After some time away from the computer enjoying the summer, I’ve been spending some more time in dark rooms (!) working on the Timeline project. There have been far more developments and changes in the last couple of months than could be discussed in a single post, and thus I’ll begin with the most visible: the latest changes to the homepage.
You may recall that this is where we left off:
This version of the homepage was a great improvement on the initial rendering, in terms of appearance and usability. The chief remaining flaw was that it didn’t permit a simple method of navigation; the three links at the bottom of the page did their job satisfactorily but left no room for expansion. Knowing from experience that confusing and illogical navigation structures are one of the principal turn-offs when visiting a web page for the first time, I also knew that this alone necessitated a rethink of some elements of the homepage. I was looking for some kind of navigation bar – but how to insert one without crowding the page and compromising the simplicity that has always been a key goal of Timeline?
Here is the Timeline homepage, incarnation three.
The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice plenty of alterations alongside the bottom navigation bar which was the impetus for the changes:
- I’ve worked to make the divisions between the header, the footer and the page content much clearer. Since space is of the essence, the distinction between the black and the grey background serves as a visual trick, allowing me to cram more information onto one ’screenful’ than would otherwise be feasible.
- The canvas background has gone. I always considered it a bit tacky. It’s been replaced by a reasonably bland grey background image with faint swirls on it. Bland is good when you’re trying to draw attention to your content – nevertheless, I suspect that it may be replaced again one day.
- The featured images now have reflections! They’re created by a bit of (some would say unnecessary) JavaScript which I borrowed and adapted a little. Trying out lots of combinations of height and opacity for the reflections provided a perfect outlet for my perfectionist tendencies; I think the resulting effect adds a touch of Apple-like finesse, though there’s always time for me to get bored of it. For now, it’s only 5kb of code which doesn’t seem to cause a slowdown on any popular browsers (my major concern), so it’s staying.
- Finally, the elephant in the room – the appearance of the search function. But that’s for another post – scroll down to find it.