It’s funny, I totally missed the Windows Vista blog’s new design cause I read all about it in Google Reader and on TechMeme. I posted several items about it to my Link Blog.
But, I clicked off of the RSS feed to check out the new design. It looks great but what a bad reading experience! You have to click each item to read the full item and wait for it to load.
Sigh. And people wonder why I have an ugly design. Here’s a hint: I don’t care about pretty pictures. I care about my readers and whether or not they can read my content without waiting and without clicking.
Oh well, back to my RSS feeds.
Scobleizer 
I will take readability over pretty anytime.
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I will take readability over pretty anytime.
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If you go straight to http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/default.aspx then you can read each entry fully without clicking through. Obviously it is better to have this on the front page, but you *can* do it.
If you click Blog you go back to the “bad” view, but the above URL is the one I have in my bookmarks so I didn’t notice the problem.
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If you go straight to http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/default.aspx then you can read each entry fully without clicking through. Obviously it is better to have this on the front page, but you *can* do it.
If you click Blog you go back to the “bad” view, but the above URL is the one I have in my bookmarks so I didn’t notice the problem.
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Aydon is correct.
But you can only get to that link by clicking a blog entry, where the link shows up as “Windows Vista Team Blog” (or whatever).
All Microsoft needs to do is put that link on the main blog page, call it “Show Full Articles” (or whatever), and it would be perfect. You’d have both “pretty” and “function”.
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Aydon is correct.
But you can only get to that link by clicking a blog entry, where the link shows up as “Windows Vista Team Blog” (or whatever).
All Microsoft needs to do is put that link on the main blog page, call it “Show Full Articles” (or whatever), and it would be perfect. You’d have both “pretty” and “function”.
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Use IE7. 🙂
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Use IE7. 🙂
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Ask the MS Future Team to develop a text input that checks the background and auto adjusts an opaque backing for the text which is a few shade darker than the picture inserted behind the text. Now that would be a cool feature that would improve readability.
Love the outdoor shots. It has the ooooooooooh factor.
Threadless T-Shirts is also funny. LOL ; )
Soon. Still learning from the best baselines.
Sponsorship will be PETTS (People for the Ethical Treatment of Typing Skills)and Soft-Micros
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Ask the MS Future Team to develop a text input that checks the background and auto adjusts an opaque backing for the text which is a few shade darker than the picture inserted behind the text. Now that would be a cool feature that would improve readability.
Love the outdoor shots. It has the ooooooooooh factor.
Threadless T-Shirts is also funny. LOL ; )
Soon. Still learning from the best baselines.
Sponsorship will be PETTS (People for the Ethical Treatment of Typing Skills)and Soft-Micros
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I totally agree.
However, the design of your site does little to help people easily digest its content either. I find the layout of your page to be ‘noisy’, with the different elements often blending together. Your sidebar would be a prime example.
There’s a middle ground between functionality and pretty pictures. Neither your blog nor Vista’s manages to hit it.
$0.02.
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I totally agree.
However, the design of your site does little to help people easily digest its content either. I find the layout of your page to be ‘noisy’, with the different elements often blending together. Your sidebar would be a prime example.
There’s a middle ground between functionality and pretty pictures. Neither your blog nor Vista’s manages to hit it.
$0.02.
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WOW that was a fast change. What I had envisioned was an opaque backing the height of the text with no shading between the lines. I still wanted to see the cool photo backing.
A slow zoom-in for the background photo would make you feel like you were in a canoe just before getting slammed with the text data. You could even hide things in the photo for people “in the know” to look for on your site as a cool factor. How about a sloooow fade in for the text blocks? Good feelings, the smell of Grandma’s cookies, time on the river etc.
Just a thought, a free one. Very fast changes from the Vista Team (Kudo’s).
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WOW that was a fast change. What I had envisioned was an opaque backing the height of the text with no shading between the lines. I still wanted to see the cool photo backing.
A slow zoom-in for the background photo would make you feel like you were in a canoe just before getting slammed with the text data. You could even hide things in the photo for people “in the know” to look for on your site as a cool factor. How about a sloooow fade in for the text blocks? Good feelings, the smell of Grandma’s cookies, time on the river etc.
Just a thought, a free one. Very fast changes from the Vista Team (Kudo’s).
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I have the blog on my aggregator, but I just thought is was lame to say they’re going to do a better job (so 2005?)
It will be just sooo much more convincing to just put the good/great content up and then fiddle with the format. But, the great machine has gone back to Dot Bubble Marketing 101, dress up the packaging and then hope the content delivers.
The Team Blog is a great resource, of humans, and hopefully they can deliver more useful content to help us in the envy for the Vista RTM install.
Sam T.
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I have the blog on my aggregator, but I just thought is was lame to say they’re going to do a better job (so 2005?)
It will be just sooo much more convincing to just put the good/great content up and then fiddle with the format. But, the great machine has gone back to Dot Bubble Marketing 101, dress up the packaging and then hope the content delivers.
The Team Blog is a great resource, of humans, and hopefully they can deliver more useful content to help us in the envy for the Vista RTM install.
Sam T.
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They may want to hire a designer who actually knows something about web design and use a header image that scales properly. How embarrassing for a company of that size and stature…
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They may want to hire a designer who actually knows something about web design and use a header image that scales properly. How embarrassing for a company of that size and stature…
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RSS aggregators may accelerate the death of design of the internet.
Good design is crucial for a good website experience but this along with nauseating flash intros will make the internet to a clumsy medium.
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RSS aggregators may accelerate the death of design of the internet.
Good design is crucial for a good website experience but this along with nauseating flash intros will make the internet to a clumsy medium.
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Am I the only one who thinks it looks like a bad MySpace page? I dunno, maybe I should use a different browser than FF 1.5 on Linux.
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Am I the only one who thinks it looks like a bad MySpace page? I dunno, maybe I should use a different browser than FF 1.5 on Linux.
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Hmm Its nothing like a bad my space page (though thats some what of an oxymoron)
Vista Blog It’s ok nothing truly aufull – In away this blogs us of serife font is worse.
Funny you say “I don’t care about pretty pictures” ins’t that a contradiction for somone working in a visual medium?
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Hmm Its nothing like a bad my space page (though thats some what of an oxymoron)
Vista Blog It’s ok nothing truly aufull – In away this blogs us of serife font is worse.
Funny you say “I don’t care about pretty pictures” ins’t that a contradiction for somone working in a visual medium?
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This means you’ve not been to http://www.shellrevealed.com where the front page is full of partial articles, clicking on the title takes you to a page where it’s still only the partial article (nothing extra on this page, just stuff missing from the front page) and then finally there’s a link to where-ever the actual article is.
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This means you’ve not been to http://www.shellrevealed.com where the front page is full of partial articles, clicking on the title takes you to a page where it’s still only the partial article (nothing extra on this page, just stuff missing from the front page) and then finally there’s a link to where-ever the actual article is.
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@15: Thanks for posting that link.
Funny. I went to it and clicked on the barcode article. At http://barcode.ideas.live.com (one of the article links), they have this verbatim sentence fragment: “Here to know how Windows Live Barcode transfers plain text to a handset” and also a form without an input button.
Makes me wonder how much else is wrong with that site.
J-Man
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@15: Thanks for posting that link.
Funny. I went to it and clicked on the barcode article. At http://barcode.ideas.live.com (one of the article links), they have this verbatim sentence fragment: “Here to know how Windows Live Barcode transfers plain text to a handset” and also a form without an input button.
Makes me wonder how much else is wrong with that site.
J-Man
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Speaking of out there blogs. http://www.clarification.com is really out there in cyberspace man! and I mean literally. I like episode two and the Vistarize us all experience – are we all trying to do ‘too’ much and missing out on what’s important in life..? I mean the Earth is slowly tearing itself apart and here we are dicussing the semantics of the blogosphere 🙂
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Speaking of out there blogs. http://www.clarification.com is really out there in cyberspace man! and I mean literally. I like episode two and the Vistarize us all experience – are we all trying to do ‘too’ much and missing out on what’s important in life..? I mean the Earth is slowly tearing itself apart and here we are dicussing the semantics of the blogosphere 🙂
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That should be http://www.clearification.com for sopme clarification 🙂 Arf
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That should be http://www.clearification.com for sopme clarification 🙂 Arf
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Maurice: I don’t use ANY font here. I just use the one that you’ve set in your own browser as default. So, go ahead and change your browser’s default font if you don’t like Times Roman.
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Maurice: I don’t use ANY font here. I just use the one that you’ve set in your own browser as default. So, go ahead and change your browser’s default font if you don’t like Times Roman.
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If the Republicans will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.–Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965), U.S. politician
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If the Republicans will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.–Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965), U.S. politician
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