I’ve pushed the original post beyond the readme tag because I’ve something to announce – the new teddY-risatioNâ„¢ Epsilon WordPress theme has just been released (for personal use, that is). I initially wanted to take my own sweet time to complete the styling part by this weekend, but I couldn’t pull myself away from my laptop so I ended up bringing forward the release date by 4 days!
Here’s a list of changes from the previous theme, teddY-risatioNâ„¢ Delta:
Minimalism – ‘Less is Better‘
Very apparent. This is one of the biggest changes that might not go down with everyone – I was initially frustrated by the lack of colours (unlike the previous theme, it was colourful!) and it’s over-simplistic appearance. However, I told myself that I really had to get serious with the minimalistic taste of mine. I wanted to incorporate this minimalistic feeling in my themes long ago, but as the design and coding process departed from my initial planning, they turned into colourful ones instead of being clean, simple and yet elegant.
I’ve ditched the whole coloured navigation bar, and opted for cleaner and easier text-based header navigation. The background was gradiented so that I don’t bore you with bland, solid colours. Gradients also add a third-dimension to your layout – they give an impression of depth and distance.
Sleek Searchforms
This is when you’ll start shouting, You’ve stolen the damn Apple’s design! Yep, the styling of the search form (at your top right hand corner) is inspired by the one on Apple’s website as well as on the Safari browser. However, the coding behind the form is different – what I dig about Apple’s search form is it’s sleek appearance.
There is this famous bug in Internet Explorer (and it’s still there in IE7!!!) is that the background of an input field will scroll along with the text if you’ve typed beyond the width of the input field – even when you’ve ‘fixed’ the background position. A workaround will be giving the <form> element the background image, while making the background of the <input> field to be transparent.
Un-expandable/collapsible Sidebars
One of the biggest disadvantage of the expandable/collapsible sidebars in the previous theme (made possible by Scriptaculous) is that there isn’t enough visual cues to let visitors know that they are actually what they are (collapsible and expandable). The effect was disasterous – first time visitors will find my navigation horribly puzzling and disorienting. So for this time, goodbye to those fancy sidebars and I’ve settled for the plain old simple design.
Cross Browser Compatibility
teddY-risatioNâ„¢ Epsilon has been tested on Mozilla Firefox 2, Internet Explorer 7 and Safari 3. My house computer burnt a hole in the graphic card so I have no access to Internet Explorer 6 yet, so be patient with the weird image placements and design faults if you’re browsing with dear IE6.
Easy on dialup users
Total size of images included in this theme is around 88kb. Still a little huge for a theme that takes pride of its minimalistic appeal, but it’s three times better than the previous one – a whooping 330kb for teddY-risatioNâ„¢ Delta. Although most of my visitors are broadband users, there are still a fraction who are faithful dailup users.
What’s after the jump:
- The brand new iPhone 3G
- Firefox Download Day!
- New Theme Coming Up? (In fact, it already had! It’s outdated)
The first, and freshest tech news will be the brand new 3G iPhone. I bet there’s so much hype out there that there’ll be at least a million blog posts being tagged with iPhone-related jargons. And because of the expectation that the whole Internet will be boiling and frothing over the whole new Apple iPhone release, Twitter has just decided to temporarily snuff out all crucial links (namely, Replies, Archive and Everyone, which got me figuring why is it still called Twitter) to avoid another big hoohaa of a database crash.
Anyway, it’s really something worth celebrating because Apple is finally embracing the beloved 3G technology (unlike the first generation which left out a few important features like 3G). And what really puzzles me is that the new generation of iPhone comes with a, guess what, scientific calculator! Wow, now Steve Jobs is planning to bring his iPhone into classrooms! This is so far the cutest part of the new generation I think :) too bad it doesn’t double as a graphing calculator or does that tricky differentiation or integration calculations for you, but it’s not too bad either!
And there’s another exciting tech news to be, well, excited about: Mozilla Firefox 3 Download Day!
Yep, you didn’t hear it wrongly. Mozilla Firefox 3 wants to snag a place in the Guinness Book of Record for the most software downloaded in a span of 24 hours… with your help. Well it’s actually easy – you just need to pledge your help by submitting your email so that they’ll inform you when you can start flooding the download link :razz: being a satisfied user of the current Firefox 2, I have no reason why I should boycott this event.
On a side note, I have another thing that might make you excited :) I’m designing another new WordPress theme for my blog.
*Note: This is a sneak preview! Layout is still quite tentative.
And for this time, I’m getting serious with my thirst of minimalistic design. No more fancy graphics (so far, total weight of images used is less than 70kb, means going easy on dialup users!) and dazzling colours – I’ll stick to the plan, simply blue with a touch of Web2.0 feeling. I’m taking this project easy this time – unlike the current theme teddY-risatioNâ„¢ Delta, I’m not going rush myself like a madman to complete a functional theme in 3 days (yea, this theme was partly rush work). Maybe by this weekend the theme will be up! Ive been working on it since Monday, so it’ll be about a week to get the whole thing done.
In case you’re wondering which theme did I started off working on, it’s actually the latest version of Sandbox theme by Plaintxt.org – I simply love this theme because of it’s neat semantics, flexibility (comes with a variety of layouts, from one to three column ones) and customisability (the stylesheet becomes your playground!). Hang in there folks!
woohoo…good specs and half the price eh?…let see how much it ends up when it arrives at our shore :cool:
haha, i’m the first one to comment on your new theme! Wee~~ I was trying to read the old post, when all I could see was ‘the author is trying to tweak the theme” page. Haha, I’m glad I came back, cause as always, I have some comments.
I can’t comment much on the phone since it’s way out of my range.
I already signed up for the download day before this too. From what i remembered, Brunei had a pitiful 10+. And the country wasn’t even visible without zooming haha.
Haha, finally till the theme. Minimalistic is definitely a brand new change. I will miss the bright colours, but this isn’t half bad. I’m okay with the header or the footer. I’d have to nitpick with the sidebar though. The categories part especially just seems like a chunk of words. A bit too compact, too many words. I guess, graphics used to separate the words a bit without a big obvious gap.
But well, other than, the new theme fits fine. with some taking used to, of course.
Check out jason’s last blog post: After the Competition
waaaa…………………pls teach me…………CSS :oops:
Check out razifmustapha’s last blog post: Update laju-laju
good theme this is. will you release this theme for public use?
Check out uner’s last blog post: kecewa
NICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! you’re getting so good at this!!! :mrgreen:
Check out Michelle’s last blog post: Love
omg :razz:
Check out nasrul’s last blog post: I’m a PHP-Lover
My first thought upon seeing this theme was, “Ack! Rainbow all gone!” LOL! But I am really digging the clean and simple look. Teddy, you have outdone yourself once again! The theme is amazing and you did a wonderful job. Just wondering, have you thought of opening the option of a theme changer on your site? Then again, that might defeat the purpose of the Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta sequence you have here.
You are so lucky that you have been re-designing your weblog. I am cooking up a summer theme for my photoblog, but with dissertation, portfolio and graduation/convocation, I have been preoccupied!
Other than that, I hope that you are well! =D Take care!
Check out Id’s last blog post: Up Close, We’re All Flawed.
me wanna 3 column. hehe :mrgreen:
Check out KNizam’s last blog post: EURO 2008 – Czech Republic vs Portugal @ 2320hrs & @ Switzerland vs Turkey 0215hrs
Slick dude. Keep up the good work!
Im changing my theme. Its too dark and its killing my eyes.
Check out NoktahHitam’s last blog post: Breakfast With Grandpa
although this is more simple compared to the previous one, it is absolutely stunning! Your designing skills are no doubt amazing!! :mrgreen: Even without the colourful buttons, i think this makes it easier for me to read, i hope you don’t mind about that haha, my eyes abit the blur sometimes. :razz:
Check out Melissa’s last blog post: My Baby Pongo Boy
@med
Yea I guess that’s what will make iPhone very popular in the US, Europe and certain parts of Asia in the near future. MYR699+ for an iPhone? Some other mobile phones in Malaysia are even more expensive than the US price of iPhone. Singapore will be part of the Asian tour, but sadly, Malaysia is out of the list, which is pretty much expected.
@jason
Thank you! So far Firefox users that have pledged their help in Southeast Asia has been ballooning pretty quickly. Anyway it’s understandable that Southeast Asia might have a lower count because many of us are still so stuck on to the evil IE!
For the theme, thanks for the suggestions! I’ve resized the fonts in the sidebar appropriately, as well as increased the line height to make them appear less cluttered. I understand how painful it is to read a clump of text! It’s horrible.
@razifmustapha
Actually CSS is pretty easy to learn! If you have any queries regarding basic CSS, feel free to contact me – I’ll be more than happy to help.
@uner
I will most probably not be releasing it, unless there is a huge demand for it. However, if you’re interested in getting the theme for personal use, I will give it to you.
@Michelle
Thanks! :mrgreen: nah, you’re better at it! Do you know that you’re the first designer who motivated me to learn more about CSS and XHTML? Without you, I won’t be able to even write a simple CSS stylesheet or wrap my head around a XHTML code! Teehee.
@nasrul
OMGGGGG! Haha!
@Id
Actually, I was quite reluctant to give up teddY-risation™ Delta too because I love the rainbow-coloured header navigation icons. I’ve been dreaming about designing a minimalistis WordPress theme a long time ago, but I realised today that you’re right – I’m a person who pays a lot of attention to detail and so I think the minimalist design will not really be my cup of tea. But anyway, thanks for the complements!
Speaking of a theme switcher, I actually have the plugin installed but I’ve never activated it. The reason behind that is because I’m lazy *flashes weak smile* to make sure that every theme in the list has the theme swither code installed. Plus, each theme gets successively compatibly with WordPress 2.5 and the old ones are probably still working on invalid CSS and XHTML. I might consider this option though, it depends whether I have the time for it or not. Theme switcher doesn’t quite defeat the purpose of the Greek alphabet naming system of the theme – in fact, it complements them :razz:
I hope you’ll get your portfolio done soon! Designing a theme is not easy, really! Good luck!
@KNizam
I’ve tried 3-column themes because but since I’ve posting images up to 600px in width, it’s hard to accomodate two sidebars in a standard 1024px wide screen. With the scrollbars at the side, the maximum width will be 960px… not enought space :cry:
@NoktahHitam
Thanks! Naw don’t say that! Your theme suits your blog very well in fact! Anyway, good luck with the redesign!
@Melissa
Yea it’s a lot (in fact, I think it’s way too much!) simpler than the previous theme. The buttons are good visual cues but then if I use plain text, the blog will load a little bit faster, heheh.