90% typography (10)
August 30th, 2007 · by Heri · Technology
MTW’s relaunch is stopped today — other developments will follow next week. As you can see, Montreal Tech Watch’s design is centered upon the content — ie text and posts and nothing else.
Some new features:
- There is a forum section, open to everybody
- Montreal Tech Events are shown directly in the right side.
- “Featured comment” and “Featured posts” in order to highlight content that readers should read.
- Online Identities. MTW is also in del.icio.us, in tumblr and a couple of other sites. Have a look at the footer.
- Direct inclusion of the tumblr feed
A more detailed on the how (on baselines for instance) should be avalaible at heri.madmedia.ca soon.
Hi Heri,
I do like the new design; it’s like a gazette.
Congrats.
I personally prefer the old design, a lot. There’s so much stuff now that I don’t know where to look. The old one was not groundbreaking, but it was much easier to navigate in my opinion.
You should also provide links to the events that are featured on the right. Moreover, Montreal on Rails 2 is at 6:45 (not 6pm) and is RSVP only.
Good luck with the relaunch/redesign!
carl: the main content is on the left column. extras are on the middle column.
because the left columns are not going to change, I think readers will get to used to it. the goal with the new design was to focus on extra ressources that people don’t usually go to on montreal tech watch.
about the events, they are taken live from a ical feed. the format doesnt support links, so that’s the best that could be done. I am thinking about pulling a feed from upcoming though.
Fred: Thanks. glad you liked it.
I like the direction of the new site, but I don’t think it’s quite right yet.
Some suggestions:
- The left column should take up more of the page width, I would say 60%.
- I would do away with the “Related” section. I’ve never clicked on a link. I never understand how ‘related’ suggests articles. More relevant is featured posts or comments, because I can understand that there is some legitimate reason for them to be highlighted. If you do this, you can move to a 2 column layout which will be much cleaner.
- Pull an upcoming feed; it will be much more useful for your readers.
- Put a small logo in the header, it will liven up the page
Hi Mat, thanks for the feedback
unless people has a 1280 resolution, it’s impossible to make the left column at 60%. furthermore, a small column width is better for legibility.
related section is what the title suggests, although I agree with you, it doesnt give more help in this post. However, you are a power user, and read MTW’s posts with a feed reader, and moreover, they were not meant for you. they are meant for casual readers who stumbled on montreal tech watch, and may want to explore the site further. in your case, you would never click on them because you’ve already been through all of them.
- about upcoming, i am not a regular user, but will see. thanks for the suggestion
- the small logo is upcoming. but i have already said too much
You could improve the excessive text-density on the right side of the page by reducing the width of those two columns, and limiting the number of bullets (15 related posts is over the top, and we don’t need to see events more than a month away…)
Also, I think MyBlogLog is a waste of page real-estate.
Look fwd to seeing what else you have coming down the pipe…
Nice work Heri, I like it! Anyway, I use the feed most of the time, I only go to the site to comment.
But there’s no margin in Safari, looks ugly.
Also, I’m not sure I’m a “power user” because I consume your content primarily via RSS. I would expect that the majority of your readers do the same. Either way, feeds will only gain in popularity so the relevance of blog design will continue to decline…
ma: if you have your resolution set at 800×600 it doesnt have margins. if you set it precisely at 1024, well there are margins.
mat: i see what i mean. i will work on this (about text-density) don’t expect miracles though … about the events, well it shows the 15 or so upcoming events in montreal.
mybloglog is much like the twitter discussion. for me, it provides some additional info on people who come here. not the essential info for sure, but it lightens the page a bit. just like adding a logo as you said.
about your last comment, mtw’s design is probably noteworthy because there is no “design” as such. no graphics, no colors, no icons, etc… everything is built FOR the content and the text. it’s more like an interface with legibility and information delivery as the main goals.
> everything is built FOR the content and the text.
That sounds like a pretty great design philosophy to me!
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