It is painfully slow, but worth waiting for

agreed scott, agreed.

“apologies for the burned retinas but so far you’re the only one who doesn’t like it.”

fair enough clive, there was a smiley on the end of my comment, honest. normally i use a black on white stylesheet for your site, but these past few days i am without such comforts, so i notice it more.

Curvy designs are getting a little… what’s the phrase, over-done? They can work really well, but I prefer square as well. Always have done for some reason. Having said that, viewed in Safari/Camino the buttons are automatically styled in that Apple-oval way. Might have to force the square issue as they don’t go with the angled design.

*Oh, and the comment box is now at the bottom, which is more traditional than the previous design.

Less of a blog, more of a nod in the direction of standard website formats. I’ve experienced the redesign of another website i frequent quite recently, and although originally daunting, the new structure emerged victorious over its outdated predeccesor. I’m sure the same will be applicable here.

I’m enjoying the angular stylings, as i detest too many curves and flowing lines.

Congratultions, Ollie.

Regarding the rotation on refreshes, I had a similar thought about causing confusion over what is new content, so I took it one step further and thought about it changing every few seconds, say 10 or 20. But not a sharp change, some clever fade in/fade out thing. However, that is totally beyond my capabilities at the moment. I’ll take a look around later in the week and see if anyone has done this already.

I’ve decided to add BlogF1 to my bookmarks toolbar, in Firefox. It can replace the official Champ Car website, as I guess I won’t be needing to visit that anymore.

The only improvement I can suggest relates to the positioning of the video player. There’s a lot of unused space to the right, which to me appears a little strange. Perhaps you could remove the ‘Sidepodcast video player’ link, and centralise the console a little bit more. However, if you’re going to be adding links to more video players in the future, then I guess this would be pointless as the empty space will disappear anyway.

The edit button is an excellent addition. In many ways, it’s a little surprising that edit and preview buttons aren’t standard features of blog engines, as they have been included in even the most basic forum software for years. I think you’re being more than generous with the 60 minute limit – I can’t see why anyone would need any longer.

Personally I don’t believe rotating the feature upon refreshes would be a good idea, as this could cause confusion and make it harder for people to establish what is new content. As you post entries regularly anyway, no doubt the feature will get rotated somewhat more naturally anyway.

I actually agree with Clive’s point that design should never come before practicalities/content, just I don’t think that it has in the case of BlogF1. One of my favourite sites was Tim Stannard’s La Liga blog. It was simply black text on a white background (with no graphics), hosted on a blogger account.

Tim’s writing is of such a high quality that he was recently poached by Haymarket, so the blog’s moved homes.

Old site: http://laligaloca.blogspot.com/
New site: http://fourfourtwo.com/blogs/laligaloca/default.aspx

I know it’s become much more colourful, but I preferred the old blogger template. Think I’ll stick to the feed reader for that one.

It takes forever to load and breaks various bits of CSS, but it is there none-the-less. It’s actually quite tricky to get a regular blog view on a page, so if anyone has any bright ideas feel free to share.

Oh, and because it’s not exactly a great fix, I won’t be adding it to the top navigation bar just yet, so you’ll all just have to remember the URL for now. When I can get to work right I’ll pop the link up.

But my criticism of the re-design is a matter of practicalities, not aesthetics (which are a matter of taste anyway). If a site is less functional through a re-design, that matters more than the look of the thing.

Ollie, just a suggestion, if you don’t display images in the second row of current posts the page load time might come down. Also if you have a fat css file, try breaking it into 2-3 different files [read somewhere that it makes some difference].

I must say I like the design, one of the reasons is that I actually play around with one of Adii’s themes for a company blog right now

i did load quite slow though, but this is the problem I have been facing with my blog recently too and can’t figure out why …

Ohh, just had a thought: I could try to rotate the featured post from the 5 (or whatever) most recent, changing with each refresh. I’ll definitely look into that, but it is low on the priority list at the moment.

-1 to clive, who’s own site burns a hole in my retina, and is thus discounted from any design criticism until he fixes it

What I meant by succeeding in achieving what no other re-design has done for me was that it has actually made me not want to visit too often. So it succeeds in achieving entirely the wrong end! For me, at least.

The regular blog view is a great idea. As an example of my resistance to what I consider ineffective design, my computer runs XP but I have the view set on the old Win98 look – a much more usable GUI.

@John, Neeraj and Esther: Thanks guys.

@Craig: Stupid WordPress. This was originally a different post. I had it saved, but then decided to bin it, but instead of deleting and starting this post, I re-wrote over it. I guess WordPress kept the old permalink. Bah! Thanks.

@Clive: Thank you for being honest, it is appreciated. I guess I can’t please everyone! Regarding the face, do you mean Clark, or the general look? If it’s Clark then that will change. The top post is a featured post that, once I get back into writing, will change regularly; maybe once every couple of days. All other posts get filed into the 8 below that, so this is only slightly different to a normal blog view. I see what you mean by it not being immediately obvious though, with these 8 posts further down. I just wanted to highlight some of my better content at the top.

the re-design has succeeded where few re-designs have succeeded with me before – I’m avoiding visiting because of the time factor.

I’m probably reading this wrong, but that doesn’t make sense in my mind. It sounds like you’re saying the re-design has succeeded, but you’re not visiting!? Then surely, it hasn’t succeeded?

AdSense revenue was never all that anyway, so this is of little importance to me. As I said in the post, I’ll see what happens with TLA revenue. Revenue comes second to content with me anyway; this isn’t my living, just a hobby that has got out-of-hand!

Thanks for being honest Clive, I do appreciate it, I’m just a little confused about that one statement. If it’s any consolation, I will be putting up a regular blog view, which you can bookmark if you like, and I’ll be adding dates on the homepage posts when I get chance.

I really dislike it, Ollie – sorry. It is even slower in loading than the previous design and then presents me with a face that looks identical to my previous visit. I have to dig around to see if there are any new posts. Quite frankly, I’m pressed for time enough as it is. I need to be able to see immediately when something has been added.

And that’s before I even consider the aesthetic quality of the site (which isn’t bad but is much less important than usability – if we need the info, we’ll put up with reading it on the ugliest of sites).

It’s a personal opinion and maybe others aren’t so bothered about time spent looking for new stuff but I have to mention it, particularly as the re-design has succeeded where few re-designs have succeeded with me before – I’m avoiding visiting because of the time factor. And, since BlogF1 is one of the best F1 blogs around, I really don’t want that to happen.

I think your ad revenue will plummet, too, but that’s a guess. Ad placement never seems to agree with logic.

Sorry, Ollie, but it’s what I really think. It’s better to know these things, isn’t it?

Interesting URL for this post by the way – Jim Clark reference?

Oh! and thanks for pointing out “Premium News Theme”, just like you I’ve been mulling around with updating my blog but have reached no-where till now. Hopefully would find something interesting at PNT.