I'm testing a new template for Mobile Opportunity. If you'd like to check it out, you can see a prototype version with some dummy content here. You can post feedback as a comment to this message, or post a comment on the prototype blog. Thanks.
If everything works, I'll move to the new format in about a week.
Its nice and clean. Looks like your personal site gave MO some branding lessons :)
ReplyDeleteI'd say go for it.
I like the graphic design a lot. It's dazzling, in fact!
ReplyDeleteI'm not so keen on the font. While serif fonts are more readable on the printed page, they look cluttered to me on the web, especially when they are small. Maybe it's a personal thing but since sans serif fonts were developed specifically for electronic media I'm inclined to think I'm not the only one who has this problem.
FWIW, I found some helpful articles on this by Googling "serif font web readability"
Thanks, guys!
ReplyDelete>>While serif fonts are more readable on the printed page, they look cluttered to me on the web, especially when they are small.
Hmmmmm, one of my pet peeves ;-)
I come from a print background, where serif fonts are definitely believed to be more readable. So I admit that I have a bias.
Times is a horrible font on screen; its x-height (the height of the lower-case letters) is smaller than most other fonts, and therefore far less readable at the same "size." A lot of the online readability studies looked at Times as the serif font, and I agree that it deserves to lose there.
But I'm not really happy with the serif fonts I can easily use in Blogger. To me, they tend to blur together in long paragraphs, and I feel like my eye starts to lose track of the lines. Georgia (the font I'm using) has a nice large x-height I feel like I can track the lines a little better when there are serifs.
But I know sans-serif is much more popular online. One person even told me once that I was hurting my credibility by using serif fonts.
I'll check out those article references, and even though I wrote a lot above, I am actually open to being persuaded on this one. After all, the blog is supposed to be for you folks, not me. So thanks for the suggestion, and I'll consider it seriously.
Anyone else have an opinion?
>>sans serif fonts were developed specifically for electronic media
Nope, they started as headline fonts long before the debut of electronic media. But there have been some nice sans-serif font designs created especially for electronic media, so the spirit of your comment is right.
Okay, the new template is up and appears to be working. Thanks very much for the feedback -- you made some crucial improvements.
ReplyDeleteI think everything is working properly. The only glitch I've spotted so far is that older posts are in the larger text font. I don't think I can fix that without republishing every post, which would be extremely rude to the folks reading this by RSS. So I'll probably just leave it.
Please let me know if you see any other problems.
Hi Michael,
ReplyDeleteI enjoy reading your blog but do not get to the site but every few weeks. I noticed the new form does not offer the date it was posted (just the time at the bottom). I, personally, would like to see the date as well.
Thanks,
Elia Freedman