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!)
Shock to the system.
I’m sure I’ll get use to it after a bit.
Anthony: I like it and as others said, if you like that is what is most important. I for one prefer other fonts on my laptop but on my 30″ Mac it all looks good.
Leif Svalgaard says:
April 27, 2010 at 10:42 am
“E.g. Google’s Chrome, where CTRL+ makes the font bigger, CTRL- makes it smaller.”
Thanks – I use Google Chrome and didnt know that.
Looks good. Now I can read the text without squinting.
I had my font-setting on large for WUWT for so long that I forgot about it! Now I’ve put it back to normal.
So I don’t think that the new font size is too large after all, but it definitely should be darker. #222222 would be dark enough and would still leave the instances of jet-black #000000 text standing out with a little oomph. The image at the top no longer seems so very huge, but ecph’s suggestions should still all be used. You also still might try creating a smaller and lower-KB version of the image – it just doesn’t seem worth it at 75KB. Then you could move the right column up.
I am getting black type on a black background. I can’ read it!!!
REPLY: You are the only one so far, probably your browser/OS settings
I liked the old style with no horizontal scroll bar. Otherwise it seems ok.
Anthony,
I like the wider text format – shows up nicely on my 10″ Dell netbook. At first I found I couldn’t see any of the sidebar, wiget etc, but then scrolled down past the comments and found them nicely on the right hand of my 1024 x 576 display. My big monitor at home shows everything o.k.
Bob Stepehens
No clear delineation of posts on home page — can’t see them at a glance but have to analyze and read the text to figure it all out.
Add some graphic elements to support the delineation visually, don’t just rely on white space and font changes.
Also Google advert on first page is too prominent.
Steven K says:
April 27, 2010 at 12:48 pm
I like the layout, and concur with the others that this is YOUR house and I’m just pleased to be able to come visit. But since you requested feedback, it would help me if the comments carried a sequential number in addition to the date/time stamp (see Jo Nova’s site for one example). Often one commenter will refer to another person’s input and though it is possible to use the date/time stamp to find my way from one comment to another, the number system makes this process much easier.
Note the following feature: The time/date stamp under the name actually is a link that goes to that particular comment, with a unique comment number. When I quoted you, I re-linked the link for your original comment to the time/date stamp. You can use those links to directly refer to a specific comment. Just put the pointer on one, right click, select “copy link location” to get the full URL for the comment.
finally my boss can read WUWT from his cubicle (from my monitor!)
It’s too spread out, and it’s hard to read, and perhaps the grey print is adding to this. I MUCH prefer the old layout. I hope you switch back, or do a compromise between old and new – this is difficult. Maybe black text?
(I have a graphics background.)
I see a drop-shadowed background has appeared. Nice :o)
CSS is neither evil nor wrong, but it is probably a steep learning curve for the novice. Nevertheless, well worth getting your teeth into for an evening to get an understanding of how it does the things it does.
Theme’s fine, but any chance we could get full feeds back via rss rather than their truncated versions?
I like the old one better. The new theme could benefit from at least 1 point smaller font size and less white space.
ecph says:
April 27, 2010 at 12:16 pm
Current layout:
http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/9118/ss20100427211228.png
Sample of suggested layout (made using Firebug):
http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/926/ss20100427211340.png”
Agree with this post, like the suggested header layout.
Did we lose the “Home” button at the top left?
It’s a convenient way to quickly get back to the top of the current day’s items.
Also, minor point, but the Photo at the top looks good, but the blue font with your info comes across looking a bit amateurish.
Overall, it’s a professional look. If you like it Anthony. Great.
Appreciate all the good content.
[Clicking on “Watts Up With That” at the top of any page will get you back to the home page. ~dbs, mod.]
prefer the new layout anthony…
27 April: UK Register: Global warming dirt-carbon peril models are wrong, say boffins
Greenhouse experiments show reduced greenhouse effect
The world may not be doomed after all, according to top American dirt scientists. Soil-dwelling microbes, expected in climate models to go into CO2-spewing “overdrive” as the world warms, refused to do so in experiments.
According to a statement released this week by the US National Science Foundation, which funded the research:
–Conventional scientific wisdom holds that even a few degrees of human-caused climate warming will shift fungi and bacteria that consume soil-based carbon into overdrive, and that their growth will accelerate the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.–
This conventional wisdom now appears to be wrong, as research conducted by University of California ecologist Steve Allison have shown that in fact the carbon-eating microbes’ planet-busting activities are reduced, not increased, by warmth….
Allison cautions that more research is needed, but seems confident that the microbe menace is not as severe as had been thought…
Allison and his colleagues’ research appears online this week in Nature Geoscience
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/27/soil_microbe_peril_no/
I’m neutral-and-moving-towards-positive about the new theme – but encourage the experimenting!
The graphic at the top needs a few Category 5 hurricane whorls.
I don’t like change!
Reasonable grievances: the large, lighter colored text is more difficult to read than the old format. I also liked the narrow column of text.
I’m trying hard to enthuse but I’m afraid I favour content over presentation
Very nice – try using the same Sans font for your “REPLY”, its easier to read in bold caps or just drop the caps.
Text is a bit on the large size imo.
It possible to have an option to switch text size perhaps since this seems to be a point of conflicting opinions? Zooming out on firefox simply shrinks everything which isn’t particularly optimal.
Test