The Big Picture

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About these changes . . .

Tuesday, December 05, 2006 | 11:30 AM

Welcome back!

As you can see, we have made some changes to the joint -- and I'd like to give you a quick run down of what's different.

Size Matters: To begin with, the Big Picture is now, well, much BIGGER. The old layout was a standard Typepad size -- two column, 500 pixels across the main section. It barely took up half of my iMac screen at home, and a third of my dual monitor Dell screens in the office. That older design was popular back in the day when 15 inch monitors ruled the world's desktops. Today, 17 inchers are de riguer, and 19 inch screens are a modest upgrade. So we went BIG. I went with three columns, added some more topics, expanded the center section to 550 pixels, and generally made things sizable. If you cannot see the full page across the width of your screen, its a a cheap wakeup call: Sorry kids, time to upgrade your monitor(s).

Third Column: allowed me to add some new elements and additional content:

-Favorite Posts (primarily the highest read/commented items)
-Blog roll (can you believe I didn't have one?)
-Media Quotes (at the insistence of a friend working in PR)
-Google Search box (more clearly identified with logo)
-Updated media/research sites
-Link to the Premium site (too many emailers couldn't find it)

Navigation: Most people never realized the glyphs up top were navigation links to the main posting categories. Now, they are not only bigger, but change color on mouse rollover -- click one and you can see the full run of published items on those topics. The new category Digital Media will also cover Film, Music, Television, and Technology (they will also retain their individual categories).

Functionality: We added quite a few upgrades to make the site more user friendly. At the end of every post, you will now find all of the usual tags: Digg, del.icio.us, etc. And the two biggest requests from last year -- a "print this post" and an "email this post" should be up and running shortly.

Given all the excerpting I do, I wanted to make it even clearer whenever I am reference someone else's work. Those indents should now stand out even more.

Oh, and a reader created a Favicon in the URL box. (Neat!).

Lastly, mad props to Joelle of Moxie Design Studios. Not only are her design ideas fresh and unique, she did some awesome programming -- from randomizing the media quotes (a different ones show up every refresh) to allt he new functionality. I know she worked long and hard on this, and it is much appreciated. I heartily recommend the services of Moxie.

~~~

Any Blog lives and dies on its content. I do not expect any major changes in postings or content -- just nicer to look at, with bigger charts, easier navigation, more useful functionality.

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» What Else is New? from The Learning Curve
Hoo, and speaking of webpage redesigns, looks like they're not making any more land over on Barry Ritholz's The Big Picture! By that, I mean Barry is using every inch of real estate available in his new 3-column layout... [Read More]

Tracked on Dec 5, 2006 6:32:11 PM