Solo Technology

It has been several years since my “main” site and two blogs all had a common look & feel. Far too long, but I’m sure you all know how priorities can vary from year to year. That partially explains why posts have been scarce here the past week. I’m finally working on a redesign.

At the risk of getting in over my head, I’ve opted to change the design to be a fluid layout. I’ll be the first to admit that decision has definitely slowed me down a bit… but I like the idea of things scaling to fit various resolutions and not wasting a lot of space.

I started with a layout found at Layout Gala. I like the source-ordering (having my content show up before the navigation, for instance) and how reasonably easy it is to shift columns around without having to change any of the markup. They have quite a few layouts to pick from as well.

Trick is, a lot of their CSS is pixel based and I’m slowing trying to move things over to em based to try and be a bit more scalable. Well, to clarify, I’m trying to do that for the font size related bits at any rate. This is not something I’ve worried about in the past… but it’s educational and seems like a good idea. If someone needs to resize my page I don’t want it to completely fall apart.

As evidenced from the shot above, I haven’t wandered too far afield for logo and colors — I guess I’m still in love with my “Halloween” colors I’m still tweaking other design elements and hope to have something rolled out within the next week or so. In general, things will be a lot more “back to basics” than the last few designs — hopefully folks will approve.

This will be the first design of my own sites completely done by myself. About time, eh?

Tools In Use

What do you all use when doing design work? I used to use a whole slew of little apps, but I’ve simplified things a bit and am fairly content with how things are working.

• Microsoft Expression Web - My main markup and CSS editing tool.
• Paint.Net - handles all my graphical needs nicely.
• Firebug - The Firefox Add-on to use when tracking down markup or layout issues.
• Web Developer - The other Firefox add-on to use.
• Kuler - a web based color tool that has been quite helpful. (Check the “Create” section to see it in action)

If I’m missing some obvious (free/cheap) tools, let me know!

One Response to “Facelift and Tools”

1. LSU FOOTBALL on December 26th, 2007 6:44 pm
   

   Thanks for the tip on Layout Gala. I’m gonna go check them out. Picking the right layout is so freaking hard 2 do. Yours looks really nice.

   :O)

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