You’ll notice that MR has a new, cleaner design (if you’re still getting the old orange-yellow elements hit F5 – the new corners aren’t loading automatically for some people). Readers were never entirely comfortable with the previous build: a few minutes after it went up one of the more prominent JBloggers kicked over an email acknowledging the new design but questioning marginal decisions like the color scheme, the type face, and the banner. Subsequent emails from readers included phrases like “I can’t read anything,” “clever in 1999,” “are you colorblind,” and “worst ever.” Really. Last week the good folks at Doc Weasel (very strong NSFW content warning, especially for anyone born before Carter lost Iran to political Islam) sent me over one of the kindest critical emails I’ve ever received about anything. It included a half-dozen quick fixes plus a brand new stylesheet and banner. When people are taking the time to redesign MR just to make it less painful for them to read it’s probably time for a new design.
Things that have changed, almost all at the suggestion of the Doc Weasel folks:
(1) All the yellow-orange elements are gone
(2) The link colors are different
(3) The rollover effects on links have been removed (this was a popular reader request that I’ve held off on fulfilling – those lines were near and dear to my heart)
(4) The font is different
(5) The thick black border is gone
(6) There are no more dotted lines around the navigation bar at the top on individual posts
The banner is also obviously different. This is actually not the Doc Weasel suggested banner and normally I’d post a link to the designer. But I insisted on a couple of final details that she described as “appropriate only for the time before web designers knew how to make things not ugly” so she’s declining credit. I also took the liberty of making some changes to the Doc Weasel-suggested stylesheet so if there’s something that looks out of place it’s probably not their fault. You should definitely check out their page, albeit taking into account a strong content warning on account of their Internet-appropriate – but potentially gender and age inappropriate – forums.
References:
* Doc Weasel
Previously:
* Where In The World Is MR? (Athens To Tokyo Travel Day)
* MR Interviewed By Jewish Journal’s God Blog
* MR Joins The Watcher’s Council
