Site Version 4.0 (2006)

Information

You've probably noticed some changes to the main index of the site. Today marks the first significant redesign of this site since August 2002 (see notes on that redesign and also the brief design history). There have been various minor tweaks to the design over the past four years, but nothing with a magnitude that could be called a "redesign." I'm actually sort of amazed the design lasted as long as it did. Four years is an eternity on the web.

The new design changes only affect the main index (aka "home page"). After some consideration, I've elected to go with a wider format, opening the main index up from 750 pixels to 930 pixels in width. This wider format has become commonplace among web sites over the past year, and continues to grow in popularity. As 1280x1024 and 1024x768 monitor resolutions (not to mention various widescreen dimensions) become the norm, and 800x600 goes the way of the dinosaur, I decided now was as good a time as any to make the leap.

Most notable changes include:

1. The series menus have been condensed such that they are no longer really "menus" at all. Clicking a series logo will take you to Season 1 of that series. Since the season menus now appear at the tops of all the individual season pages, there's no need to have the season menus on the main index page. To accommodate the wider format, the series logo/link boxes have been arranged in two columns instead of stacked one upon another. In a very superficial way, this is a throwback to the pre-2002 design.
2. The ad at the top is now a 728x90 leaderboard instead of a 468x60 banner. The Google ads have been moved up there from the right-side rail.
3. That thick, annoying blue bar (separating the main logo from the content area of the page) has been removed. This was a pointless waste of space that has long annoyed me. It's now gone.

Even with the changes, more has remained unchanged. The overall look and feel is fundamentally the same, and has simply been revamped for the wider format and streamlined a bit. The content of the page is virtually unchanged. The one exception is that I've nixed the "Featured Links" from the site. Many of those standby sites that I've linked to over the years are no longer updated, so I'm calling it a day and getting out of the linking business completely (which was always very limited regardless).

All interior pages remain unchanged. They have been and continue to be about the text. Since the interior pages automatically size to fit the browser window, there was no need to change them to fit a different width format. Perhaps in the future I'll consider a more comprehensive site overhaul, but I don't see that in the foreseeable future. The current design continues to get the job done.

I hope you like the changes. If not ... well, too bad. You'll just have to get used to it. How's that for customer service?

◄ Design History