Hey folks Harry here - Well, here's stage one of the AICN redesign. Dr. Stephen Falken has simply redesigned all the furniture for AICN. Stage two - will go into the world of what the furniture is made of, creating stain-free furniture and the ability to find the history of all the furniture. You'll find that we kept a certain level of the "Fugly Geek Harry Thing" - But you should find this a tad easier on the eyes. Soon - there will be new sections - fully activated, Talkback Registration will be reinstated and there may even be paragraph breaks, word wrap, active links, pics and more in Talk Back. We're going to be making this baby move faster, do more and still be geeky as hell. I hope you like it. If you have comments about something not working - contact Doc@aintitcool.com and let's hear what you think, as we're working to make this a better pad for all of us (me, you & them)!
Hello,
I'm Doc Falken and am responsible for implementing and helping design this new look. Just want to say hello and that I'm carefully reading through your comments, opinions, and even proposed solutions. Thank you for caring enough to react at all.
With that said, what is with this new design?
That is easier said than explained. The AICN site has a very distinct identity and it was difficult coming up with something 'non-corporate', fun and reflective of Harry's personality. Three elements that simply had to make the new design were:
The Colors -
A couple of browns, some shades of purple and a red/maroon need to be on the new site. For folks that don't know, the color palette was actually inspired by a dream Harry had where he was in a three-way with Daphne and Velma.
The Big-ass fonts -
Harry loves him some big old font sizes. Geek through and through - this new look was definitely comic book panel inspired. It would be awesome if all of the lettering had that panel quality, but the closest I could get was Century Gothic, for now. There is some promise with the sIFR technique, but for webmasters, there simply aren't enough system fonts to work with.
The truly amazing thing was that the scripts that were changed tonight all had timestamps from 1998. This site hadn't been changed in 7 years. While some folks are against change, I think that this first stage has much promise. The good news is that I've engrained myself into the AICN team (yep, got the tattoo and everything), and Harry has a vision for the site that I hope to implement for him. I'm not going anywhere, and this site is only going to get better and be cooler.
So what's next?
Well, for the next week, I'm going to be fixing, tweaking and responding to your comments. Font selection and the story order on the front page seem to be number one with a bullet. These will get addressed soon.
Then, we've got to get the Forums back online. This will be a little tricky because we want you to have one account that will allow you to TalkBack and comment on Forums with ease. So we've got some heavy lifting to do there. Expect the magic by the end of March.
Then we need to get some feeds running for you. RSS and Atom feeds will be popping up in the next couple of weeks. Please keep the comments coming. I'm wearing a cup and am numbed by a bottle of Chardonnay (Cakebread 2003, if you must know).
Update: Internet Explorer users on a Mac seem to get a stretched out front page. Will fix shortly. While you are waiting, why not download the fancy new Firefox browser? (I know, I know. Sorry.)
Update 2: Well, we are now about 18 hours into the life of the new AICN design. I greatly appreciate the comments and the font effects will be lessened later tonight. The front page stories will also be more clearly marked so your eye will know where to go. Solutions are coming for this tonight as well.
Also I'll get the talkback to spread out across the page and get the font to be a little friendlier. And if I have some time we might put in a font size tool (a la the geniuses as ESPN.com) so you can have some choice in the matter.
Thank you to the CSS gurus who emailed me with some great suggestions and strategies. I can't tell you how much I appreciate the positive feedback and help in that regard. Also the kicks in the ass are appreciated so I can continue to work to make sure this layout works.
Update III:A full day in and we've made some slight changes to the front page so that it is more obvious where to go. Yep, I can already hear Jakob Nielsen and Tufte spinning in their graves, but we are working on this to make it better. Also toned down the fonts a bit and removed the Century Gothic for the friendlier faces of Verdana and Trebuchet. This will no doubt stabilize soon, much more to do.
