Ok, lets give this a try!
Here it is, my own version of the Daleri Selection theme that I presented in the previous post. I am perfectly sure that lots of pages, posts and details are broken on my site right now, so please don't shout too loud if you run into something that doesn't work. I'll spend the next couple of days on reviewing all pages to make sure that everything works…
So, what about the new look? Well, first of all, it has a third column and needs a screen width of 1024px to look well. I know that leaving 800px behind is a sensitive point, but according to my site statistics very few of the site visitors are still running 800px. Feel free to protest if you don't like this change, feedback is always welcome. The sidebars will be organized in a better way than before, so it will be easier to browse subpages to the different site sections. The main menu will contain fewer links that will lead to site sections (like "MP3 music", "Website templates" and so on), and each site section will have a number of subpages (for example: "andreas01" and "andreas02" under the templates section) that you will be able to access through a subpage menu in the left sidebar. I will also open up the possibility to get sponsored links on other pages than the frontpage - something I have not had before that many have asked for. The sidebar parts are still not completed, so the sidebars may be a bit confusing right now.
And what more? Well, some new colors, some new styles. The content area is wider (600px instead of 540px), which will allow me to post larger images among other things. As mentioned before I will add lots of content pages, one page for each template and theme - with additional material for every release. I will also put direct links to the latest theme and template release in the sidebar so that it is easy to download the latest design. But more about that later. For now, the main priority is to make sure that the basic site features and pages are functional!
Let me know what you think of the changes. And don't read out too much from the header photo, I will explain the background of it in my next post!
Edit: …and it validates!
Edit 2: I know it has no significance in reality, but andreasviklund.com now has a higher Technorati authority than the three most popular blogs in the world (Engadget, Boing Boing and Gizmodo). My technorati rank is #4, which means that there are three blogs in the Technorati universe that has more incoming links than this site - but which are also excluded from the top 100 blogs list. This is useless trivia since the majority of my incoming links are from people who use my designs, but still very cool numbers.
Edit 3: I got to get some sleep. Most things should work now, but the archive will be down for today. I've left the monthly archive links in the sidebar in case someone wants to read older posts, but those links will be removed once the archive page is functional again. Contact form and commercial templates should also work now.
Comments
Comment from Designe
Time: June 6, 2007, 8:06 am
Andreas my congratulations.. An excellent theme, only I was frightened when have come to you on blog, have thought that was lost…
Comment from Ulon
Time: June 6, 2007, 8:10 am
Andreas my congratulations. An excellent theme, only I was frightened when have come to you on blog, have thought that was lost.
Comment from Jan Blazicek CR
Time: June 6, 2007, 8:15 am
Well, not bad work. Okay, since U said that you dont want us to complain about header, I won't, but I don't like it very much :). Otherwise, I don't know, we'll see if that was step forward.
Comment from CoolGoose
Time: June 6, 2007, 10:20 am
It's very nice and imho better than the one before ;).
A small suggestion: make the Comments text click able cause it's annoying to try to click the number only :P
Comment from CoolGoose
Time: June 6, 2007, 10:21 am
Damn no edit button. And make the header clickable ? :P
Comment from Alberto
Time: June 6, 2007, 12:12 pm
Seems nice, but it's very hard to use it on a 800×600 px monitor.
Comment from marius
Time: June 6, 2007, 12:50 pm
I like the clean style and the Verdana font. Did you try the Trebuchet font when testing? . Also not many people are still using 800*600 resolution , so that won't be a big problem in my opinion
Congratulations for the 4th rank on Technorati. Is a great achievement!
Comment from Lionne
Time: June 6, 2007, 1:36 pm
I like the new style very much, it's gorgeous. Good work!
Comment from Andreas
Time: June 6, 2007, 3:06 pm
Thanks for the comments! I'll change the comments link, probably both here on the site and in the original theme. And yes, the header should definitely be clickable. I know about the bad looks on 800px screens, but again, very few people who visit this site is using that resolution today. I'll post some more detailed stats about that later.
The header image is a somewhat artistic mix of four photos from my hometown. The only detail that can is clearly visible among the images is a photo of a sculpture by Carl Milles known as "Hand of God", which can be found in a small park in Porjus. There is no intended connection to belief or higher powers, just a small tribute to the beautiful place where I grew up. :)
I will replace the header with a more simple (and colorful) later, but I wanted to try something different just to break out of the old look.
And I will obviously need to add a custom style for my comments again…
Comment from Music Jams
Time: June 6, 2007, 6:27 pm
Damn great style. U got it Andreas. Its another great work!!
Comment from Dave
Time: June 6, 2007, 11:21 pm
Andreas the design is great. Will we be able to change the header image to something that we have? I don't really see a problem with you having a unique header as long as the user can change it. Or make two versions available to download, art school header or plain header.
I'm having problems with the width but thats more likely due to my old Mac not running system 10 therefore the browsers are old.
Comment from LobsterMan
Time: June 7, 2007, 12:13 am
Beautiful design Andreas!
As for it not working for 800px users, I don't think it's a problem, because the main content column will still be perfectly fine for 800px users
Comment from LobsterMan
Time: June 7, 2007, 12:15 am
Also, May I suggest SRG Clean Archives for your archives page?
Comment from Mattias F
Time: June 7, 2007, 1:01 am
Looking good! I love the header and the smiley in the bottom ;)
Comment from Jason Cole
Time: June 7, 2007, 4:33 am
It looks great. I like your new header. The custom comment styling for your comments needs to come back.
Comment from Andreas
Time: June 7, 2007, 5:31 am
Added some additional styles for my own comments. Will improve this as well, but it works for now…
Comment from Luka
Time: June 7, 2007, 9:23 am
Well done Andreas, surely a beautiful design :)
Comment from Pablo
Time: June 7, 2007, 1:41 pm
Nice Job! But without the two right columns (blog and archives) it does look "empty".
Comment from Web Design
Time: June 7, 2007, 6:24 pm
Nice, I like it.
Good job.
Comment from Mario
Time: June 7, 2007, 10:28 pm
Looks really good, especially the header. Maybe i can use this for my next project…
Comment from Christopher
Time: June 7, 2007, 10:35 pm
Looks very nice, great work overall and I'm sure it'll progress more over the next couple of days (or weeks) with the finer details.
As for the header you've created, personally I think it looks fantastic! Good to see something that reflects you and where you gre up, it certainly has a form of originality :)
Comment from Huygens
Time: June 7, 2007, 11:17 pm
Just a few remarks: for your detailed post page, there is a little bug, the tag 'form' for the comment is duplicated. If you validate it with the W3C HTML validator, it will point it out for you.
Another point about web site width and usability in general. I would recommend you a really cool website from T. Baekdal. He has a really interesting article on web page sizes in relation to screen size. A quick conclusion to his thought is that we should not optimized for screen size but for web browser displayable area (task bar, menus, side bar can all take quite some space and the 1024×768 screen resolution is then not so meaningful. In addition, some user might not browse with the application maximised). His article: http://www.baekdal.com/reports/actual-browser-sizes/ (I heavily recommend the related and see also links).
Anyway, it seems that you have done once more a great new theme!
Comment from Thomas Williams
Time: June 8, 2007, 12:38 am
I like the design very much, to be honest, the design you had previously didn't really appeal to me, although this new design really does look good. Although I'm a bit disapointed that you've ignored those with 800 * 600, I would of thought a designer like you to make their websites as accessible as possible.
Other than that, the site looks good :)
Comment from Andreas
Time: June 8, 2007, 4:05 am
The 1024px screen width is indeed a sensitive change. And yes, I am normally working hard to make the site as accessible as possible so I am very aware that a few visitors are disappointed about the width. I've been around for so long that I've gone through the very same thing when I left 640px width behind in favor of 800px - many years ago…
I am looking at different adjustable solutions that will allow the layout to shrink if the screen resolution is lower than 1024px width, but I haven't decided which method to use yet. About 0.7% of the site visitors are still using the 800px screen width with regular browsers (small screen devices such as mobile phones are excluded from that percentage). That translates to around 25-50 unique visitors per day, which is still a significant number. Feel free to recommend your favorite fallback method, I may possibly build it into the Daleri Selection theme (and future 1024px-based designs) if it works well!
And thanks for noticing me about the form error, I had missed that completely. It appears in the original Daleri themes as well, so I'll need to update those quickly!
Comment from CoolGoose
Time: June 8, 2007, 7:12 am
Please stop complaining that there are not 800×600 designs. Not even 10% of the people use 800×600 and more than 30% use resolutions bigger than 1024×768 and the 800×600 design looks puny on them.
Comment from ShopMania
Time: June 8, 2007, 9:45 am
I agree CoolGoose. only few people use monitors that allow only 800×600. and they will probably brake soon..
Comment from Tomos
Time: June 8, 2007, 12:01 pm
I love the new look, 3 columns is alot better than 2 columns.
Comment from heleny
Time: June 8, 2007, 12:17 pm
Hello! Great design! The new style is much better, i like it.
Comment from Tomek
Time: June 8, 2007, 1:04 pm
I agree with CoolGoose and ShopMania the number of 800×600 users is getting lower every day. I think the number of people who use laptops (I use 15.4) and 1280×800 is growing fast so maybe it's a good idea to create templates special for them. btw. Tomos i also agree with You I also like the new look of 3 columns template, and I will use it on my new blog project. Greetings
Comment from Realizzazione sito web
Time: June 8, 2007, 2:13 pm
Very nice theme, but so minimal for me
Comment from Thomas
Time: June 8, 2007, 5:20 pm
Looks good, the 3 column design is really well done, most people have a 1024 resolution so the design will fit for most users…
Comment from Alberto
Time: June 8, 2007, 6:41 pm
Andreas, thank you for your kind words. My criticism was only due to make the theme fit the best on each kind of screen.
For the lower resolution you could try to make changes only to the sidebar: I guess the text under "what is this" is ok, but you could move the two columns beside to an only column.
Anyway probably you also have to create an alternative header image with lower dimensions.
Comment from David Herreman
Time: June 8, 2007, 8:50 pm
Great design Andreas!
Comment from Hill
Time: June 8, 2007, 11:08 pm
To be honest, I like it just the way it is. So stop complaining about all small details and use this simple 3 columns template and just say "Thank You"
Comment from Neil
Time: June 9, 2007, 6:16 am
I find it offensive that you're not catering to those of us browsing at 640×480. My 486 can't handle anything higher.
Comment from Ken Dahlin
Time: June 9, 2007, 7:18 am
Congrats on the new design. You continue to rock.
Comment from Mircea
Time: June 9, 2007, 7:45 am
It is one of the cleanest designs I have seen so far.
Congratulations.
Comment from Robbie
Time: June 9, 2007, 4:17 pm
It's a beauty, another great design, thanks.
Comment from Design
Time: June 9, 2007, 6:13 pm
Very nice theme!!!
Comment from Alberto
Time: June 10, 2007, 12:01 am
Andreas,
this post I found could be useful: http://windyroad.org/2007/05/18/resolution-independent-web-design
Comment from CoolGoose
Time: June 10, 2007, 8:53 am
Javascript is bad :).
Comment from Gnome
Time: June 10, 2007, 4:40 pm
Alberto: that windyroad site is not good. The entire site lags, and techniques like that are still in the early stages of development. http://www.alistapart.com/articles/switchymclayout/ is a bit more work, but it gves a great deal more control without PHP and without nearly so much JS.
Comment from Robert
Time: June 11, 2007, 2:07 am
I like the three column design, thanks a lot…
Comment from cs
Time: June 11, 2007, 6:27 am
wow. u r very good designer
Comment from George
Time: June 11, 2007, 10:08 am
Hello!
This is wery intresting idea.
Andreas it is good design.
Thanks for this.
Best regards
Comment from Ernie
Time: June 11, 2007, 7:40 pm
under 800×600 it´s a little hard to see, maybe you can fix this with variable boxes…
Comment from gry
Time: June 14, 2007, 1:01 pm
Great design! The new style is much better !
Comment from SEO IBB
Time: June 18, 2007, 3:17 am
Why is your blog names "WordPress › Error " on Technorati ?
Comment from Green Hat People
Time: June 18, 2007, 11:10 pm
Thos who use resolutions of 800×600 and less shouldn't be allowed online.
Comment from emil
Time: June 6, 2007, 8:03 am
looks fine, i like it. It will be nice if you can transform the logo in a button that takes you to the home page.