Oddball Number Six
Posted by Chief Oddball in the evening on May 29th, 2006“V6, come to section J immediately.” Ha — I had to trot out another Doctor Who joke for today’s launch of Oddball Update 6.0, just to pay homage to the version 4 announcement which began similarly. Anyway, welcome to Oddball Number Six, bearing absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to Cylon Number Six, about which some of you may be disappointed. Nevertheless, I have succeeded in what I was trying to do with this design, which was give the site a cleaner, lighter appearance that’s easy to read, classic but with a subtle, modern sophistication. Or, in layman’s terms, made it different because I was sick of how it used to look. Fair enough?
Most of the stuff works as you remember it, it just looks different. I am testing a new method by which the server fetches the remainder of a post only when you click on its “Continue Reading” link; if you have any problems getting the rest of a post to actually appear that way, do let me know. The search field on the sidebar is of the “live” variety, meaning that results will come back in real-time as you type, and you can use your arrow keys to select one quickly. I’ve also brought back the “Who’s Online” feature; I had major problems with that before, but the technology seems to have come a long way. (Nonetheless, I’ll be keeping my eye on it so as to spot any potential bugs!)
I hope you like the new design, and that you find it easy on the eyes. If you have any comments, feel free to post ‘em here, or drop me an email.
Looking nice! The masthead image is very nifty.
Thank you very much! I went through a couple of different masthead image ideas before settling on that one. In the end I wanted it to look like an aged photograph, but sorta newsprint-like at the same time. Photo-realism was too distracting so I went for the high-contrast look, and dulled it even further with the “Note Paper” filter.
I’m still tweaking little things here and there as I get feedback (or change my mind on the fly), but I’m happy to have something new online. I certainly don’t fault you for your recurring wishes to redo your own site, as I seem to experience the same thing! In fact I was thinking of adding something similar to what you have done, and include a screen cap of the various early revisions of this site’s design. Only problem is, I don’t have some of them anymore.
I’d be very interested in a screencap history of your site, that’s for sure. It’d look better than my old stuff, that’s for certain!
As an aside, I can’t wait for the 84th incarnation of Oddball Update so you can make a long-awaited D84 reference. Or perhaps some sort of “Miles Fothergill” reference.
I may try to run with that screencap history idea, actually. I managed to dredge up materials on all but Oddball 1 — which I don’t even remember at all, oddly enough — and although some of them are crummy Photoshop playgrounds, they ought to be good enough with some finessing. Might be a fun exercise.
Ha, that’s a lonnnng time in the future before I can reference D84! Actually, the Miles Fothergill reference will only have to wait ’till the next redesign, since he was the chap who played SV7. I guess that would work if I called it “Super Oddball” or whatever, hee.