Updating

2008 Sep 11
Comments 26
Published In Books, Site
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Rather than posting something new this week, I’ve decided to step back and clean up a few of the darker corners of the site.

Since this new direction is focused on the relationship between visuals and content, I’ve started including big thumbnails of each entry on the archive pages to give people a different way to browse through articles.

Articles now have individual comment RSS feeds so you can follow along with a discussion. These feeds, and comment posting, remain active for a month. You can find the RSS link at the top right of the comment block. Additionally, I’ve included a hide/show box of quick tips for Textile syntax above the comment field.

Lastly, I’ve beefed up the Recommended Reading section by giving each book its own page (like so). I’m planning on dumping a slew of new recommended books in there very soon. Now back to your regularly scheduled broadcast.

26 Comments

Permalink for this comment Richard Medek says: September 11, 2008

These updates are great. I’m as much of a sucker for tinkering with a personal website as the next guy, but this latest redesign, and the entire experience of browsing your corner of the web, has taken it to a whole new level. It’s a fresh perspective, extremely effective, and very inspiring. Thanks, Jason.
Permalink for this comment Steven Southard says: September 11, 2008

You’ve been generating lots of code and creating big architectural changes to handle this new direction. I’d image that you were either highly organized or highly unorganized on the back-end to support all of this. Thanks for giving us an update because around Sunday if figured you would be working on something new.

I’ll check out the new books. Maybe you can add a rating system too, like star or something. I think that would be especially useful on recommends like Grid Systems
Permalink for this comment Jason Santa Maria says: September 11, 2008

@ Steven Southard : I am actually very organized :) But, the parts of the site that I’m really shaking up couldn’t be much more low-fi.
Permalink for this comment Jin says: September 11, 2008

I like the idea of each entry set its own mood. I try to do this on my site as well, except for only swapping backgrounds and header color using wp custom fields, not the layout.

One thing I’ve noticed about your new site is, it loads very slow. I checked it from home and work, same results. Any reason why?
Permalink for this comment Jason Santa Maria says: September 11, 2008

@ Jin : Could be any number of things. Sometimes my server is slow, sometimes I use pretty large jpegs, and sometimes it just lags a bit from the various CSS and JS calls. I’m OK with the speed hit though, most of what’s happening here is a work in progress.
Permalink for this comment Daniel Carvalho says: September 11, 2008

Hey Jason, just checking if this comment goes through.

Sorry for the long delay in this test, but since my move, I have not been connected to the modern internet world for some time now. Finally a has the interwebs.
Permalink for this comment Andrey Smagin says: September 11, 2008

I really enjoy these changes. It feels more like a print magazine, if you can say that. There is a trend lately for web-pages to exist out of site context. May be it is because of the search engines. But anyway I like the feeling that each page feels like it has been crafted instead of thrown together really quick with the use of some template.
Not sure though about your decision to stop accepting comments after a month. Unless you discuss some topic that is really date related, there is going to be interest in discussion for years. There is gotta be a way to let people contribute.
Permalink for this comment Jason Santa Maria says: September 11, 2008

@ Andrey Smagin

Not sure though about your decision to stop accepting comments after a month. Unless you discuss some topic that is really date related, there is going to be interest in discussion for years. There is gotta be a way to let people contribute.

True, there may interest in a topic, but in my experience on this site, people rarely comment on stuff older than a month, and if they do comment, no one else is usually around to respond. After a month’s time, the conversation is usually pretty dead. I would rather just shut it off and leave it be what it is at that point. If someone wants to continue the conversation, they can start a new thread on their own site.
Permalink for this comment Shane says: September 11, 2008

I like the nice aditions, especially the archive with screenshots included, that is a GREAT touch.

I did find it rather odd that you didn’t have ONE book about web design, CSS, or anything, not even your boy Zeldman got a shot out?

Other than that oddity (at least for me) I really enjoy the organization of both sections.
Permalink for this comment Jonathan says: September 12, 2008

First off, I think this site is beautifully crafted, and is an inspiration.

From a usability perspective—on the recommended reading page—I expected the “More Info →” link to take me to the internal page as you described above, rather than to Amazon.com. I know the title above the thumbnail links to the internal page, but perhaps you could change the link(s) underneath the thumbnail as follows:

More Info →
Amazon.com →

whereby the top link takes the user to the internal page, and the bottom one obviously takes the user to Amazon?
Permalink for this comment krasi says: September 12, 2008

Hi Jason,
The latest update as well as the new version of this site is just awesome! I love it! That screenshot idea is great too. Are you making the screenshots of every article manually or you have an automatic way to do that(a script or something)? Just curious…
Cheers!
Permalink for this comment lewro says: September 12, 2008

I had in my mind the same question as krasi. The idea with screenshots pre post in the archive is great and is implemented absolutely superb way. The layout, typography…Love it. I guess you make the screenshots manually or?
Permalink for this comment Jonathan says: September 12, 2008

An additional suggestion would be the ability—as on many other blogs—to ‘subscribe’ to the comment feed, so that I can opt to get an email everytime someone adds a comment to a post that I’ve previously commented on.
Permalink for this comment Jason Santa Maria says: September 12, 2008

@ Shane :

I did find it rather odd that you didn’t have ONE book about web design, CSS, or anything, not even your boy Zeldman got a shot out?

I actually don’t read many web design books. There are of course lots of great web design books out there, but I’m much more interested in other topics, and the reason I started the Reading section long ago was because people were always emailing me asking for design book recommendations :)

@ Jonathan : Yup, you’re right about the Amazon links, I’ve updated them.

@ krasi and lewro : I don’t publish too often, so it’s a quick process for me to take the screenshots with Paparazzi and quickly save out a jpg.
Permalink for this comment Jonathan says: September 12, 2008

Ah, I see you’ve updated it on the individual book pages—I was actually talking about the main list of Recommended Reading displaying all the books, ie, at http://jasonsantamaria.com/reading/ , where the “More Info →” link under each of the book descriptions still misleadingly takes you to Amazon.com, rather than the internal page. I think it would work well to have both the “More Info” (to the internal page) link and the “Amazon.com” link displayed one above the other on the main list at http://jasonsantamaria.com/reading/ …
Permalink for this comment Jason Santa Maria says: September 12, 2008

@ Jonathan : Ah, I see the problem. I updated my templates, but those pages had caching turned on in EE. The updates are in now. I’m actually fine with keeping just the Amazon link at the bottom. I expose the full review on each page, and the title and book cover link to the individual pages already. Thanks for the heads up!
Permalink for this comment Josh Stodola says: September 12, 2008

The darkest corner of this site is the obsessive use of sIFR. It makes the pages slow to respond and each siFR element flickers. It’s damn annoying. And for what…?
Permalink for this comment Jason Santa Maria says: September 12, 2008

@ Josh Stodola :

And for what…?

Specifically to annoy you. ;)
Permalink for this comment Daniel Carvalho says: September 12, 2008

Nice work on the website Jason. I appreciate and really like the thumbnail previews of each post, especially since it’s so practical considering the direction you are taking with your blog.

I can’t say I find it hard to believe, but am somewhat supprised at how much scutiny your website receives. Personally I think sIFR is great and I get no flickering.

I always find it amusing when one can pick up a designers nuances and traits in design that seem to permeate through their work. Although you have a few, the one that sticks out the most for me is your affinity with the colour #cc3300 and the use of Georgia. I think you should trademark the color #cc3300 ;)

Bare in mind this isn’t a criticism, I just find these things interesting.
Permalink for this comment Jason Santa Maria says: September 12, 2008

@ Daniel Carvalho :

I can’t say I find it hard to believe, but am somewhat supprised at how much scutiny your website receives. Personally I think sIFR is great and I get no flickering.

Eh, it’s going to be different for everyone because Flash and the way browsers support the hackiness of sIFR are going to be a bit unpredictable. With that said, this is my site and I’m OK with it not working for everyone. Half of what I’m doing here is play and experiment, so sometimes, stuff just isn’t going to work across the board.

Although you have a few, the one that sticks out the most for me is your affinity with the colour #cc3300 and the use of Georgia. I think you should trademark the color #cc3300 ;)

Georgia makes sense, it’s one of the only web fonts that both looks good, and can stand up to larger sizes. As for the #cc3300… yeah, oranges are one of my crutches sometimes. You should of been around when I used to make everything green :)
Permalink for this comment Jonathan says: September 12, 2008

Roll on web fonts — http://alistapart.com/articles/cssatten

Wrt to the sIFR use—I don’t suffer any intolerable delays or rendering difficulties myself, but for the few places you use sIFR display (in static headings), could you not create a PNG for each of these and remove the sIFR code, thereby achieving an identical look, but without the additional JavaScript? It is your site, but I would have thought if there’s a different solution that achieves the same effect in a more accessible way, then that makes sense?
Permalink for this comment Joe Clay says: September 15, 2008

Keep up the freaking sweet work. I love it all so far. You’ve given me a lot to think about as I attempt to find the time to redesign my site while I have a huge video event to make an animation for looming on the horizon.
Permalink for this comment Jason Jones says: September 16, 2008

Wow, great work! I just came across your polaroid post and loved the design work you did on it. I love the whole editorial style of the whole site! Nice addition with the updates too.
Permalink for this comment Brian Christensen says: September 17, 2008

This is really nice. What a refreshing way to present blog content. It doesn’t even feel like a blog at all. And using thumbnails for the archives is like icing on the cake. Keep up the outstanding work. I’m definitely looking forward to your future articles.
Permalink for this comment Aleksander says: September 18, 2008

Nice website Jason. Good to see hard work on details. Keep it up!

May I ask about the “recommended reading” thing? I was looking for similar widget for my WP blog but couldn’t find any. Could you recommend anything that would work similarly and display a random thumbnail from a collection?
Permalink for this comment Jason Santa Maria says: September 18, 2008

@ Aleksander : I’m sure WP probably has some sort of plugin that can make this happen. I just update my manually in EE.