Instead of making new content, I decided to rearrange old content. Spring inspires a change. The last two themes I had used paper texture and grunge style, so decided to go with no texture and minimal decoration. Load time should be a lot better, if my host server is running well.
When I first saw this theme it reminded me a little of Eureka Seven, mainly because of the bold use of arial, but now that I’ve done an awful job of cluttering it up, it looks less so.
This theme looks messed up in IE6. Then again, almost every theme hates IE6. Anyway, to the 6% who still use IE6, sorry about the mess.
Edit: Reverted back to Sketch’d.
Man, F*** IE6!!!
The greyscale of the main page really makes the images POP! Everything looks good in FF3.
That’s exactly what I thought when I went to check it out. I’m guessing most of the people using IE6, got here from Google search. They tend to leave immediately, so I’m not that concerned about fixing it right away.
Oh how I hate having to fix CSS just for IE6. One of the most annoying part being a web developer. Nice looking theme. I still want to get around to changing mine.
I might even not bother fixing it.
I don’t bother either, just like I have left all the 800×600 people by the wayside. 1024 peeps still get my love, since my own netbook only has 1024 res.
It looks nice, but the rustic Haibane style really spoke to me….. oh well.
I get the urge to change themes all the time. The last theme was awesome and had a lot of personality behind it.
Looks very nice!
Out of curiosity, do you have your system loaded with multiple popular web-browsers to check how it renders in them all?
I did a blog redesign and it worked great in all browsers but IE. For some reason, IE blows out my three-column layout if a line in the first column is too long.
Every other browser handles it nicely.
Great work!
I just have firefox and IE. I didn’t really do any testing, so I have no idea how it looks on Chrome, Opera, and the Apple browsers.
Very well typography. I’ll miss your old theme though, it was so… nah, well, you know how I liked it.
No, really, it looks very good. And about IE6 problems, try fixing it with some JavaScript, like this one: http://code.google.com/p/ie7-js/.
To hell with IE. Like Kabitzin observed, the grey boxes seem to pop out. Nice change of theme.
Would’ve been better if it had at least little designs.Though,honestly,I still love your past theme.It gives your blog a lot more life into it.Now,newcomers would be like “bah,just another anime blog” on this coz its too plain.Honestly speaking that is.No offense BTW.
That is a very insightful comment. Something I’ll have to think about over the coming weekend. Liam McKay’s Sketch’d (previous theme) was such a pretty thing, but the load time always bothered me, plus not a week goes by where I don’t look at putting on a new skin…it’s just a compulsion that’s often thwarted by the effort it actually takes to do it.
I must disagree. Very small minority of anime blogs have such clean and professional themes. Typography stands out. It’s in no way like “just another aniblog”. But a coloured mascot girl somewhere on the page would improve the overall impression and the color balance. It’s my opinion.
I was thinking of adding a background element along the top and some sort of border element, but I’ve encountered a problem with the theme. It’s too big for 1024 resolution screens. I could slim the DOM tab box and get rid of a sidebar to shave it down, but I don’t know how much of a headache that is going to be. 22% who visit are 1024 res. Didn’t even think to check it.
It does looks a little plain or “normal” but i still like it , looks really clear and white makes it easy to read .
And it works great in Chrome ^^
But yeah , i will miss your old theme , was awesome
I’ve always been a fan of minimal, white-grey themes (though it’s not quite evident on my own blog) so I can’t help but love this.
You kind of get bored of Arial after some time though >_>
Looks good, I like it, and I’m not usually a minimalist kinda fan. Change and variety is always good.
Woah this is quite a change to the old theme!
I agree with nagishrine that the simplicity of the whole theme makes it look more like “just another animeblog”.Theres nothing defining that sticks to you mind about the design.
I never had any loading speed problem s with any of your themes
This is quite the change!!!
When viewing your old theme, I never had any problem with it…but I use Firefox instead of IE.
I do like this theme though. Clean and neat!!!!!
Real nice!!!
I like it!
a Clean cut,great contrast between the “pretty anime things” and the background
The old one however was kinda unique but this one is more in the crowd,oh well no segregation ^^
Spring is a time of birth ;D
I agree, it really does look a lot like the Eureka Seven eyecatches. I liked how detailed the last theme was, but this one looks nice and clean. Good job!
Also, no need to apologize to the folks still using IE6. They need to update anyway.
Lovely new theme. I like the main control center. Very neat and well structured.
I was in the process in changing my current theme but it turned out very clustered in all browsers so I stuck with it for another period of time and made a few updates with it.
I like minimal themes. When I look a Zen theme and is hardly minimal, I kind of dont like it. And I agree with you. The fonts resembles the Ray-Out font type. ^^
At first sight, the new theme didn’t look too nice on my work resolution of 1024, however, I had to remote desktop to my home computer to see the new theme in a “proper” fashion at 1920. Looks good! It’s simple and flows well.
Yeah, my monitor at home is 1920 and it looks great on that, which is what prompted me to make the switch. The smaller the res the worse it looks though. Anything less than 1280 and it doesn’t flow well at all. I wonder how difficult it would be to make a different layout for 1024 browsers and have it auto-detect that?
I haven’t tried it, but it seems you can have a near-duplicate CSS file for smaller resolutions. However, it does not look that easy. It seems like what you really want to do is detect browser window size.
Thanks for the link. If I’m bored/bothered enough by it, I’ll wind up doing it.
Why did you change it back
?
I saw a significant drop in the length of time people stayed on the blog and the number of posts they’d read when I didn’t have anything new. I think the Sketch’d (with Rakka) theme hides the fact I don’t update that often. With Typograph (minimalist white theme), people would click, see there wasn’t an update and then go away. The lack of fluff emphasized the content and without new content, people just left instead of feeling compelled to check out what else they may not have read. With Sketch’d, the difference in average page views per visitor didn’t change much on days with new posts vs. when I didn’t post for a week. There are always 2x more visitors on days with new posts, but the fact that there was a huge drop-off in average views on Typograph vs. Sketched on non-post days leads me to realize I don’t generate enough content to use a design that emphasizes content via minimizing the trim.
Also, I was looking at the people with 1024 wide screen resolutions (22% of the visitors) and the slightly too big design of Typograph really turned them away from the blog — their average page views were much lower than the average. I think Typograph at 1280 and up was a more functional theme on the right browser and resolution, than Sketch’d, which was a reason for trying a new theme. Building a theme for 1280 resolutions and up is a little premature…perhaps by 2010 as older systems get phased out, Typograph wouldn’t turn off such a high percentage of visitors.
This is a temporary reversion back to Sketch’d. I might have to just break down and learn how to code my own theme since I waste way too much time looking for something close to what I want.
Well I use your RSS feed, so that’s how I find your new content. I do like the Rakka theme better though, it’s just more aesthetically pleasing. Of course, Rakka is my favorite character from one of my favorite anime, and is one of three anime figures I’ve actually bought (I don’t buy figures much).
wow, nice blog