Website overhaul

Regular visitors might have noticed over the last few days that I've been tinkering with this blog and website. At first glance it looks basically the same, but there are some differences.

One of the biggest differences is the text size. In this age of iPads, Kindle Fires, and other tablets, not to mention smart phones, more and more people are browsing on smaller screens. Although the text is often auto-enlarged or zoomed to a readable size, it still messes with layouts and generally looks like a big old mess.

For a while I had a "mobile phone" version that cut out some of the surplus widgets (like the right-hand sidebar) and made the content simpler. But although the content was shared, it still meant two different website templates.

In the end I redesigned the site so that it has a fluid layout with fairly large, nicely readable text. If you minimize your browser window and scrunch it down so it's really, really narrow, you'll see that the site squeezes down accordingly and the content wraps to fit. It should work on most smart phones without any sideways scrolling or special zooming.

See how my ugly mug slides to the left, the text wraps, and the book images shrink to fit.

I've noticed that most blogs these days use large text, perhaps for the reason described above, or perhaps because people are so fast-paced now that they only glance at computers as they're rushing past! Anyway, I too have "gone large" with the text. I've also dropped the right sidebar, which is a nice-to-have on a website but is very rarely included in mobile phone versions. My simple, fluid layout avoids the need to show or hide that sidebar depending on whether it's a computer or handheld device -- which, let me tell you, is a pain to deal with.

The site isn't perfect by any means. I expect to keep tweaking things as I find more bugs and annoyances. Still, it's getting there. There are some snazzy widgets I used to have that I'll miss, but hey, it's a blog. The purpose of a blog is to impart information as easily as possible to the reader.

So what do YOU think? Found any bugs here? Is there anything you like or dislike when viewing this blog on a computers vs. handheld device? Do you even care? :-)