Steve Rydz
Web design and development since 2007
The new look has arrived!
I mentioned sometime last week that I’ve been working on a new look for this site and here it is. OK it’s not 100% finished, there are lots of little tweaks I’m working on behind the scenes and as always it doesn’t play nice with Internet Explorer but that is all to come.
The focus of this site is now totally on the writing. My actual work will be presented on another site I am currently working on. There will be more on that later.
In my previous post I mentioned that I want to emphasise the content with good layout and typography. I’m hoping that I’ve achieved that here. The layout was based on the 960 grid system, like most great sites are these days.
I’ve added a little CSS3 progressive enhancement with @font-face and border-radius so as long as you are viewing this site in a webkit or mozilla based browser you should get the best experience.
In terms of functionality there is nothing special going on, but to be honest I don’t really need anything special to be going on. It’s a blog, the point of this site is my writing and as long as I can do that then everything is fine and dandy.
I am still working on what content to place in the sidebars accross the site, they will eventually show content relevent to the current page but for now they are as they are. I also want to place a little more emphasis on the navigation.
I did toy with the idea of using HTML 5 to mark up this site but I really don’t think the time is right for that just yet. Besides, there are people doing a good job of that already. Maybe next time?
Now I need to focus on bringing you some really great content. I have some ideas for a few articles and I would also like to post a couple of tutorials. You can expect these in the coming weeks.
That’s about all for now. I hope you like the new site…
Walls come tumbling down
This past week has seen two great web conferences. An Event Apart and @Media 2009. There were many great speakers at both these events and I am disappointed that I was unable to attend. Still, theres always next year.
Anyway, one of the speakers was Andy Clarke, who has published not only his slides but also a complete transcript of his talk, Walls come tumbling down over at his blog. Read, learn and enjoy.
Should Microsoft fix Outlook 2010?
The news has broken that Microsoft will be using the Word rendering engine to render emails in Outlook 2010. This has caused quite a disturbance among the design community due to the fact that it will not be capable of supporting current web standards.
There is already a campaign for Microsoft to fix this issue and Web veterans such as Jeffrey Zeldman have written about it also. All in all the majorityof designers and developers are against Miscrosoft going forward with this. I however have mixed feelings.
Ultimately I don’t see it as a major problem and obviously I am also not at all suprised. Microsoft have a reputation for holding back the web. In my experience if someone repeatedly recieves broken emails in their chosen client they assume it is the applications fault. From that point they either put up with it or change their mail application.
There is another side to this though. Jason Cale recently said to me on Twitter;
you’ve obviously never had to do a email comms programme for a multinational then.. Outlook is a way of life
That is of course a very valid point. In pretty much all corporate environments Outlook is a way of life which can’t be altered by anyone other than the dedicated IT department. For anyone who’s responsibility it is to create emails for this purpose, i have to say I don’t envy you at all. I guess I’m lucky that this doesn’t really affect me.
Of course I wish Microsoft would stop doing these things. Finally they have a browser with decent CSS support so why have they made this massive leap in one direction to then go the opposite way with their mail client? One thing is for sure and that is Microsoft will never fail to amaze me.
What’s happened to your site?
It’s OK, there really is no need to worry. I have striped pretty much all the styling from this site as I am working on a redesign. My reason for this is that I am working from the content out in a similar way to the way Jeffrey Zeldman did recently.
My goal here is to figure out exactly what content is necessary on this site as it is mainly a blog, and that is something I really want to focus on, providing good quality content.
I apologise if things are looking a bit broken for you right now but rest assured it won’t be long until things are up and running properly here. I may even post the odd jpg or two to Flickr as I progress.
My aim believe it or not is to simplify the site. I know it’s not exactly the most ostentatious site out there but there isn’t really any focus at the moment.
Any suggestions will of course be welcome but I think I have a pretty clear idea of what I want to do. I want to not only provide great content but also encourage reading with great typography and layout.
Multi-tasking: Designs, Themes and Books.
I refuse to let such a thing as the recession keep me from being busy. It might be harder to find work at the moment but that’s OK, it leaves time for personal projects, and I have a lot of them.
Something I have been meaning to do for a while is completely re-design this site. I have come up with several iterations in private as well as publicly. So far I haven’t been able to achieve the vision in my head. This is the main problem with personal projects, they are never good enough.
As well as that I am working on a Premium Wordpress theme. It will be aimed at photographers but will should be suited to showcasing any kind of work really with a little tweaking. I’m still working on the visuals for it at the moment but I expect to release it some time next month, so keep a look out for that.
As if that isn’t enough for the time being I am also working on a book. Don’t get too excited, it’s not a novel or anything. It’s called So you want to be a Web Designer? and is aimed at those who are looking to learn about web design but have no idea where to start.
Once I finally have those projects completed I plan to start writing an album. Yes that’s right. I occasionally make reference to my past as a wannabe rock star so some of you may be familiar with this. In 2007 I put my solo career on hold whilst I began establishing myself as a web designer.
It was always my goal to release a solo album by the time I was 27, which is next January for those interested. I’m not rushing into this though and there is every possibility that it won’t happen, no matter how much I want it to because I am not going to release something just for the sake of it.
So that is a lot and should pretty much lock up my free time for the rest of this year. Oh, and did I mention I am getting married this year too? On Halloween to be precise. It’s going to be a mad one…
Flickr
© Copyright 2007 - 2009 Steve Rydz. All Rights Reserved.
Powered by Wordpress 2.8 | Back to the top ↑