Mike-Ward.Net

Site Redesign

I was getting tired of the old look. Here’s a new look that’s a nod to the Web 2.0 designs of late but without the “beta” emblems and rounded corners. I already get points for a silly name.

What’s interesting about this design is how much it accomplishes with so little.The CSS for the entire site is 40 lines. The banner graphics consist of just two 1K images. The images are thin vertical straight lines that are then repeated horizontally using a CSS repeat element. This makes the site very modem friendly without looking too plain.

I’m also using Bloget in its standard mode without any template customizations. Again, I wanted to see just how far I could push the design using just CSS and standard HTML. I think it came out nicely.

Bloget is coming along nicely. I’ve focused on usability in the upcoming release. Basically, if it annoyed me, I fixed it. I’ve also added some navigation aids in the administration section., started the long process of localization and streamlined the HTML output. There’s even a theme that looks like (cough) one of those other popular blog engines.

Cool finds as of late. Resharper 3.0 is out and there is a free 30 day trail. It’s a great tool that aids in cleaning up and refactoring your code. I get the feeling I’m only using about 10% of its capabilities but even at that it has been very useful.