Please welcome ‘Vader’, a K2-based ‘design’ (not that I want to inflate the word ‘design’, but ‘color palette’ is a bit weak, yes?), which will help me bring Binary Bonsai up to speed as well as test among other things the pages functionality in WordPress. Should you wish to see Freya, you can visit her in the detention area.
Vader will take a little time to properly settle, as I clean up some of the cruft from Freya. The most important change, apart from the colors I suppose, is how I am now using WordPress’ built-in Pages function, rather than static .php pages. It took some wrangling, and I’m still not entirely satisfied (I can’t tell a page to not show up in the menu, which really annoys me).
But the good thing is, now mostly everything is editable from the WordPress admin, and I no longer rely on images for the layout. Except of course for the header image, which by the way was done by Rasmus of E3 fame.
By the way, Vader is the first dark design in the history of Binary Bonsai designs, but not the first to bear a Star Wars theme.
Now to finish the Episode III review.
PS: Whatever errors there are, will most likely not be fixed until late tonight or tomorrow, as I have a previous engagement with some online RPG.
For some time in the future when I’ve changed the design again; this is how it looked:
Nice noir-esque feeling to it. I particularly like the Death Star in Hell theme to the header :)
PS: The default of ON for notification by email is evil!
of, not to. Sigh. Curse my typing co-processor.
Wow! Very striking. Good work.
I like it! I only have one problem: to me it seems like there’s not enough contrast and I find it difficult to read the text.
Good work!
I like it, good work! The colors are very pleasant and the text is easy to read.
I’ll up the contrast, I need to adjust the colors anyway. On my cinema display it’s very readable though.
Nice.. although the comment field needs attention – near white on black for such a big area tends to draw the eye away from comments something fierce.
On my 19” flat TFT it’s a bit over powering, on a CRT it’s probably okay though..
It’s already on the todo list :)
Just to say Congratulations. I like it.
Keep on with the good work.
Aah, you have finally joined the Dark Side! >:)
K2 is shaping up very nicely. Love the live search.
And the new design kicks butt :-)
Nice one!
Prefered Frey (cool name too)
Can’t say I really like the green with the red…
You still rock :D
Oh my. what a change!
K2 Looks awsome, though this particular design is, well, interesting. Prefer Freya, though for the purposes of experimentation with K2, it’s great, shows how versatille it is.
As always, lovely. As you might have noticed, I also turned off the lights a while ago.
Can’t wait to see it settle, perhaps with a live preview et. al.
As for how you’re wrangling pages, I’d LOVE to hear more about that. I do know most of the basics, but aspects of how you’re mananging directories vs. page slugs and how you’re using wp_list_pages are things you need to write more about! (Please?)
It’s too dark for my tastes.
Joen, I’m using your sidebar stuff plus a plugin for running PHP on the pages, and then I’ve got a few templates. The wp_list_pages stuff is all exactly like K2.
Okay cool. I’ll be looking forward to snatching that code :)
Btw, feel free to edit or delete that misspelled trackback I sent.
Aww, I was hoping to steal the code for the dark floating blob of info (what do you call it??) from the Freya design, but now its gone! Does it feature in an entry anywhere? I’ve learnt a lot abut Web design from Kubrick, so thanks! Keep up the good work!
What I can make out looks beautiful, but I find it extremly difficult to read the text.
The floating blob of info is back, cheers Michael!
Okay, so it’s nice, but on my CRT the contrast is too low. Maybe add a style adjuster?
I’m sorry Michael but….
I really don’t like it, very hard to read. Looks more like a warez site now.
Please bring back the amazing Freya!
Very, very nice color scheme :) I really like it. Plus, the header image is slick ;)
Ok, a couple of problems with this design.
It is hard to read as Steve said.
Your Kubrick page gives me a 403 Forbidden.
Your ‘Live Archives’ no longer work.
…and your <ol> and <ul> tags don’t work for comment
I don’t like it. Here’s why:
1. It’s probably due to the sharp contrast to what I’m used to. Time may change my opinion.
2. Green and red text is too Xmas-y.
3. It’s too drastic. All black, no fades, no subtleties.
4. This is not a Star Wars blog. So why design it like one. Now it feels like a fan site.
5. A SW themed blog is the antithesis of the originality of Freya.
6. The dark side isn’t about conformity. It’s about embracing your raw, passionate emotions. This is not passionate emotions.
Now, before I get completely blasted from this site for my harsh criticisms I’ll say this: I’m a graphic designer simply offering my thoughts to another designer. I love Binary Bonsai. I love Kubrick. I er.. um… like you Michael. Sorry don’t know you well enough for love. And I’m sure all of this will adjust into something as spectacular as usual.
Best of luck!
Sorry about posting so many times, but I also noticed that in your footer the link to K2 doesn’t work.
Thanks Wyatt, but as I said, it will take a while for everything to settle… Relax :)
How dare you Michael, going around and making things dark and having fun with your site. The nerve. :)
I think it looks pretty cool. That header graphic looks pretty slick.
Regarding keeping pages out of the menu, you can’t just use “exclude=1,47,etc…” in the wp_list_pages function? Or are these pages created outside the WP interface? maybe I’m just confused.
Chris, how dare you tell me such an obvious way of getting rid of pages from the menu!? :)
That’s just what I was thinking. :)
The thing that really bugs me is that when K2 is released all the hard work I did trying to learn WordPress will seem so juvenile by comparison. Show off. :)
My sincerest apologies :)
Apology accepted. Just try not to let it happen in the future young man. :)
Posterity.
Dude. Wow.
lol
looks great!! :P
You note that you can not exclude pages out of your main nav when using WordPress’s page functionality.
Actually, this is not the case if you’re using wp_list_pages(). Please note that a possible argument is “exclude,” and it’s value should equal the id of the page you wish to exclude.
More information can be found on wp_list_pages()‘s Codex page.
Also, the corners are no longer rounded at the bottom, but I think you intentionally did this, and I also like the blue background on form focus.
I’m not quite sure I like the trackbacks listed above the comment form, as I can no longer read the latest comments while submitting my own.
Of course, it seems I’m too late. I wrote a better entry though :) (or would it be more appropriate to use :P?)
Just a suggestion, shouldn’t the header say Binary Bonsai in it somewhere? ;)
If you don’t mind I’ll be the one telling Michael things he already knows. :)
Ack, sorry for double posting, feel free to delete my second post and merge the others, but I found something else. On the homepage, under blog activity, if you roll over a users name under this post, it suggests they commented negative 1 year and 12 months ago. Seems the time-stamps are confused.
Dave, not necessarily :) You all seem to know where you are :)
heh, mixed opinions it seems.
For my largely irrelevant part (after all, it is Michaels blog so its clearly up to him), I like the change but Im not much of a fan of dark websites.
Something interesting (For me at least :p ) – looking at the sceen shot, and then how the site looks on my XP machine, I can’t believe how good the fonts are being rendered on that mac in comparison.
Yeah, Windows font smoothing is pretty damn crappy.
It seems you’ve neglected the highlight backgrounds when users come from a search engine (unless you intended for them to be white and such). They don’t seem right if that was intentional.
Lots of minor stuff needs attention.
awgh… not nice to kill your kubrick area ;-P
not by meaning for sure, but i can’t access the /kubrick/ folder.
i get (for the first time) a 404 on the 403… hehe
(ie. apache can’t find the error page for ‘access denied´)
Are you planning on styling the form text areas (inc. searchbar) a bit darker?
Dear God people, read the entry!
I suggest to keep the darkend style. I was shocked by first sight. I don’t like it when people copy the same darn trendy styles. The web needs more creativity, and I like your application of a non-white on color. I actually belive that with that original style of the archaic command prompt-like screen of bright text on black is unforseen. This may or may not turn out sexy, but its worth a try – minor adjustments can go a long way.
go for it!
It’s much too dark for me to read on my crappy windows box… as was said before, font smoothing is really horrible in XP.
And also – for me, links are a turquoise-greenish color… but in your screenshot they’re all red. What’s up with that? Did you change that after the screenshot or what? (I am using windows… could that be it?)
Anyways, fantastic redesign (although I personally think I prefer Freya…)
Another thing… the Kubrick section isn’t showing up for me either.
Badass. I loved Freya but this is nuts… in a good way. Shows alot of personality. Impressive!
It’s really easy for me to read (19” TFT, Windows XP ClearType), although it hurts my eyes a bit when I look at the comment box, and it takes time for my eyes to focus on the bright scroll bar!
Wow – I am going to second the opinion that K2 is looking great. I’m working on a new site, and have been looking for some dark-colored themes; can’t wait for this one to come out. :)
Keep up the great work!
I like the new dark look and especially the Star Wars theme.
Some nitpicky details: – When I use the livesearch, the results push all the comments down, leaving a huge space in between the entry and the comments. – Did you mean for this comment box to remain blue in this redesign?
Excellent work as usual.
Hmm, very cool, great job :)
Initial reaction, after just seeing the screen-grab in Bloglines: wow, I like this. Wonder who he made it for? Then I see it was for yourself. A couple minutes later and I still really think: wow factor. Good for you, going to the “dark” side.
Love the masthead graphic, the red titles, the green linkage.
I’ll just reiterate a few suggestions I saw while skimming the comments: A little more contrast for main body text. Ya, this white comment textarea is WAY too bright: I like it when it’s focused and light grey. Nav text could be a little bigger. Not sold on its mouse-over pop-ups. The RSS / Trackback links for an entry: typeface a little too thin and not immediatley appearent they’re links. I’m on WinXP FF, btw.
“Nice, I liked Freya, but the new design is pretty cool as well!
I’ll be documenting my trip to Europe via the method of backpacking on my blog, we’re leaving in about 24 hours =D Check it out everyone, Michael included.
Cody (www.doteyed.com)”
The lack of a border on #page is sort of throwing me… I feel like I’m at the top of the Empire State building and there’s no guardrail! A border of #333 or #222 seems to help.
Coolio!
really nice…“style”
Love the “no-images” philosophy :D
Mark, funny you should say just that; I thought it was common knowledge, there are no hand railings in Star Wars… (Not kidding you, it’s one of the design ‘rules’)
Love it! Great for a change. Hope you gonna work on it further.
I’m not overly keen. My main issue is the total lack of contrast between the background and the text. I find it very hard to read.
On the plus side the header image is nice :)
Michael, why not just making this stylesheet an alternate one, or keeping your previous theme as an alternate stylesheet?
Everybody needs to worry less about my site and more about their own, thank you :)
But, but…
How much of a last second addition was that smiley to your comment?
Really nice design/theme/whatever you want to call it. You might want to punch it up a notch, but the header graphic is absolutely amazing.
You should really brighten up that text a bit, as suggested by some earlier posts. On my TFT, it’s perfect, but the text color turns out a bit too dark on the CRT.
Besides that, I like it very much, even though I’m not a big fan of “dark” layouts. Keep it up!
It’s like nobody reads what I write, I swear it! GIVE IT TIME TO SETTLE PEOPLE!
Vader is a temporary look, meant to last only a few weeks while we say goodbye to Star Wars :)
I forgot to ask, how the heck do you take those screenshots? You have a 1600×1200 monitor?
Yeah, it’s a 20” Cinema Display (on which there are no contrast problems ;), I think perhaps there are some people out there who need to up the brightness on their monitors a bit).
Hey Michael, how the hell did you fix the ‘Live Archives’ problem, I had the same problem as you (as in it just didn’t show up at all)?
You might want to note, that the live search makes your site not validate. In fact, there are 9 errors.
Same thing that happened to me when I implemented the search. I’ll remove it on my own site until I see how you fix it.
Wyatt, have you tried the latest version?
Jeff, luckily I trust my own ‘validation’ more than I trust W3C’s :)
Jeff, How to make ‘Live Search’ Validate.
Wyatt, while that should fix a few things – the majority of Micahel’s (and assume Jeff’s) errors are ones about amperstands in the Javascript and what not. To fix that, take a look here @ W3C. Basically you just need to add the CDATA things.
Michael, realy loving this switch – I was never fond of black (dark) layouts but I think now you’ve converted me..
Silly me. I noticed that when searching around and skipped it before I realized it didn’t validate, sure it would, and then didn’t go back once it did.
I also should read the errors. Might have been able to figure that out if I had actually looked at… :)
Michael: i noticed your “admin” link on the menu. I don’t know if you allow other users to register at BinaryBonsai or not, but if you dont here’s something that i do on mine.
On the menu i put a “” and it will only show the admin link to the site owner, when he is logged on.
Like i said, this only works if you dont have the “Anyone can register” option enabled.
The new design rocks, altough there’s something that i don’t know if you did it on purpose or not. When i click on the “Read more” link on any post, the menu stays with the “blog” and “archives” links “active”. Was that on purpose?
Anyway, good luck with K2 ;)
Looking better Michael :)
You’ve updated the comment entry div, which is good – I have my LCD display set about as accurate as I can get it (takes quite some time on a ‘doze platform – most people don’t even bother and use at factory defaults) and there is noticeable difference around edges, borders etc..
Personally, the design is growing on me, however catering for the majority of your readers, rather than a minority (not everyone has a mac and the brilliant font rendering it comes with) so without some display tweaking under ‘doze a lot of elements are going to look identical.
The differences are very subtle, which is one of the things I really like – however since they’re subtle a lot of people just won’t “see” the elements the way they should look, doubly so on a CRT that doesn’t have very granular control compared to a flat panel..
Black/grey designs are often extremely difficult to pull off successfully, however I reckon you’re on to a winner here..
.. embrace the dark side, it is your destiny. :)
The first few sites I ever made were all dark. The very first one was back in late 2000, I decided to go red and black – also from the influence of the Dark Side. It was a tribute to Darth Maul, who I thought was pretty awesome at the time.
After those first few sites though, I’ve pretty much stuck to bright ones. It hurts my eyes too much when I switch tabs from a dark site to a iight one, but still, I’ve always had this thing for dark designs. They just seem to have more depth, I dunno. I still love them, I just love my retinae more.
I shall nevertheless enjoy ‘Vader’ while it lasts.
hoatt damn!!!
now this is looking sweet!! got the (almost) shock of my life when i just came here now and saw the big change. looks great… and it works. :D
To those of you keeping track, the Kubrick page is now working again.
Just for the record: I was clear on the idea it was temporary, still — new design is hard not to critique. It’s like going to a gallery and not commenting on the art.
Of course, maybe I’d have been a bigger fan if I’d actually gone to see the latest Star Wars by now, which I have not. I may even wait until it comes out on DVD. gasp!
i wasn’t really waiting for the Kubrick page to be back… but i am wondering what all this business about “K2” is? i tried Googling for it but found nothing – so i’m waiting until your K2 page is back up so i can read all about it.
http://binarybonsai.com/k2/
hi, i posted yesterday as Manager.
Mugget: K2 is the new template that Michael is working on. It stands for Kubrick2 … i think.
Michael: i was reading the “Colophon” and i noticed some php errors on the bottom of it…just to let you know.
btw, seems my comment as “Manager” was fuxored :s … i meant to say i would call the wp_register(); function and it would only show the admin link when the owner of the blog was logged in.
Got a bit tired reading all the comments, but this is killer!
God damn you, Heilemann, for being far better at me than this. (That was a joke…) Finish K2 now.
Tres cool. But dude, where did the Gravatars go?! I guess they were too colourful…
Once again, you’re skill simply astounds me.
One damn cool design my friend!
A pleasant surprise seeing Vader rather than Freya. Maybe you should put Freya into that hot white suit Amedala wore in Ep. II…the one that was slashed mid-riff as she and Anakin and Obi-Wan fought to escape execution from those silly CG creatures. :p
OMG… I loved your site… till now! Why did you do this???
I am sorry. I know that a redesign is a personal affair but if the white (grey) text for the body of posts and comments does not change, I will stop visiting the site. I know you are thinking, who the hell cares if one user stops visiting but I am sure it will be more than that and it will put off new visiters.
The text is horible. On my iBook (15”) and work computer (17” resolution maxed, pc) the text is nearly imposible to read, even when I increase the font size. Who cares about font smoothing, most users have no idea what that is. Accessibility is key, you know that.
Please change it!!
David, three things. First of all, you’re coming on awfully strong against a temporary novelty design on my personal blog.
Secondly if the text is unreadable on your iBook, you need to have it checked out; it is perfectly clear on my Powerbook.
Thirdly, I have brightened up the text.
I like it; and there’s no “I CAN’T READ! MY EYES!” problems here. I do prefer lighter designs, though, but this is just fine.
I just wondered, since I can’t get the contact form to work, if I could obtain a copy of this theme and and the plugins you have embedded so I can have a staring point for my site. (Im a n00b)
Promise me youll release Vader into public domain once you switch again. I want this one so badly.
Mwahahaha! I’m slowly recounstructing this site design in my sandbox, and soon I will have it! A lot of work you say? I don’t have a life you say? Well this is the best layout ever, and whilst I love dark themes, I have such a hard time pulling them off. Michael, you are WAY to good for me. I feel ashamed of my design right now. And that’s a good thing for you.