A new face for Mozilla Links
It’s been almost a year since the last major update to Mozilla Links look and, to be honest, it gets boring to look at the same page so many times a day every single day. Besides, it was broken. At some point in time I messed so much with the Vertigo WordPress theme to the point it was too much pain to fix.
So for the last month or so I’ve been working on a new design, largely based on the iNewspaper theme. I’ve tried to make it very clean and easy on the eye.
These are a few changes you will hopefully notice for good:
- Print. There is now a stylesheet for printing so no loading for you, no plugin required for me, just print the page or click on the Print link in the post toolbox and you will get a clean version.
- Share. Do you like to share Mozilla Links content? If you do, the ShareThis link in the post toolbox is for you. It provides for ways to share a post over digg, reddit, StumbleUpon and a lot of others social bookmarking sites as well as email. You let me know if you think there are too many options or you miss one.
- Threaded comments. You can now reply to a specific comment so no need to quote or messy scrolling to find what someone is answering to.
- Breadcrumbs. The path to the actual content is shown just below the header.
- A new logo. For the sake of it, really. The only thing I was sicker about than the site design, was the logo itself. So it is gone for good. Not that I am particularly in love with the new one, but it is different and somehow: 1) keeps the color reference to Mozilla colors (black and red), and 2) suggests connection (as in “Links”).
- A few Firefox 3 icons here and there.
- Less ads. Really I hate to add ads. But I am greedy. Lucky you I am less greedy these days so there you go.
- The theme is called iNewspaper, but it could as well be called iNewYorkTimes. I love the NYT design. Consequently, Mozilla Links shamelessly borrows a lot of ideas.
- Mozilla Links runs on WordPress 2.5, as it has since its release about a month ago. It is a terrific upgrade with a lot of improvement for admins and a few for readers.
I hope you enjoy this new design. Thank you for stopping here.
Please look around, kick the tires, and let me know what you like, what you don’t and what you miss.
Comments
Peter
* Text ignores zoom level in Firefox 2 (!!); the default size is too big and I can’t make it smaller. Congrats on fucking such a basic usability thing up.
Percy CabelloApril 23rd, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Just tried text zoom in and out with Firefox 2.0.0.14 and it properly scales up and down. No idea on what may be wrong with your setup and your politeness really helps me not to care. Cheers!
userApril 23rd, 2008 at 4:33 pm
i don’t know about *zoom level* but same here –> “the default size is too big”
however, there’s always stylish
BobApril 24th, 2008 at 7:59 am
Nice way to get help. Complain about a user error and then swear at people.
Super!
Jeroen
Great new lay-out, love it. Still one very minor issue, the live title (aka microsummary) doesn’t work.
PercyApril 23rd, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Do you know if it’s been working recently? I looked up and my only guess is that the microsummaries plugin may be outdated for WP 2.5. I will keep looking into it. Thanks for letting me know.
JeroenApril 23rd, 2008 at 4:33 pm
It was also broken at the old layout. I think it’s broken for almost 4-5 weeks now…
Rafael Masoni
Oh noes!
Sorry, I don’t like it. I feel totally lost.
But well, you’ve got the content ;)
And the text resizing isn’t really working and I don’t know why. I’ve tried both menu and hotkeys (Ctrl++, Ctrl+-) and nothing happened. Firefox 2.0.0.14 here.
Francois Botha
Sorry, don’t like it… reminds me too much of http://www.nytimes.com
Andrew Conkling
I, for one, like it. I went with a similar minimalism on my blog: http://andrewski.net. But there are a lot of dissenters here; Percy, maybe your next post should be about how to force your own fonts and otherwise how to troubleshoot problems in your Firefox? (Yes, I’m looking at you, Martin. ;)
Jon
I really do not like the new look. It gives the feel of some sort of technical journal and so is not at all welcoming to the more casual reader or even the “semi formal” reader. If I Stumbled on to this site I would promptly Stumble out. I’m not here to flame the site but I believe its important to give my feedback.
David Naylor
Great! It’ll take a while to get used to the change, but change is always nice!
gxg
The design looks awful in IE6…
Not my choice of a browser, but I can’t use anything else at my office.
Andrew Conkling
Everyone who’s having trouble on the site (I’m not), how about you run Firefox in a new profile and see if the problem persists? See the MozillaZine wiki for instructions: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_Mode. I suspect everyone just has a tricked-out Firefox. ;)
userApril 24th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
http://img516.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fontsizeci5.png
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.14) Gecko/2008040414 Firefox/2.0.0.14
John Slater
Hey Percy. Nice work on the new theme. If you’ve started beta testing the new Mozilla.com site yet, you might have noticed that we have a link to your site from our revised press page…we’ll have to update the logo next to it to match your new look!
Percy CabelloApril 24th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Thanks John, I’ll contact you by email to have the logo updated.
Simon
No :(
It looks now pretty sort of “Official” (bah!)
Anyway, GREAT site Percy – Good job
Best regards and Good luck on your way
Simon :)
Kon
I really really dislike the serif fonts in the body of the page. They make me not want to read Mozilla Links any more! Please use some sans-serif font for the sake of legibility! Please.
Percy Cabello
Thanks to all for sharing your comments so far. The main concern seems to be serif/sans-serif for post bodies. I am still pondering whether to change it or not, or provide an alternate stylesheet. Would that make it? Please keep providing your feedback.
Jon
I agree that changing the font would greatly help take the “official” edge off the new look. I also think that perhaps changing the background colors for the left and right columns as well as thickening, slightly, the column’s outline would help smooth out the look and make it less dull.
I do love the new logo though.
Alex
I like the new look.
You mentioned a few Firefox 3 icons here and there. One of them being the new Subscribe RSS icon you’re using. You should be aware that because of icon updates in nightlies, there are new icons now and that orange and white RSS icon is now blue and white.
Martin
Like the new look and feel. A good change for readability and the same good content!
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