Hicksdesign Redesign

Jon Hicks has implemented a redesign of his blog, powered by Textpattern. I really enjoy his designs and mastery of CSS, and this one is no exception. In brief, the use of white space is wonderful, a nice reprieve from the clutter of many web sites today. The information is still all there but presented in a compact, discrete manner.

He has also chosen to take advantage of a new popular concept floating around called generally IFR, although there are many variants to the latter that allow greater granular control over the details of using flash to produce text in special non-standard fonts like the newer sIFR, now at version 2.0. Authors Shaun Inman and Mike Davidson have provided web developers with an invaluable tool. Read more about its functionality in Introducing sIFR: The Healthy Alternative to Browser Text. I find his sparse use of this nice feature very amenable to a sleek design such as this; too much use of sIFR can lead to slow redraws that the user should not see as on Jeff Croft’s site.

The only qualm I have with his design is the static image of the grass and countryside on the right. It is a wonderful example of the power of CSS, but it clashes with the use of the scroll bar, providing conflicting interface cues to the user. When scrolling, a user expects all the page elements to move in unison, but this image contradicts that notion. Also being so close in proximity to the scroll bar further destroys the scrolling concept. More discrete usage of such static images (as in the background) is far less combative with a user’s expectation of scrolling behavior.

Other than that, however, I find the redesign refreshing and a fine example of the power of CSS. CSS is really coming of age, and I find the abhorrent usage of tables in current design most frightening and maddening, given the apparent power of CSS.