I FINALLY GOT A COUPLE OF HOURS free, enabling me to do something I’ve been itching to try since I first saw the web on a modern mobile device: redesign this website.
First I cranked up the type size. With glorious web fonts and today’s displays, why not?
Then I ditched the sidebar. Multiple columns are so 1990s.
This site has always been about content first. But the layout was a holdover from the days when inverted L shapes dotted the cyber landscape; when men were men, and all websites bragged two columns, laid out with table cells as the Lord intended.
The previous redesign deliberately hearkened back to the old, old days of this site. It was fun (even if I was the only one who got the joke). But my journey down Retro Lane coincided unfortunately with the first big news in web design since the anchor tag (mobile-first, content-first, responsive, etc). Today’s little design exercise here redresses all that.
This is not a finished work. I may make some things squeeze-y that are now rock-hard. I might lock the viewport and play with padding and things. But the site is now much closer to where I’ve wanted it for the past two years.
Page backward, if you wish, to see how it rolls out so far.
Thanks to Tim Murtaugh, who helped me debug more than one maddening straggler.
