Realigned, M1k3.net v5.4. Engraved on March 9, 2008 by Michael Dick; Comments (11)

Do you ever look at your web site and just think that it feels old? I don't keep track but I am sure I look at my website on a daily basis, whether it's to answer comments or to just look at how well it is designed. Regardless the reason, after awhile your site just begins to look old. In all honesty, M1k3's 2nd version could probably still hold up today (if it followed standards), but it's just that designs get old and people, including yourself, like change. That's why last week I decided to do a little updating to M1k3...I felt like things were old and I needed to update, make things better and more efficient.

A few changes.

One of the first things I wanted to do was get my Flickr pictures on my web site since I am a picture maniac with my iPhone. Secondly, I wanted to do something with the navigation; the absolute positioned navigation was getting on my nerves...at an extreme height. Third, and probably the least important was the objective to remove any ads not creating revenue.

Search has arrived.

Search was a feature I ended up adding at last minute. It's funny though, because it's my favorite addition even though it was last minute. The search functionality I added in is very impressive...to me at least. You may search a keyword and from there you can switch back and forth based on articles or comment results.

Em based...resize your text.

The feature that was the hardest to implement was the em based layout feature. Resize your text, everything resizes perfectly -- do it. The thing that surprised me was how hard it was to implement ems, but if you think about it my site is pretty graphic intense so it took a lot of time, a lot of markup, and a lot of sliding doors (css sliding doors).

Comments

Engraved by Brad C. on 03/09/2008

That's pretty cool. I expected the text to resize when I increased it, didn't expect the whole site to increase. That's pretty cool. I've never used EMs to define width and height of columns and such. Even the backgrounds resize. Pretty impressive.

Engraved by James Fleeting on 03/09/2008

The updates look great. Sometimes you just have to make little changes here and there and it can give your site a clean updated look.

Engraved by Michael Dick on 03/09/2008

@Brad, thanks for the comment. I was really excited to make all dimensions in ems. I am thinking about making the site a fluid layout with width constrictions using max-width...but I don't know yet.

@James, yea it's amazing how small subtle details make the world of difference.

Engraved by Jeff Davis on 03/10/2008

The updated site looks great. Love the em based layout.

Engraved by Michael Dick on 03/11/2008

@Jeff, thanks man! It was a blast coding the site to be em based, however it was a little harder than I thought it would be since my site is graphically heavy.

See you at Refresh coming here pretty soon.

Engraved by Matt Sanders on 03/11/2008

Looking good bro. I'm glad you've got it up. really..I have no excuse now. You've updated your site twice since I said I was going to do mine.

Engraved by daustralala on 03/12/2008

The navbar is awesome, but it reminds me of SimpleBits' navbar. Overall, I can still feel the old M1k3 rhythm.

Great job!

Engraved by Michael Dick on 03/12/2008

@Daus, you're right! Simplebits was one of the inspirations that got me thinking about both em based layout and using that type of nav. It just appealed to me so much!

Good job! Thanks for the comments!

Engraved by Samuel Wat on 04/09/2008

WOW! Great job! Love your work!

Engraved by Michael Dick on 05/07/2008

Thanks for the compliment, Samuel.

Engraved by Jonathan Solichin on 07/13/2008

Slick works Mike! I love it. It's very unique and grungy.

Give your word.

HTML is allowed...line breaks are converted to <br />'s. You need to be somewhat friendly, at least to me or you'll get deleted. Now off, go post!