Website Update
I spent the past week or so rebuilding www.jimchines.com. I had two main goals:
- Set up a theme that would work on mobile devices.
- Make everything as clean and readable as possible.
I went with the Simfo theme and trimmed a lot out of the sidebar content. I’m pretty happy with the home page. I like the slider, the thumbnails for the different series, and the recent blog posts. But some of the other pages, like the bibliography, look a little too stark now.
I know I need to clean a few things up, like the Press Kit page. But I think I’m at the point where I’d love to have folks poke at it a bit to see what works, and if there’s anything that either breaks your browser or just makes you gag in disgust. So far, it’s worked well on my phone and my internet browsers. It gave my parents trouble on IE8, but I think that might be something weird in their system setup.
Anyway, feedback is very much appreciated for anyone who has time to go exploring…
Martin
March 24, 2014 @ 9:45 am
Looks good, will test it from mobile too but later…
Jim C. Hines
March 24, 2014 @ 9:49 am
Thanks, Martin!
Crystal Bryant
March 24, 2014 @ 10:16 am
Looks great! I like this a lot. No issues on Chrome.
Issues:
IE9 — alignment on the front page.
http://imgur.com/a/Vppvd
IE9 — when I hover over the cover slide, it moves the content below it — adds a little padding between the cover slide and the content, which goes away when you move off the cover slide.
Mobile (Galaxy S4) — in the menu, the link only activates if you click the actual words, which are quite small. For usability, it would be awesome to click the “row” that the words are in and activate the link.
Jim C. Hines
March 24, 2014 @ 10:36 am
Thanks, Crystal!
The alignment issues are, I believe, a “working as designed” thing. With it being a responsive theme, if the screen is smaller for some reason, it should bump those elements down onto another row. I’m not sure why the available display size would be different between Chrome and IE9, though. That’s weird.Actually, it should be just shrinking the width to keep all four elements together. Hm…I’ll see what I can find out about those other details!
Eleanor Stokes
March 24, 2014 @ 10:38 am
It works great on my iPad. I visit blogs exclusively on my iPad, so it is nice to have full functionality here. The old format caused issues so I didn’t go there very often.
I just compared the iPad version to the desktop version, and it is the same. Frequently in order to acheive mobile finctionality the website is stripped down for mobile viewers. It is nice to know I am not missing anything, or that something important won’t show up and I will have to remember to get myself to a regular computer in order to understand what you are talking about.
PS…I am good at breaking websites. If I find a way to do it I will let you know. (bwahahaha)
Anya
March 24, 2014 @ 10:46 am
I haven’t explored too thoroughly, but I really like the redesign!
D. Moonfire
March 24, 2014 @ 10:46 am
I like the starkness a lot, makes it easier to focus on the words. I like it.
The only thing I would prefer are slightly larger headers in the bibliography and less fences (hr elements). Maybe using whitespace would work.
Jim C. Hines
March 24, 2014 @ 10:59 am
Something more like this?
D. Moonfire
March 24, 2014 @ 11:12 am
Yes, that is what I meant.
misha
March 24, 2014 @ 11:36 am
Works just fine on my Droid Maxx
Brian Williams
March 24, 2014 @ 12:51 pm
It looks good on my iPad with one exception that I’ve noticed in some other sites. Something about the formatting seems to prevent me from zooming in on portions of the page. Since I’m young and have good eyesight, it’s not a problem for me, but I’m sure others would appreciate being able to zoom in as needed.
Jim C. Hines
March 24, 2014 @ 1:05 pm
Brian – can you clarify exactly what you’re doing to try to zoom in? Thanks!
Lark @ The Bookwyrm's Hoard
March 24, 2014 @ 1:11 pm
Very clean and minimalist. I like the lack of clutter. One suggestion for the bibliography page – I usually prefer to see series or trilogies in order, rather than reverse order, so I read them in the right order. The way it is currently could confuse a reader if s/he didn’t happen to notice the publication dates.
Brian Williams
March 24, 2014 @ 1:34 pm
Sure, I’m trying the standard iOS two finger pinch-to-zoom, which works fine on places like LJ, but I’ve noticed that some mobile sites with a sidebar (like your site) seem to break it.
Amanda June Hagarty
March 24, 2014 @ 3:24 pm
Looks good on my Galaxy Nexus with Chrome app.
Does anyone other than parents use IE? LOL
Stephen A. Watkins
March 24, 2014 @ 5:14 pm
The bullet-points under each Short Fiction title on the biblio page – the ones that list reprints for that title – are a bit distracting. The bullet makes the subitem look more important than the original item. I’d advise either ditch the bullet on those items and just indent them, or have all the titles in a bulleted list, and have the reprints as a sub-bullet.
Sally
March 24, 2014 @ 5:37 pm
The headline font is smexy.
But I miss the blue background. All this white makes my eyes hurty. Can we have just a hint of pastel? Even an eggshell or ecru? *
i agree that the bibilography, while perfect as a resume, isn’t helpful to new readers who need to know what order to read the books in.
It all works on my Chromebook, which obviously is running the latest flavor of non-mobile Chrome.
how often do you get to say “ecru” in a sentence?
Marie Dowd
March 24, 2014 @ 5:49 pm
I would like if the slider did shift and maybe had a little text. I like the new layout, but this much pure white is a little hard on the eyes if you don’t use a mobile. Mobile friendly is good but this is glaring. Perhaps a light gray or cream to handle both scales?
AMM
March 24, 2014 @ 6:12 pm
1. I normally run with JavaScript off (it generally speeds up page loads and rendering by about 10x), so I’m glad the web site is more or less functional with it off. (I also appreciate that I don’t get 50,000 “certificate” pop-ups — why does a blog need https, anyway?) A “go” button on the HTML drop-down lists would make it even better, but at least there’s a plain link at the bottom to older pages.
2. There’s a grey box at the upper left on my browser. Is that the “slider”? It looks like a poorly-styled search box (like I get with Yahoo mail), but I tried moving it and typing into it, and it doesn’t react. (Reminds me of an SF short story….)
Dara
March 24, 2014 @ 7:32 pm
Might I suggest that you swap a couple of elements?
This is what I see right now without scrolling down (above the fold):
http://solarbird.net/Livejournal/2014-03/hines-above-fold-2.jpg
I might suggest swapping a couple of elements brings more up above the fold without being overbearing (tho’ of course your milage may vary on that) and
http://solarbird.net/Livejournal/2014-03/hines-more-above-fold-2.jpg
As it’s stacked right now, that big banner that you’re talking about having scroll is the Big Feature Element, and that’s what eyes go to first, and that’s cool, _but_… it’s a bit overbearing, visually. It’s _too_ much weight, and kind hard to draw off of that to see other things – particularly since there’s no other complete content of similar visual weight. Flipping that to the top is still quite eye-catching, but the centre of focus becomes your name and the site navigation menu, making all that a lot more obvious and (imo) likely to incite navigation.
Also, the books section goes up above the fold, and we see your most recent tweet without scrolling.
My two cents, anyway.
Dara
March 24, 2014 @ 7:48 pm
Of course the problem with that is that if you don’t have it on every page, the site nav bar will move up and down and that’s bad. So, yeah, alternatively, just bring down the visual weight of that rotating large attractor element. Where it is now, it just hits me as kind of a stop/wall page – like those Try Our Ap!! pages you have to dismiss on the iPad all the time to get to the actual content of web pages – even though it totally isn’t that.
I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be harsh. The whole site does look more current, and I like the blog entry view quite a lot better now. But you asked for feedback, so.
Hm. Poking around more, I’m noticing that fields for typing are a bit low-contrast. It doesn’t bother me on the blog page, but it does on the Contact page, and I can’t entirely tell you why it’s different. Maybe it’s just because there are more fields to fill in and none of them are pre-highlighted. And there’s more label text. That might be it. Putting a little more colour into the typing field background would probably sort that just fine.
Anyway, the above aside, I do think it’s a good update. ^_^
Amy Bauer
March 24, 2014 @ 8:21 pm
I’m reading in Safari. Looks good. I approve of “cleaner.” 🙂
Alex Hurst
March 24, 2014 @ 10:41 pm
This looks great! It definitely makes it feel a bit more “modern” and reader-friendly. I do miss the colorful header on all of the pages though.
Kassie Jennings
March 25, 2014 @ 7:48 am
I agree that it would be less confusing to see the series listed in chronological order rather than reverse. Also, I noticed that you have the Jig omnibus edition listed as “forthcoming” in July 2012.
Jim C. Hines
March 25, 2014 @ 9:55 am
Fixed the order and the “forthcoming,” thank you!
Jim C. Hines
March 25, 2014 @ 10:16 am
I added borders to the Contact page fields. Does that help with what you’re describing?
Dara
March 25, 2014 @ 12:00 pm
Yep! Totally sorts what I was seeing. I don’t think the borders even need to be that strong, tho’ it’s fine that they are. But if you’re looking and thinking black is too much, medium- to dark grey would no doubt work just as well.
Jim C. Hines
March 25, 2014 @ 1:37 pm
More like this?
Jim C. Hines
March 25, 2014 @ 1:39 pm
That’s probably either the slider or the search box. I’ll see what I can do…
Thanks!
Sally
March 26, 2014 @ 6:28 pm
I do too. I know it’s harder for mobile, but the book cover thumbnails were so friendly.
Ivory? Old Lace? (minus the arsenic, natch)
Actually, the pale blue of this text box is quite lovely. Maybe a bluish off-white. F0FFFF (Hex color suggestion, not rude word!)
Dana
March 27, 2014 @ 1:43 pm
More white space is good, but the pinkish background makes it harder to read. I would prefer an even paler background, or something with more gray.
Black ink on white paper is the ideal, at least for me.
Jim C. Hines
March 27, 2014 @ 1:53 pm
Several people said a pure white background was a bit too much. What about this, which is a very faint bit of gray?
redheadedfemme
March 30, 2014 @ 1:29 pm
I’m not on a phone or tablet, but this background color is very soothing. I’d keep it.
Marie Dowd
March 30, 2014 @ 2:15 pm
Yes, the light grey is great!
Sally
March 30, 2014 @ 2:55 pm
All praise to the faint gray! My eyeballs are very grateful. Ahhhhh.