I think we’re getting close to a winner here. I’ve put in a two-tone background for the main area, and while that still needs a bit of tweaking here and there, I’m pretty satisfied with the effect. It brings the yellow through into the main area just a bit, and gives the background pattern a bit more body, without screaming too much about it. I do actually want to reduce the yellow slightly from the example shown here, but not by a terrible lot.
Right now I’m actually looking for a filter, or a trick that’ll allow me to delete a certain percentage of somewhat randomly spaced yellow pixels from the top layer of the background image, without simply lowering the opacity for the whole layer, which just doesn’t have quite the same effect. I’d like a quarter, or possibly even a third, of it to be gone. But that’s mainly down to tweaking, the basic design is there now – I think.
One final point: if you compare with the earlier screenies you’ll notice I’ve changed the colour of the top menu-layer to match the background for the main area. The only other tweak I’m currently looking at is the link colour for the main area, which isn’t quite working for me now that it’s more or less blue on blue. Even so, I’ve got a feeling the end of the redesign process may well be in sight. Or at least the end of this round of the redesign process. I’ve sort of given up on the idea of ever being truly satisfied with this site’s look for more than a few months at a time.
I like the background much better now. The designer in me still screams against the colors (but tastes are different and that is good), but other than that I like it, especially the top menu with the two bars.
What do you dislike about the colours? Apart from the fact that it’s not plain black on white (or white on black). If that it I more or less agree: I tend to prefer a basic black on white setup myself. But somehow I can never fight the temptation to have a little fun with my own site. Having said that I’m contemplating another design change for the relatively near future.
I’d like to have a shot at moving from a black background & black borders with colours & images behind the text to a graphical background with plain black on white (or possibly white on black) text fields imposed over it. Watch this space
I just dislike the plain-ness of the yellow sidebar and the color itself. Like I said, color is a matter of taste, but it’s fun to argue about it
With your current design, you have at least the menu on the left break the plain blue apart with the black horizontal bars between the menu items. And on the right you have the archives and stuff which also make a nice contrast to the plain blue.
In the current light design the yellow is so … empty. I know, there’s content on it as well, but the color somehow looks empty. It looks like it’s not finished yet. Maybe I am missing at least one strong color on your design, as the blue in the middle is very soft as well. I can’t recommend some kind of structure since that would most likely conflict with your background image in the middle, but what about inserting some separators between the menu items? Short vertical lines? I don’t know, something!
Hmm, I guess I could try vertical seperators in the menu. In fact I’ll put some up for a while at http://jarsto.nl/testing/index2.php – which has also spawned yet another variation on the main background image, though I think I’ve finally pretty much got there with that one.
My own first instinct is that the separators between the menu items aren’t an improvement, but I’m not wondering about breaking up the background of the sidebar. It shouldn’t be terribly hard to extend what I’m doing for the main background, but with the colours reversed. So the sidebar would get the swirls in blue on a yellow background, that might be worth playing around with.
If you use separators, I would only put them on one bar. Since they are not aligned, they give the page a restless look. But if you can really extend the background image to the bars and reverse the colors … that would be pretty neat indeed.
The sidebar should be doable, the menu bars are going to be a lot trickier. Still it’s not a bad design idea to have that running throughout the site to unify things while at the same time breaking up the colours a little. The trick with the menu is going to be IE6 though. Because IE6 doesn’t do “position: fixed” it’s a scrolling element there, and a fixed element everywhere else. Hours of “fun” to get that right I can tell you.
I feel with you, I remember how much trouble I had adjusting my last customer’s site to this abomination called web browser. Funnily enough, I am just experimenting with a wordpress template which has the inbuild function to crash IE6 when it tries to open the site. If I wouldn’t be desperate for readers, I would really be tempted to check that box
I can well understand the temptation. I’ve been tempted in the past to drop some conditional stuff into my code that would only show up in IE6 and basically put a banner across the top of the window reading “F*ck off you technotard”. But as I’m forced to use IE6 at work myself I can’t even do that with a clear conscience, I know a lot of people using it never chose to.
ROFL! Yes, we better watch out or there may be a lawsuit next by people who feel they are discriminated because of the use of their browser. If they go before a US court, they may even win.
But I am one of those sad souls as well which _has_ to use IE at work, though we are finally cleared to use IE 7. Tabs! Finally! Yay!
Tabs aren’t the biggest improvement in IE7 for design, though they’re a great user feature. The main reasons I like IE7 are: support for PNG transparency, better RSS standards, actually positions a background the same way other browsers do, etc. Tabs are just a bonus, from a design point of view all the under the hood stuff is going to make life a lot easier, once IE6 finally really dies.
Oh, I don’t care about the design stuff, really only about the tabs. As I am managing my business unit’s intranet pages, I usually need to have about four to ten windows open. Managing that with IE6 was a nightmare! I had no control over my desktop at all, especially since I had gotten used to the use friendliness of my Mac. With IE 7, I can actually reduce my windows to just two and put all the stuff I need into tabs. It’s been a great relief, let me tell you.