So its finally arrived after much gnashing of keys and indecision. The new site has really been written for two main reasons, firstly because the old one had just become so difficult to maintain and secondly to provide a better resource for users in addition to just downloading stacks.

Disclaimer

I am no designer, in fact it is worse than that; I have absolutely zero artistic or creative ability, I am a numbers man much preferring to get lost in the beauty of an elegant equation than the world of colour or self expression. If your websites look like a bag of nails  STOP and do it again, do not settle for second best, mediocrity is worse than death.

This is far from saying that I think this is perfect, nothing is, and I'm sure many people will hate it, thats fine but at least I did it by analysis and not my own personal taste. If the experience is good for users then its job done.

Because of my lack of ability, design takes me a long time and a lot of iterations. Contrast this with almost everything else in my life which I can do in an instant, certainly science, technology and business. What this tells me is that no way on earth should I be a designer, I would starve to death with so little income. Conversely, I watch in amazement at the short amount of time that it takes talented people to come up with an innovative and unique design. There are some very talented people who use RapidWeaver, learn from them and the things they do.

People who write code are not superior, quite the opposite in many cases. Don't be intimidated by the fact that you are not technical your creative skills are what you should exploit and be proud of if thats your thing.

Menus and stuff

All that preaching and I still can't stop myself from a little (or a lot) of experimentation. We all know that navigation is one of the two keys to a successful user interaction. The other is of course typography aka readability. Without these two elements, people will neither be able to find the information they want nor will they absorb it if they actually get there.

Dropdown menus are the surge of the earth. Time and time again, studies have shown that they are ineffective and confusing for users. Simple top level links that  describe perfectly what you will find (i.e.  not generic)  are key to users quickly navigating a site and so their retention. Back to the indulgence - I just couldn't resist a pretty push menu as well but remember it is not key to navigation. It provides extra functionality (primarily the quick links to individual stacks)..

The other menu like element of great importance is the stack finder on the Stacks page. The previous site came in for quite a bit of criticism that people did not know what the stack did without visiting the product page. The stacks finder now has a short description of each stack when you hover over it. This is of course in addition to the existing filter and search facilities. 

Then we come to the menu on the blog posts page - this page if you are reading it via the link from the blog page and not in a lightbox. This menu is actually in two parts with a conventional bar at the top but also a slide up bottom bar with links to comments and social shares. Both the top and bottom menus slide out of view as you scroll clearing the page to allow focus on the text. Now, the text, we've hit my pet subject.....

Typography

The typography on this blog page is very different to the rest of the site. The blog posts have a very different requirement than other pages in that they contain a lot of prose and must be readable. I probably spent more time deciding on the font that you are reading and fine tuning it than any other aspect of the site.

Whilst we are on the subject, remember that many of your readers will be over 40 and STOP using ridiculously small text sizes just because you have and iMac with a fantastic screen. Most people do not and many have less than ideal vision. A site that is a struggle to read will loose engagement faster than you would believe. You may think that it is vital information but if people are struggling to read it then they won't. They will just give up as I'm sure many of you have done so far already. Hopefully that is because I am interminably boring though and not through poor typography.