You’ll notice today that the look and feel of the blog has changed. You’ll see a new, cleaner interface and some changes and improvements to the layout. These have been carried out by digital design agency Reading Room.
Just for today, however, you’ll have to bear with us as the implementation means things will move around a bit. The site will hopefully settle down by the end of the day, so if things aren’t quite right, our apologies!
This re-launch also marks another auspicious event – the project is no longer in Beta but is now a fully-fledged live blog! Since we launched Lords of the Blog, the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive from all sides so this day marks a major milestone for us all.
We hope that you find the new layout a little friendlier and more usable!
Andy Williamson, Hansard Society
I hope this isn’t a precursor to Lords reform!
This has been a smooth transition – surely no one could confuse it with Lords reform 😉
To stay in tune with time, change is inevitable. Congratulations to the team. Hope to see better of this blog with every passing day! Cheers!
So where’s YOUR photo Andy?
Missing! I think we’ll change this to use the Hansard Society logo though, it’s easier on the eye!
“This re-launch also marks another auspicious event – the project is no longer in Beta but is now a fully-fledged live blog! ” I have no idea what this means, but it sounds good..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8128136.stm
Hi Bedd,
I gather it’s a geek term for ‘in development’.
Congratulations on new, clean & very readable layout.
Stylish and easy. Good work on the feeds.
Wow the ‘new coat of paint’ is fantasitic!! It makes the whole page so much more engaging- a job well done!!
Hey, now this is more like it! The way the speakers are highlighted in the design’s grid is very well done, good photos too.
The use of a very similar font to the Keep Calm and Carry On posters is a good wheeze. Plus, it’s the red of the benches in the Lords and the red of that poster, good decision.
However, I do have a bone to pick with Hansard: a while ago I sent in a design, but despite repeated e-mails to Hansard never received a reply!
Am not grousing that you used this design, it’s very good, nor do I have a problem with rejection. What I take issue with is never even receiving a reply. Not even thanks, but no-thanks. I still don’t know if you even received the e-mails!
So, what happened Andy? 🙂
Andy it seems is a man of impeccable etiquette.
On blogs/forums personal emails are frowned upon unless the email is of a personal nature. In such cases mention of the email on the blog is a breach of privacy.
However, if something is posted on the blog then its entirely at the discretion of the owner as to whether they reply or not.
Hansard; never been the same since it got nationalised last century. Anybody having problems with Firefox 3.5? The name and email is not being saved as it used to be, presumably by cookie. Also, is there a post pending banner in use anymore?
Senex: I’m not sure I understand your point old chap. The e-mail to contact Hansard was given to me as a way to contact them, and since the only party in the e-mail conversation was me, I don’t see how breaching my own privacy is a problem! Anyway, perhaps you’re being sarcastic, it’s a bit difficult to find out when all we’ve got is text.
The missing Name and Email information could be because the site has moved to lordsoftheblog.net instead of lordsoftheblog.wordpress.com They seem to be saving for me after entering them again (cookies don’t work across different domains).
Site looks alright to me in Firefox 3.5, and Opera 10b as well, what exact problem(s) are you seeing?
On the subject of privacy, I consulted the Oracle at Delphi nowadays known as go-ogle, the entrails of the subject were laid out before me but I only saw a bag of worms.
If blog owners were to readily accept emails on topics related to a blog then they would quickly be overwhelmed. The place to voice things is on the blog itself.
However, if you were to send Andy an email asking what shampoo he uses because you like the look of his hair then this would be an entirely private matter. If you were then to relate this to us on the blog, well why would you make known to the world at large what is a private matter?
Once we begin to erode the boundaries of privacy governments/organisations will expect us to offer up everything to them on the basis that we do not need privacy because nobody values it anymore.
Liam – we did receive your suggestions for a new layout. Sorry if you never heard back from us, not sure why. You can rest assured though that your ideas weren’t ignored; we get a lot of feedback and suggestions on the look, feel and functionality of the blog and all of them went into the mix during the redesign process, as did input from the bloggers themselves.
Andy
Thanks for the response Andy. I was just being grumpy about never having received a reply. 🙂
Back to the design itself, blockquote/quote tags could do with some styling:
This is a test quote
Other than that little niggle, everything looks spiffy! 🙂
Andy have emoticons/smileys been disabled here now as they’ve stopped being converted to images for me since the upgrade?
Croft – Nothing’s been changed intentionally 🙂 I’ll have a look around and see if the theme update has caused this. Can’t think why it would have though – Andy
That was easy… ‘convert emoticons’ had somehow got turned off. No idea why and hope I’ve not stuffed something else up by turning it. Fingers crossed…
Ok, thanks they have now appeared although on Firefox 3.5 and even firing up satan’s very own browser (IE 8) they seem to be showing up on the start of the line not at the end as you would expect. Is that just me or is everyone else seeing that?
In FF 3.5 the emoticon locates itself between the word Firefox and 3.5. In IE6 an indentation appears after the word ‘be’ and the emoticon sits between 2 lines beginning with ‘Showing’ and ‘expect’
The Name and email boxes are yellow in IE6 but white in FF.
In IE6 the post is shown without a yellow ‘awaiting moderation’ banner and the name and email are remembered. The yellow boxes and post do not appear in FF. It could be my ad blocker, need to test this.
In IE6 the banner has been replaced by the sentence ‘Your comment is awaiting moderation’ black lettering on a white background. This appears under the users handle as opposed to the more sensible location at the end of thread which was the case in the beta.
In IE6 the subscribe to checkbox does not appear under the post button but does so in FF.
Senex,
Thanks for the comments, I’ll pass them on our technical people. Whether it will be deemed to be worthwhile ensuring full backwards compatibility with IE6, I don’t know.
Matt Korris
Hansard Society