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Big Picture Redesign, part I

The long awaited redesign rolls out this week. I wanted to walk you though the changes we made in the site -- why I did this, the added functionality, and how its going to look.

First, some history. TBP has gone through a few site designs, from basic, to a bit more complex. Via the Wayback Machine, we can see these:

click for bigger screen shot

August 2003

Two years later, that design had bored me to tears, and I worked with Moxie to come up with this design:

May 2005

18 months later, we went a little more colorful:

December 2006

I've reached the point where its too colorful, two busy, too overwhelming. Simpler is better, and tomorrow, I'll show you some of the design ideas we kicked around.

The new site is much cleaner and lighter than the current one -- 2 columns, very unbusy sidebars. Except for a light flash intro, its very simple and clean.

And, it loads much, much faster than this current design.

A few structural changes: I went with a tabbed format -- there are 6 of them, with the first tab the main part of the blog, focusing on economic and market issues. The other tabs allow me to segregate other material from different authors, books, videos, etc.  Those of you who don't want to see the videos, music, or non market related stuff won't have to look at 'em.

The biggest changes are the functional improvements: "Email this" page allows a simple email forwarding. The print function was the single most requested upgrade. We did a kick ass job -- see this post, Analysts Forecasts Remain Too High -- Then look at this: Graphic Print_blog.PNG -- pretty slick !

I am pretty jazzed -- the new features and the entire design is way cool.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008 | 08:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (33) | TrackBack (0)
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Comments

Since I'm first I think I'll say, after complimenting Barry on the progress he's making on the blog, that although my eyesight is good, I suspect some older and, possibly, wiser commenters are missing out on regailing us with their views, due to the code word required being difficult to read.

I won't propose a solution since I know it's part of the difficulty with a site like this to filter who can place comments.

Also earlier I stated that it would be awesome to have follow up comments emailed to you so you can engage in more intense debate.

Somehow I signed up for this at Naked Capitalism, its pretty cool. My gmail account somehow aggregates the replies so my mail box doesn't appear filled up with a single thread.

Posted by: Simon | Oct 22, 2008 8:41:19 PM