Blog FeedTime for a Redesign
When I first launched Aelon’s last design, version 9, I noted that the 12 months between it and it’s predecessor was the longest I had ever gone without redesigning one of my own sites - twice as long in fact. Since that day it has now been 15 months, and frankly the need for a design wasn’t actually critical - it was just something I wanted to do. The fact is, v9 was a good design, and deserved to last as long as it did. Maybe even a little longer.
As such, this latest redesign comes with no real functional changes over the old. The way everything works and is laid out is much the same. What I was really aiming for was something a little sleeker, rather than the simple boxes and rectangles that were here before. The end result you see here before you: Aelon vX.
Now yes, I could have gone with “v10″ but as ATI could tell you with its video card naming conventions, using the roman numeral is much, much cooler, and that is sorta the basis for this design - simply to have a bit more flair. In that, I think it succeeds.
Of course that’s not to say that vX is without any real benefits. The text is larger and of higher contrast - a move I thought necessary given the growing number of people with high resolution screens. In the same vein, I’ve largely done away with 800×600 support - the width of the site being just over 850px. It will work, but you’ll have a fun time playing with horizontal scrollbars. It really is time to move on.
Speaking of moving on, I have also made the unprecedented (for me) move of a complete lack of support for Internet Explorer 6. IE 7 has been around for a few months now, and I wasn’t prepared to compromise this design to cater for a user statistic which is shrinking noticeably every month. While IE 7 was still frankly a pain to develop with, the fact is I was pushing things further than I even bothered trying to with iE6.
All in all, the design has been an aesthetic refocusing. Our target audience are gamers and geeks, and I think the design now reflects that better than before.
7th April | Reply
it looks very nice
8th April | Reply
As I said before, I like it. Its similar to the old design, which is a good thing. I really like that top bar. Looks very swanky.
8th April | Reply
On a ‘I am a sad person note’ that orange Aelon button excites me….
8th April | Reply
I really think this is a big improvement which is unusual for me.
8th April | Reply
Sweet. It’s all….shiny.
8th April | Reply
I’m more or less in favour of the update. The backdrop seems to work better in this release than in earlier tests and the header bar is pretty swish. However, I do have 1 major issue and 1 minor with this design. As cool as the Aelon button is I don’t think that it is good design practice - it’s not obviously a button to begin with and there is no indication of its function. Beyond this I’m also not sure about the way that comments are presented - the gradiated header bar for each comment just doesn’t do it for me and I think the last Aelon iteration looked better.
9th April | Reply
Well, the forum is there for anyone still wanting to taste the flavor of v9 (unless you plan on changing that over as well). The way the title portion “floats” in between the content and nav bar is a little awkward to look at, but the atmosphere of the place certainly bumped up a notch thanks to that fine blue expanse leading off into CG fancy…
9th April | Reply
I will probably be leaving the forums as they are for quite some time. They’re not really used often enough to warrant a new design, and v9 definitely still holds its own well enough there.
9th April | Reply
I really like it. At first I didn’t know where you were going with it, but now that we are there i’ll let you get to second base.
10th April | Reply
Oooh. Pretty!
10th April | Reply
Very nice, I like the big orange button even though it doesn’t do all that much.
Nice touch with the bits that “glow” when you scroll up and down the page ;o)
11th April | Reply
The new design looks really good to me. I don’t see any problems with the big Aelon button, and everything looks a lot slicker than before. All you need to do now is get the regular posts to start up again
13th April | Reply
This is really slick, and I think you used the shadows and positioning very well. The only problem I see is that the area under the search bar gets cut short… did you give it a fixed height?
13th April | Reply
Ah, no, not fixed height. Just some foolishness with floats, when the text size is bigger than normal.
Fixed now, thanks for pointing it out.
14th April | Reply
I love it, dude… time and time again you manage to surprise me with your eye for design, and this is no exception. Good game.
14th April | Reply
I like your design. Looks real nice.
22nd April | Reply
Oooh, pretty!