Don’t worry readers, I’m trying an experiment. WUWT has looked the same for about 3 years, so I’m giving it a makeover. I’ve activated a newly designed theme for WUWT. This one has advantages over the old one in that it does a better job of supporting newer hi-res monitors such as the 20-24″ LCD/HDTV models that are becoming popular.
It also provides for larger text and images, better visibility of links, plus a few other features including a custom background which I’ll get to later.
In the meantime, let me know what you think in the poll below.
Sadly, no I still can’t offer an edit feature. wordpress.com hosting doesn’t support it.
UPDATE: Some readers say they can’t see links on the right side. They are there, try the horizontal scrollbar or set your monitor to a higher resolution. Also, wordpress during the upgrade nuked all my widgets on the right hand side, working to restore them -A
UPDATE: all the sidebar widgets are now restored. -A
UPDATE from CTM: Firefox users should install the CA assistant and greasemonkey.
http://climateaudit.org/ca-assistant/
This gives you full previews and some preview and formatting buttons.
Make sure to set your installation settings to not hide old comments or much will disappear.
Comment Tab:
- “Old” and “New” comments are defined by age in hours.
- You can hide all old comments (default: 48 hours). Hiding older comments is a great way to simplify your view of more intense discussions. (On Lucia and RomanM’s sites, the content of old contents disappears, but Author/Date remain. Nice!)
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Looks good to me on Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100402 Namoroka/3.6.3, clean simple and uncluttered, my monitor is 1680 X 1050. On the old theme I usually zoomed to get easily readable text, now I don’t have to.
Item#6 of Paul Vaughan April 27, 2010 at 12:54 pm reconsidered (regarding date-stamp):
Just realized the new date-stamps are hyperlinks. If people know how to use “href”, the new system is superior and may cut down on lengthy quotes that build in redundancy.
One more note:
8) The spaces between paragraphs are *good*. Years of experience running online courses tells me that short paragraphs are the way to minimize reader fatigue and evade reader “skiing” (“ski”mming & “ski”pping).
Cheers.
Like.
Mr. Pete’s CA-assistant no longer works within the comment section (Preview and comment tools still seem to work though).
REPLY: It was never intended to work here, I never offered support for it. -A
Eduardo Ferreyra says:
April 27, 2010 at 2:49 pm
For those who miss the smaller text size: press CTRL and use the scroll wheel in your mouse to reduce or increase the size. No big deal
Thank you Eduardo, very handy.
It’s all messed up! Almost unusable.
Oh hold it. I forgot I was using my cell phone browser.
Looks fine on my laptop!
Change we can believe in.
I like it.
I use a 1920×1200 display so a wider page is no problem but the default text size is at least one font size larger than it needs to be. The old size was fine. And yes, I can make it smaller but I don’t have to it for any other web pages.
I don’t visit the site for the format. I visit it for the info. Ultimately, this all about your aesthetic, Anthony. Knock yourself out. 🙂
Anthony,
I think this new theme may need a little adjustment. I find the line spacing too large, and the separation between stories seems poorly defined. While I can change the scale of the page on my screen with the control key and mouse wheel, this does not reduce the visual confusion. I notice that titles are sometimes closer on the screen to the preceding story than to the story they relate to. Also the font size used for titles seems too close to the standard font size when it is set to bold.
On a more subjective note, I prefer sans serif fonts for emission pages (monitors etc.) and serif fonts for reflection pages (books, newspapers.)
That said layout changes will not stop me visiting your fantastic site.
Hi,
From the WordPress support forum, try adding the following to the theme css to support superscript.
.sup{font-size:xx-small; vertical-align:top;}
REPLY: I already tried and rejected the mega-lame-o wp.com css editor (I hate CSS anyway but deserves special recognition for lameness). It breaks the new theme. -A
There’s a saying – “the better is a foe to the good”.
There where two groups before – a far too MANY happy people like me who didn’t have to touch anything to zoom in/out to read, and the “poor” readers not so lucky like the first ones and in minority.
Now, I belong to the UNhappy majority (?), and the few “richer” guys with 24″-27″ beasts are all smiles.
REPLY: I’ve personally tested it on Windows XP using Firefox 3.5 with a screen resolution of 1024×768 and it works just fine. IE6 on the other hand is a train wreck. – Anthony
The CHANGE’s in vogue? 🙂
Regards
P.S. According to research 1024×768 is _still_ the most used resolution.
Looks great.
Hmmm … I’m neutral on the actual change …
Now, the next question, how does it look on the iPod Touch; since I’m not on the Cisco corporate LAN anymore I’ll have to give that a try over at the city Library WLAN tomorrow.
Now, a quick HTML test (the commands used will be duped using ampersand-prefixed LT and GT text for ‘show’ purposes as well):
<blockquote> <i>
</i> </blockquote>
And back to normal text.
.
.
needs a little colour, preferably on the right side bar, and clear a dividing line between the posts
Agree with Chuck@ur momisugly 4:23, looks like you are getting ready for an older readership 🙂
I would like a font that increases the contrast, this one has too much grey. Lack of contrast is the main problem in reading fatigue.
I hate change………
Mr Watts,
But the font layout! Too big gaps between lines, too big font, and too big lines! And that serif font! Awful!
To put shortly – all the graphic parts and layout are too big!
And that’s what some readers tried to impart to you.
Wider screens are not for applications to be stretched broadly but to have two application windows open side by side.
Best regards
I like WUWT so much that I wouldn’t complain whatever you do. However, you did ask.
I waited until I went home to comment on the issue which troubles so many, which is the disappearance or movement of the items on the right part of the blog. At home my laptop and wife’s desktop saw all of the widget items at the top of the page, just as they have always been.
At the office my older desktop saw the widgets moved towards the bottom of the page, and I have to scroll down almost to the bottom of the page to see them. If I don’t figure it out soon I will have to call on my daughter for help. That is, unless some of you kind commenters will take pity on those of us who were educated before Archimedes had a principle and offer detailed advice.
Anthony
It is much, much better for my huge 24 inch monitor.
It is excellent.
Thanks.
Great on mobile (Android).
Anthony
It does not have a link to HOME at the top left conrner of the menu bar.
[Click on “Watts Up With That” at the top of any page to get to the home page. ~ dbs, mod.]
Don’t like it… The serif font is MUCH more difficult to read. If you change your stylesheet to specify Trebuchet MS, I’ve found that one to be very easy on the eyes and very fast to read.
At work, where wordpress images are blocked, it is black text on a gray background, with blue text titles and links. Not fond of that either. If you eliminate the gray edges, that will also go away, I think.
I like the old lighter title text on a black background. The new theme looks less polished. It really is a step backwards.
I liked the old “freshy” theme better. But you could take the elements you like from the new one, and the old one, creating your own new hybrid. I think you can open the two wordpress .xml stylesheets, compare them, and make the old theme do what you want for larger monitors, or create your own. Mine is a 28″, 1920×1200 and I’ve never had an issue (but I zoom mine in so it fills the screen anyway, can you say LARGE TEXT).
If anyone out there hasn’t tried it, press ctrl & roll the wheel on the mouse up and down to zoom almost any application. Nice feature.
Thanks Anthony, no offense, but it could be better.
Add one more vote for a less North Pole at noon white for the background. The extra column width compromises readability for my old eyes. The width in the comments section is about the max that allows me to scan down the midline and grok the full line width without scanning.
Anthony notes: Sadly, no I still can’t offer an edit feature. wordpress.com hosting doesn’t support it.
But the Greasemonkey edit and preview (Firefox) continues to work in this new format for your site. This has all the features one could ask for.