It’s been just about a year since the v9 design. You know what that means! Redesign time! This is, most definitely, the biggest overhaul yet. Not that you won’t recognize it. There is a fresh coat of paint, but all the old stuff is there.

The Kickstarter Made It Happen

When I struck off on my own, I knew I wanted to make a go at making CSS-Tricks more of a full time gig. Right away, redesigning the site toward that goal seemed like a good idea. But why do that hidden away in my room? I love the idea of working in public and that’s exactly the kind of work CSS-Tricks is made from. So I thought I’d turn on my microphone and screencast the whole process. Then I’d make those videos available to purchase or subscribe to. To validate it was a good idea, I put up a Kickstarter.

It went pretty well :).

Now I’m coming through with my promise to the backers. The videos are available in a new area of the site called The Lodge of which Kickstarters will get access to and everyone else can purchase access to if you’d like.

Screenshot

If you’re reading this anywhere other than css-tricks.com, I encourage you to jump over and look around. But here’s a screenshot of the homepage for the feed readers:

This design and all previous ones are screenshot for posterity here.

See a problem with the design?

I’m going to try something new. I’d like it if you could open a new issue on an otherwise-blank GitHub repo when you find a bug or any other problem with the new design. The GitHub issue tracker is awesome and perfect for publicly tracking bugs.

Report Issue in Issue Tracker

Comments

For a long time I’ve had a system here of curating comments. It’s a simple thing. Spam I delete. Not-very-useful comments I bury. Awesome comments I feature. You can read more about it.

In the v9 design, I never got around to a good style for buried comments. Featured comments got a gold star. In this new design buried comments are more obvious (they are squat and fade out). Featured comments have a yellow stripe across the top.

I’m not trying to be mean to people who’s comments I bury, I’m trying to be respectful to everyone else who’s time is being spent on my website. Comments like “Nice post!” often aren’t actually spam, but also aren’t useful to anyone. If I discourage those kind of posts by doing this, I’m OK with that.

New Stuff

The Lodge is the biggest new thing.

There are a few new Deals on the Deals page (if you have one to offer, hit me up). Not a lot of brand new stuff really. New content will be coming a lot faster now that the redesign is “done.” I’ll be finishing the Almanac for real, posting tons to the Gallery, shooting new screencasts, and blogging up a storm.

Illustrations

I think the new design is worth exploring just to see the custom header illustrations. Lovely work all around by Reagan Ray, Meg Hunt, John Neiner, Giovanni DiFeterici, Erica Sirotich, Nick Sirotich, and Alyssa Nassner.

Little Easter egg: hover over any custom header for about 5 seconds and a link to the illustrator will pop up.

It’s Not Over

One of the beautiful parts about the web is that it’s ever-changing. It doesn’t have the finality of print design. I have a huge list of things I want to do on this site, from the tiny to the huge. Look forward to this design morphing over time. I’m sure it will be quite a bit different than it is today by the time v11 is a sparkle in my eye.