Joshuaink: The bus full of hippies edition

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The bus full of hippies edition

Sunday March 20, 2005

Okay, after much umming and arrring I have decided to launch the new design, even though the site itself is still undergoing a fair bit of reconstruction and still needs a bit of tweaking.

You may need to empty out your cache, and I know some of you had trouble with Firefox last time, so it will be interesting to see how things pan out this time around.

I have, to be honest, had a mixed response to the flowers and there is no doubting this is broadband material. For these reasons I was close to not using them on this site (though I would have used them for something else I am sure). Anyway, in the end I thought fuck it, let's do it and see what happens.

I have a lot of notes concerning both the re-design and some new Texpattern stuff waiting in the wings, and they will be published over the next few weeks.

For now though, all that remains to be said is a big thank you to Denis for nailing down the brief to perfection (anyone looking for illustration work would do well to consider Mr. Radenkovic). Also thank you to Joen from Noscope for providing valuable feedback, and, of course, what round of thank you's would be complete without a nod to Mr. Hicks!

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

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Joen

1819 days ago

Looks great John. Very lovely.

The green hues fit perfectly with the flowers, and I like that you’ve cut back on amounts of fonts. But you know that :)
Rob Mientjes

1819 days ago

Nice. Glad the flowers returned. And the log of course.
B. Adam

1819 days ago

Wow, looks great John! We’ll miss you in the CSS Reboot but this is certainly worth it.

The blue outline is fantastic—I had to do a little doubletake at first. Great detail.
Schultzy

1819 days ago

Nice I was seeing bits of it come through.

Im still unsure about the flowers.
Could you have a alternate css without the flowers how you had it about a hour back.
AkaXakA

1819 days ago

It really does look fantastic.

I like how it frames the site from the top without becoming top-heavy. Also, the subtle in the comment boxes is a great find.

Can’t wait for your next textpattern articles!
Schultzy

1819 days ago

I must say like the hover logo and the transparencies with flowers make it look better than the first time.

I also loving in the archives the latest articles and sumaries being in there and making the layout less cluttered.

My mum says it looks girly but there is nothing wrong with that.

I am also new to this laptop lark …
sitting on the bog with is it better than a newspaper.
Kev

1819 days ago

Looks great. I was wondering how you were going to balance all the imagery and you’ve achieved it brilliantly. I love how the forms look especially.
Rob

1819 days ago

Looks very nice, are those still guide lines from fireworks at the top :p
Jeff Smith

1819 days ago

The new design looks great John. Excellent attention to detail and great readability.

I’m working on a new design and structure for my site as well, but am really struggling to find the time to sit down and concentrate on it. I hope it comes out half as slick as this one.
Kris Khaira

1819 days ago

Wow.. I like the flowers.

Did Hicks make your logo?
Steve Urmston

1819 days ago

Love the new design, flowers are stunning. I’ve tried myself to make a site that had a ivy header & had to give up totally, so I know how hard it is to get it looking this good.

Great details as well, form element look pretty & I love how the go button appears when you click the search (always the tiniest things eh!)
Rogier

1819 days ago

Looks great. The flowers and colors are absolutely brilliant.
Eric

1819 days ago

I like it alot, great job! I especially like the comment name rollover effect. I wonder how long it will be before everyone does this :P
Peter J.Lambert

1819 days ago

Nice one John. You must spend far too much time thinking.

So many ideas to steal.

But where’s the Cohorts list gone? Where’s the love, Oxton?
Indranil

1819 days ago

There’s flowers in here! Where? Great design, by the way.
Does this mean that you ain’t gonna take part in CSS Rebbot?
Ah! I see them now! Damned connection.
AkaXakA

1819 days ago

How come my gravatar doesn't work though? And John: The images are cached anyway, so the sites fast in loading (on my broadband anyway). PS. The Forget next to the Forget checkbox needs some padding. PPS. That's the only mistake I can find! If that doesn't show the quality of this site, I don't know what does.
AkaXakA

1819 days ago

This mail is directly copied from my gravatar login.

It might be case-sensitive. If so, this should work. (And it does – on the preview at least!)

PS. Nooooo my lovely comment! It’s ruined! Abused! The HORROR!
Tom

1819 days ago

Indeed its bit slow, there also seems to be one of those blue fireworks selections lines.

If you run your site though this beast, http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

It should give you the time for a 56ker, and it doesent look good, perhaps you can do some compression on the images.
Martin W

1819 days ago

Now that is damn nice – and nicely timed for the excellent weather today!

I’m waiting to see if the flowers wilt and die come September….a nice bit of pruning may be in order :O)
fb

1819 days ago

cool. even loads ok on dialup :cry:
not sure about the blue construction lines but eh, cool :)
JD

1819 days ago

One word for you.

Sexy!

JD
Tom Werner

1819 days ago

Sweeeeet. Looks loads better than the three column layout you were rocking a couple weeks ago. I love the transparency, and the blue guide line is kind of cool. It would be even cooler if you could attach it to a :hover on both the column’s divs so that the guide would only be on the one with focus, or default it to be on the main one and switch it to the side salad if your mouse was over that. That would be bitchin’.

The mouseover on the commenters’ names is really a good idea and perfectly executed.

I still like the flower header, and even moreso now that you got the dangly things to extend beyond the main flower area so it fills up the full width of my screen.

Let me know if you still need help getting gravatars to link to the poster’s site. I think there’s even a true plugin for gravatars on TxP RC3, I haven’t yet tested it out and put it up on gravatar.com, maybe you could find it and test it for me?

The submit buttons on the search box and comment form are unstyled for me, I think they would look nice with a little color. The default grey on Windows just doesn’t mesh with the lush feel of the rest of the site.

Oh, and I always think it’s nice when the site author’s comments get a little bit of extra style to distinguish them from the other comments. I find it to be a big usability enhancement. You might think about doing something with that.

Overall fantastic work…a real pleasure to look at and use.
Sembazuru

1818 days ago

Wow.

@Kris Khaira: It’s not Hicks, it’s Radenkovic (who also did the flower illustration.)
Pierce

1818 days ago

I am becoming more tolerant of the flowers.

Actually, I really like the right hand column, and the way the foliage wraps around it.
Denis Radenkovic

1818 days ago

This is absolutely beautiful !!! I LOVE the way it all works so well together.

And, thank you! :)
Andrew Hume

1818 days ago

Yep, still lovinª the flowers: but not the “construction lines” (as they have become known). I keep wanting to click them off.

Good work mate.
Martin

1818 days ago

Dont like it!
Its just not …well… YOU?
....Sorry :(
Yannick L.

1818 days ago

I absolutely love it. Great Job!
Anton

1818 days ago

=snif=

I think meh allergies are kicking up a touch…

=achoo!=

Nice look though. I’m expecially fond of your attention to the form elements.
darren

1818 days ago

teh shit
fucken A, bro! This is an awesome design! :)

i love the mouseover on the logo.
Jon Hicks

1818 days ago

You’ve got it right now – so don’t you dare go changing it gain – y’hear?!

Gotta love it for its sheer brazenness!
daveeee

1818 days ago

Looking good J! In the apple store on Regent St., London, displaying your site to onlookers; aw, the power of code & safari unite!

I especially love the blurred flowers in the content part of the site, very cool . . . :)
Khaled

1818 days ago

Very cool stuff. Nice simple clean.
Michael Bester

1818 days ago

This is absolutely stunning! Fantastic work…
Cowboy Dan

1818 days ago

Isn’t that Modest Mouse’s logo?
matthew

1817 days ago

Truly an excellent header image. More than a header it embraces the elements below it in a very welcome fashion. As an image, it’s stunning.

The layout and composition of the other site elements complement each other very well. Nice work.
Andrew

1817 days ago

You should probably offer an alternative style sheet w/o the backgournd images. It would be uber easy to pull off. Just change three parts of the code.
Gordon

1817 days ago

Other than the blue “construction lines” which I really don’t see a need for and they only serve to drag my eye away from the content…

I’d possibly up the post title font size a notch, as it’s kinda swamped in among all that glorious detail in the graphics.

Other than that (and hey, what do I know!) it’s wonderful, inspiring, bold, and a million other adjectives my brain refuses to dredge up for me.

Bravo to all involved.
Garrett

1817 days ago

Amazing. Period.
Narayan

1817 days ago

Well done, John, not that I had any doubt.

Looking forward to those writeups.
Matthew

1817 days ago

John, lovely design. I love the colors, and I think the way you’ve gone about using the flowers is just lovely. I’m on dial-up and find it all to be perfectly acceptable, by the way. Cheers, and keep up the fantasticness. :)
Marco

1817 days ago

That’s really awesome. What a great looking site. I’ve listed it on my design showcase site. Lovely!
Ed Merritt

1817 days ago

It’s all looking pretty damn gorgeous John. Well done.

Put an ear to the ground and you might be able to hear the sound of a distant round of applause coming from the south.

That would be me, still being impressed.
Hunter Chorey

1817 days ago

Very nice :) I like it a lot.
– h.
Tomas Jogin

1816 days ago

I don’t know how I stumbled in here, but I was just awestruck by the design. Fantastic. I then found this entry and figured that this might be the best place to say so.

Very very nice work. Very original (a good thing), very distinct (also good) while still keeping the familiar blog format (a good thing, imho).

A perfect example of “insanely great” unique design without compromising familiarity and thereby causing confusion.

Fantastic.
Jeff Wheeler

1815 days ago

Well, I’m sorry to report but I’ll never be leaving your site now. I thought The Big Noob was good, but this is indeed, my new favorite website.

I hate/love you. I can’t decide which.
Rob

1815 days ago

Is it just me of are you skipping over the issue of the blue fireworks lines?

Perhaps I’m just going mad :p
Small Paul

1815 days ago

Terrible. Terrible, terrible, terrible. Single worst blog design I’ve ever…

Hah! Not really. It’s charming, gorgeous. Makes me feel like it’s summertime. Complex, but in a very relaxing way.
Ian Lloyd

1814 days ago

That really is a work of art. There’s more love in that bus-load-of-hippies page than I’ve got in my hippie-free bus that really should have more lovin’ in (see avatar for reference!). If I’m not mistaken, that must have taken an insane amount of work.
Mathias Bynens

1813 days ago

Woah! This looks so 60s! Great job, John.

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