When you returned from your long holiday weekend (those of you in the US), you may have noticed that your favorite blog (eh..hem) looks a little different. After 375 posts and more than 18 months of solid blogging, Telerik Watch has finally received a much need facelift! The new look is not only more consistent with Telerik's current branding (you've seen our new booth, haven't you?) and "cooler" looking than the old slightly-modified Blogger template, but it is also more functional. With the new template, I will be able to easily draw your attention to featured content on Telerik Watch and the Telerik.com Blogs via my new sidebar "Featured Posts". I've also added direct links to the Telerik Road Maps so you can always check-in with our official Road Maps to see what's coming in our future releases. Finally, the UI of the blog has also been updated for easier reading, with larger post titles, high contrast content text, and a clearly defined post footer area.
I hope you enjoy the new look and find that it improves your experience on the Telerik Watch blog. Content is still king, of course, so I won't waste more posts on the this UX revision. Enjoy the changes and thanks for being loyal readers of this blog!
9 comments:
Love the new look, keep up the great work guys.
The booth looks awesome as well!
I hate the new design. The background gradient makes my eyes hurt. Also the combination of gradient colors - blue, green, purple and black - is obnoxious. I hate to say it but those ugly gradients have become a trend for telerik - the same ugly gradient is present in the Silverlight and WPF examples.
The new look is great Todd.
@Anon- Sorry to hear you hate the new look! I'd suggest that you try subscribing to Telerik Watch via Google Reader or Outlook to avoid the ugly colors that hurt your eyes. Also, try resizing your browser window to about 900 wide- that will hide most of the gradient that is bothering you.
If I could provide alternate themes on Blogger, I would, but for now I'm afraid this is it. Hopefully the workarounds will help.
-Todd
It's good to improve. I love improvements. But frankly this new design is bad for usability. Half of background is black, another half is white. It's so contrasting that my eyes hurt just looking at it. I think you should narrow down the contrast.
@Sopheap- Interesting perspective. The goal, of course, was to make Telerik Watch easier to read by providing high contrast on the readable portions of the blog (ie, black text on white backgrounds or white text on dark backgrounds). Generally speaking, this is a goal for good usability design. I also use the white contrast in the reading area to draw your eye there and away from the potentially distracting design elements on the page.
All of that said, I'm sorry this also hurts your eyes. I'll see what I can do to address the issue...
-Todd
Love the new look. Maybe the comment window that pops open (which is very convenient) can be longer.
todd, i was not talking about background and foreground contrast. Background/foreground contrast helps reader. I was commenting particularly on the backgrounds. Half is white and another half is black--almost black. Contrasting backgrounds is a bad thing.
Here's how you can test it yourself. Create a web page with black background and another page with white background. Open the black one and stare at it for 1 minute, and then open and stare at the white one. The moment you look at the white page, your eyes will be painful. You can replicate this test with just only one page but two columns. Left is white, and the right column is black. It's still painful for the eyes when you switch the columns.
@sohpeap- Fair enough. I'll see what I can do to lessen the contrast between the background and the foreground. Thanks for taking the time to provide your thorough feedback. As always, I appreciate your input and the time you take to read this blog.
-Todd
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