nevertheless what do you think of my PHP script? I had cooked it up as a very simple CMS without using MySQL and I really do like the "traditional" website format and the lack of extra features. I had tried most CMSes but really even Drupal was too feature-rich for me, so I ultimately thought: why not use a home-grown script :cool:Now with your knowledge of Perl, maybe you can teach me how to turn that PHP script into a CGI one. ;)

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Fri, Dec 22, 2006 @ 21:47 IST #
  13. Merry applicable holiday, if you have one (I can't remember at the moment, sorry.)

    Comment by Rik (visitor) on Tue, Dec 26, 2006 @ 09:20 IST #
  14. Rik, thanks a lot. Merry Christmas and Happy New year to you too (if you celebrate them :))We don't have a religious festival at this time, but it is a holiday season here as well and of course there are a lot of Indian Christians, so Christmas and New Year are big as well. New Year is also a general holiday :mrgreen:

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Tue, Dec 26, 2006 @ 11:23 IST #

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