

Ask HN: critique my blog? - alecbenzer

http://alecbenzer.com/<p>Been tweaking the design of my blog a bit lately. Anyone have any comments/suggestions? I'm principally a coder, so I'm a bit out of my element when it comes to design.<p>I'm looking for comments on the design, not the content, but feel free to comment on the latter as well, if you'd like.
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przemoc
With simplistic design there isn't much that can be done wrong. This is a good
thing. But OTOH in such case it's also hard to provide universal tips as
tastes regarding minimalism and such are different across the globe. Therefore
you cannot please anyone, but aiming for majority is achievable.

IMO in design one of the most important things is keeping, what I call, the
C^3 rule. Design must be Clear, Consistent and Coherent. Creativity is not
obligatory, may improve user experience, but may also worsen it. Be careful.

Clear meant as easy to follow and understand but also as tidy.

Consistent meant as lacking any contradictions but also as thought-out well
enough to avoid any changes for longer period of time.

Coherent meant as expressing your product as unity, where all its parts
conform to the same rules and contribute to overall look'n'feel (hopefully in
a equal or similar manner) but also as suiting the content.

So let's check it.

C1. Approachable? Yes. Neat? Yes.

C2. Lacks contradictions? No, see qxb comment [1]. Future-proof? It depends
[2].

C3. Cohesion? Yes with minor flaws [3]. Does look supports the text. Not
everywhere [4].

[1] Beside "posts" looking like a link, its placement is also untoward. Why?
Below "posts" there are dates. Are dates the most important parts of posts?
No. So you have to fix viewers focus to the correct column, placing "posts"
above titles.

[2] The question you have to answer is what you see in future in this blog.
Will be there any non-date related pages like, let's say, "projects" or
"photos". New sections in header will make it a bit heavier possibly even
dominating over your above name.

[3] Your name is written lower-case, but post titles, showing at the same
place (actually not exactly, which is another minor flaw) aren't lower-case.
There is also not enough room to breath below the post title. Another thing is
"me"+"faq" thing. "Me" links to about page and "faq" is actually about you
too. "cv" is again about you. And these links are too close of each other. To
deal with it you have several possible ways, e.g. 1) combining "me" with "faq"
(incorporating /faq page into /about), so you'll have "me" "cv" or "myself"
"résumé", 2) renaming these links to "who" "am" "I".

[4] Code snippets often does not fit in your text column, making it completely
unbalanced and awkward. Wrap them manually (e.g. make 60-chars line a rule).

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qxb
I like it. I am a big fan of simple, straightforward webdesign that focuses on
content.

Without looking at your source code, my only quibble is: remove the
underlining from "posts". Everything else on the page that's underlined is a
link, and that isn't.

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jbrennan
It looks nice and is easy to read. Do you plan on adding some kind of Atom/RSS
feed?

