It'a a tad too small. It'll be hard to read late at night/early morning. Everything else is OK.

This doesn't sound like the Ace whose biting sarcasm attracts me to this blog. Asking opinions? Wanting to know if something is "better for people"?

I'm disgusted. You should tell us that you're going to do what you're going to do, and if we don't like it, we can go cry to His Royal Kosness.

"Is that an eyesore"? What is this, Queer Eye for the Ace Guy?

I swear...some people just don't know their role...

"It'a"? Let's try It's

The new design seems fine, even at 1024x768. Looks okay in both IE and Firefox, both on Windows and Linux.

Your site looks fine the way it is. Very readable. The new site's font is too small. That's all.

Disgruntled -

Lay off Ace. An intense 13 hour session with a latina shemale prostitute takes the vigor and agressiveness out of any man.

Sure, make me sound like a grouchy web-nag.

Seriously, I like the new look. My only recommendations? A little bit of white space on the right and left margins of the center cell would help it look a little less cluttered, which is the only potential issue for three-column sites.

Other than that, nice.

Current font: Good
Gray boxes: Good
Pictures: Very very bad -- we don't need another thing slowing down page loading
New design: Good on the sides, need a better (and bigger) font in the center

Perhaps a lighter gray in the comment boxes (for more contrast).

Mozilla 1.7.12, Windows XP Pro, 1280x1024

I like the three column design - everything is flowing right on my setup;
I haven't seen your banner for a long time - WTF?
Body text is a little small - the text size in both sidebars comments is just right for me;
The text size for the posted by line is good;
I like the typeface - to ME it's easier to read;
Don't like the grey quote boxes - they break up the page too much - maybe something with a thick light grey left border in italics?

Just a personal preference, but I like the drop down in-line comments just for reading.

hehe... Queer Eye for the Ace Guy... good one!

The lighter gray is a good idea.

Some possibilities?

F2F2F2

E8E8E8

DEDEDE

More like, Ace Eye for the Straight Guy.

Fair enough.

The redesign looks good. I especially like the font (no serif), but, as with many things in life, it could stand to be a bit larger.

I like the comment format over at the sidebar a little better than this one with the grey boxes.

Formatting changes... ain't they a bitch?!?!

I copied your gray boxes for my quotes.
I override the fonts on all pages anyway.
I don't mind either style really.

I like the new layout. I agree w/ sublog's suggestion, a little white space would make it less cluttered. Keep the gray boxes!

I like the original better. The new style looks a bit office-y. Who was complaining?

I like the lighter grey that Slu and geoff suggest (and was going to slam Slublog for him suggesting that the boxes be eliminated, until I realized his point)... Your comment section with the grey boxes are the least confusing of many of the popular blogs.

Type font definitely needs to be .5 or 1 size larger in the new format.

So where's the dancin' girls?

Other than that the new thing is comfortable to read.

I prefer the older font, more readable for me. It's one of the things I like about your site, easy on the eyes.

I do like the lighter gray for comments - that is an "easy on the eyes" improvement. Current one is a little eye-straining.

On my browser (Firefox), the text column goes all the way across the page. It is MUCH easier to read if text lines are no more than about 4 inches wide.

Also, I think there should be a little more white space between posts. It's easier to find the headlines when scrolling.

As for type size, I can read it just fine, but there is a relatively easy way to put in scalable text, which every reader can adjust for himself. It uses a cookie, I think, so it will stay that way when that reader comes back to the page (assuming they ever come back, of course).

The sans-serif font is a good move -- it's more readable on a computer screen.

Nel Sangue,
Phinn

and was going to slam Slublog for him suggesting that the boxes be eliminated, until I realized his point

Bring it.

Ah, who am I kidding? I'm in a good mood today. It's sunny and I just found out I can make the sound of Chewbacca screaming my default ring tone at the office.

The verdana sans-serif font selection will be easier to read online than what you currently have on the live site, but I'd suggest enlarging the font size itself slighty for readers with less than perfect vision.

I'd bump your #contect padding left and right one or two pixels to see if that adds some white space there, but not too much more. Vetical whitespace is fine, IMO.

I also agree with going with a lighter gray background than the #CCCCCC, perhaps something along the lines of light gray #E3E3E3 or an even lighter gray #F0F0F0.

Other than that, I think it looks sharp and uses your screen real estate well.

I too am trying to hash out a new design, and wanted your opinions regarding something really important: do these pants make me look fat?

Zzzzzzzzzzz ..... Is it 4:20 yet?

Woah. The page went fuzzy when i clicked over...it's pretty hard to read, a wee bit too small. On an LCD with Cleartype enabled, the lettering just fuzzes into the page.

Looks on my screen like you went from 12 point Georgia to 9 point Georgia. I liked the larger font better.

I'm not seeing any little numbers after the headline.

I would leave the smaller font. It may be a matter of people having to get use to it.

I like the attribution up top under the lead.

I also like the dividing in thirds.

It would be nice if the "Remember personal info?" worked.l

Slublog also noted that some people want to submit pics to a page so that readers can see what (some) commenters look like. I guess I'll do that.

Crack my screen and I sue.

The dark font on the dark background of the title doesn't do the site justice. Too hard to read. Need contrast.

If you're gonna keep the boxes look for comments, might I suggest a grey page background and white boxes... it would be a little easier to read with the light background and dark text.

Just realized you were taling about the headlines in the sidebar. Cool feature. Will make it much easier to check back into comment threads we are following.

I also like that you have the author of the piece at the top with the title of the post...

Web Design Questions
– Ace

Let me be the 500th person to say that I like the new font better, but it could be a tad bigger, and have a little more white space on either side.

Your blogads on the left are bleeding into the main column... I gree that there should be more padding in the main column - at least 10px on each side... IMHO

Havin' fun yet?

It looks like you changes your font and text sizes already?

I want spell-check. (Because of my Alzheimer's)
I want commenter registration.
I want editing power for at least 10 minutes to correct errors. (Because of my early senility)

And I want a "boobie pic of the day" to be featured on the site.

The font is fine, but it could be one or two points bigger. I used to complain when people complained about things being "too small to read", but now that my eyes are older I know better.

You don't need a box or background around a quoted comment. Just indent it. The less "chart junk" is in the way, the easier it is to read.

Oh, and forget the pictures of commenters. That is much the same as having the weather guy on TV stand in front of the map he's trying to show us -- it's as useful as tits on a football player. I don't wanna know what they look like.

"it's as useful as tits on a football player. I don't wanna know what they look like"

Who does?

Make it a few points bigger.

Or change to Arial.

The font is big enough to be me in Firefox. You all know you can adjust the text size in your browser right? I think too much bigger would be too much

More Boobies!!!!! Thats all......I'm out.

You're joking, right? The font in both versions shows up exactly the same for me--Georgia. Looks nice.

My only comment is that the picture of Tony Blair looks too much like Ed Grimly

I agree with Slu that the center section needs some margins! Looks cluttered without them. But I disagree about the gray boxes - I like them. Helps me skim better.
DKK

Like *they* said:
Larger font.
Lighter grey.
Remember personal info, especially after previewing. "Yep, that looks ok."...
hits POST and it sends a nameless comment.

Yeah things look amazingly different on different computers. I do my blog on a Mac and it looks just dandy. The first time I looked at it on Mrs. Geezer's new PC laptop, I was stunned it was so grainy looking.
Both are using Firefox but maybe it's something I need to tweak on her machine.

My only quibble is a purely asthetic one. I think the byline should be a size or two smaller than the headline. The italics on it are good, though.

Other than that, looks great.

On Safari, they look exactly the same, but with a third column. My vote is "completely indifferent", but I would like for the number of stories on the front page to be cut down some. The HTML alone is 272K.

Old design.

New design.

Maybe I'm different, but the newest comments, blogroll, and headlines I've never even looked at. They're in the sidebar, where the ads are, which I'm highly trained through years of Internet experience to completely ignore.

I'd like some sort of commentor box/laugh line for the google ads myself.

Seriously-"Peace is worth the Effort" "Propeace community site" the headlines alone are worth a laugh.

Just throw in that UN man flash and we could do our own MST3K to sound of stupid hippies crying.

The font looks the same to me on both sites, but the new site is about 40% whitespace (20% on each side). How about an option to toggle Kim Richards photos on in that unused area?

Now the screen is divided into 5 columns - two blank white columns on the outside.

Looks great to me (I'm using Firefox on Windows).

Since I have decided to quit my job and post full time, I would like for the most recent entries section to be easier to reach. This changes the most for the site, so I want to keep track of it.

Your site looks gay.

Please change it.

Don't center the main table. It makes the text hard to track, and makes the blog look like it's printed on a roll of toilet paper. I'd prefer the old, larger font size, but having the huge left margin really makes the page hard to read. Everything else is fine.

I like it the way it is, so, as the new look isn't really much differnet, I'm ok with it.
Except for the g-damned flashy things.
Flashy things irritate me.
A lot.

I'll add another vote for no avatars. They just bring clutter and add nothing important.

I'm glad to hear others are having trouble with the 'remember info' option. I just thought it was me and some weird cookie setting.

Shnookums, I have been slightly annoyed for awhile that when my mouse rolls over the red in the headlines for example, the red text gets bigger which throws off the alignment of everything. It appears the new thing just has it underlined, which is good. That whole "touch it and it gets bigger" thing reminds me too much of 3 am in the VFW parking lot if you get my drift.

Font=good.

I'd also completely scrap the recent comments since this site gets so many anyway, it's of little value other than clutter.

I suspect that with the blogads cutting through the top headlines that no one will realize the headlines continue under them and it's a little awkward. So, I'd scrap the recent comments and move your picture blogads over to where the recent comments used to be.

I like when contact info is up in one corner or the other so I know where to send my dirty emails without scrolling through too much stuff.

Also, I think the comment counter for the headlines should come after the headline instead of after the goofyass taglines.

xoxxo,
Feisty, prostitute

I can make the font bigger in my browser (Firefox 1.5), but then it's also bigger when I view other sites, even when I don't need it bigger. If the font were about the same size at all sites, then I could set it once and browse away without having complaints about any of them.

Point is, there are some things that ought to be consistent because everyone benefits when they are. Font size on web sites and keyboard layouts are two such things.

Oh feisty is so right!
That thing where you try to click on "view" and then it switches down to the next line, then switches back to the top one.

arggthhhththh!

I would love to see a wider page or one that stretches with the browser. All the blogging software out there seems to think that most people still have 15" monitors that run at 640x480. Hugh Hewitt's site is an example of a site that adjusts its width by the browser. Endless scrolling because of a narrow site gets annoying real quick.

I kinda like the gray boxes for quotes.

2 more additional suggestions...

Make an Ace of Spades little tab logo thingy - there's a post at MuNuviana on how to do it.

You may want to have a link to index2.html with your original 2 column design for those people who like(d) that one better. Just rename your original index to index2, upload to the original folder, and link to it.

PS I liked the new san serif typeface on the first edition of the 3 col design FWIW.

I would like to see a larger font in the comments section. The new design looks fine.

Gotta disagree with Feisty. I like the recent comments and use it often. In fact I don't like having to scroll down to it.

New design looks sweet.

Madfish is talking about a favicon.

Looks Fine.

I'm too lazy to read all these comments (so it might have already been covered), but please make it so that all the URLs that you link to open up in new windows!

I am not a lurker.

I like the font. Its too small. Make it bigger. Just a bit.

Rip:

NO! Do not make all links open in new windows. That should be a browser-level option. Some of us aren't that lazy, and sometimes like to follow a link out without spawning a new window. Wrapping links in open commands makes that impossible. If I want a new tab or window, there's always the contextual menu or the command key.

(Opening new windows for comments is fine, though).

Please please please get a mobile/PDA version! Blogs without it are a pain in the ass!
PLEASE?

Repeating other comments:
****************
Current font: Good
Gray boxes: Good
Pictures: Very very bad -- we don't need another thing slowing down page loading New design: Good on the sides, need a better (and bigger) font in the center.
****************
I would only like pictures if they are real hot babes in tight outfits, like Atlas. And, yes, I know that is a Photoshop job and she really looks like Jabba the Hutt.

me like both fonts.
me like grey boxes--lighter grey, ok
me oppose commenter pictures etc.
me agree w/ Fiesty--ditch recent comments.
keep contact box visible up top.

AND shift blog info BACK to its traditional place on the left side
thus, the 'recent headlines' and other generic stuff could go to the right

other than that, ''don't go changin'' Ace

Open in new windows? What a wretched idea. People who don't use tabbed browsers should be shot anyway.

IF you decide to go with the 3-column design,
may I suggest that you use a scalable
stylesheet.

You know, long lines of text for wide windows, short lines and long colums for small windows...

Allow me to quote that guy Maddox from Best Page in the Universe:

If the thousands of mid-sentence links don't annoy you, the long slender columns of text will. Most of the screen on a blog is blank for an imaginary populace of readers still using 640x480 resolution. I didn't buy a 19" monitor to have 50% of its screen realestate pissed away on firing white pixels

Try using a very light grey background for the black text. IBM did a lot of work on CRT readability and that worked best.

Several people have mentioned using a lighter shade of grey, and I agree. And also, a bit more whitespace between the center column and the sidebars. Not a lot more, but five or ten pixels, I think.

One minor thing - there's some nasty compression artifacts in the title image. It would probably come out better and smaller as a gif rather than a jpg, since it has only a few colours.

I bet ace is quite sorry he asked for input. Not YOUR comment though, that was a brilliant one, no really.