A List Apart: Comments on: A List Apart 4.0

Posted by: Viking KARWUR

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Nice design... Wish you all the best!

Posted by: Abdelrahman Osama

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

That is *great* Thanks. I love ALA especially _ ALA 4.0 _

Posted by: Matt Thomas

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Congratulations, folks. It's quite lovely. And the move to TextDrive? Pure genius, if I may be so bold.

Posted by: Kevin Navia

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Great job on the site! Onward to the content!

Posted by: Miko Walczuk

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Very, very nice.

Posted by: Alexander Hahn

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

we say in german. plain and good. hoped for an update since may and I really like the new things.

Posted by: Drew McLellan

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Good work guys. It's great to see ALA get a new lease of life. The only problem is deciding which "t-shirt":/store I want most :)

Posted by: Sébastien Guillon

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Looks great and definitely more agreeable to read. Looking forward for what's to come. You guys pulled a nice one again!

Posted by: Faruk Ateş

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

A great read, and this bit really cracked me up: _"Each issue will have its own color scheme. Imagine: Red and green for Christmas; blue underlined links for when Jakob Nielsen finally writes for us."_ I can't wait to see new issues appear, now even more than before.

Posted by: Chris Lloyd

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

It's fantastic to see the content back, I always really enjoy reading your articles. I can't get enough of the illustrations. Great stuff! Now it's probably just me, (and I feel slightly blasphemous saying this) but I find it really difficult focusing on the text in the articles. It would be great to have an option to make the font-size larger for us people with bad eyes and small monitors. :)

Posted by: Sami Niemelä

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Finally ALA gets the classy look the great content deserves. Good work!

Posted by: Jonic Linley

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Great to see your back guys! Does this mean you're taking submissions again?

Posted by: Tony Bittan

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

I had only been thinking about ALA last night in bed (no really), and wondering why it seemed to have died..nice surprise this morning to find it resurrected in all it's new found glory. Now happy as a pig in doo-dah.. Have we now arrived at the days when we can design at fixed width, 1024x768? Not that I personally have a problem with that.

Posted by: Nicole Sullivan

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Great new look, Congratulations!!! I especially like the top left graphic and issue number.

Posted by: Mark Jäger

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Great Job all of you! I really feel at home with the new design. That said only one thing irks me: Did it really have to be Verdana? Lucida would have done the readability-trick too as it did in 3.0.

Posted by: Erwin Heiser

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

A nice, clean design that puts the focus squarely on the content, and a bold move to target larger monitors. Well done, lads!

Posted by: Kev Leitch

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Great work from all concerned. I like how you've rebranded and yet there are aspects which still feel very much like previous incarnations. The illustrations by the way are superb. I'd come here just to see them to be honest. OK, enough sycophancy ;o)

Posted by: Bob Monsour

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

A very nice design indeed. I'm sure we'll start seeing copycats emerge, i.e., that "sincerest form of flattery" thing. This is really nice work.

Posted by: Davide Bocci

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Congratulations!!! This look is fantastic! Great Work.

Posted by: Peter Holloway

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

I visited the States for the first time recently and was struck by how common this word was in use. Here in 'stiff upper lip' Britain we reserve it for things that are truly awesome! Awesome redesign guys!

Posted by: Benjamin Cortes

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

I just wanted to congratulate you guys on a great job. I really appreciate the content you provide and it serves as an inspiration that even tough this is a tough field to work in at the end if you love it you can still be happy in it. Love the new look!

Posted by: Scott Killen

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

I came to see the changes and was instantly hooked... What was supposed to be a quick 5 minute visit, turned into an hour long stay... Great Job!

Posted by: Tony Bittan

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

The Joe Clark article, at least in Firefox, prints 8 pages, only three of which have content - on the first three pages, the content shifts in successive stages to the right, then by page 4 it's gone. In IE6 slightly different, the right edge of the content column simple disappears, so you lose words and parts of words. Please file under "constructive criticism" :)

Posted by: Neil Cadsawan

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

The attention to details on the new design clearly show the passion of everyone involved. Congrats on a great re-design.

Posted by: Mark Eagleton

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

This new design makes me want to read it *ALL* over again.

Posted by: j f

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Can someone explain the thought behind using 0.8125em for the body font-size? Lookin good btw.

Posted by: Richard Leland

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

love what you've done. tight design - simple, easy to read. thanks for running a great site.

Posted by: Chris Harrison

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

The new site looks great. I'm excited to hear that ALA is back! This site has been an invaluable resource for designers. Thank you!

Posted by: Greg Hoy2

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Great work all around. I've had glimpses into how much effort this was, and it was well worth it. Cheers.

Posted by: Todd Lambert

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

The new site has panache! Thrilled to see a favorite site, move forward. Keep up the good work...

Posted by: Thomas Loudon

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Looking forward to An Event Apart near me.

Posted by: Brad Bice

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Every now and again my favorite online magazine is redesigned and I am taken aback by it's beauty in organized thought and aesthetics. Welcome back.

Posted by: Bryan Warhold

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Love what you've done with the site!

Posted by: Yannick Lyn Fatt

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

You guys did a wonderful job. The re-design is great and look forward to all the new articles.

Posted by: Rose Fu

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

A List Apart is now absolutely gorgeous! I always went to it as just a resource, never thinking of it as eyecandy. But now, wow, now it is both. Simplicity is sublime, and this design is sublime. Okay, it's designed for 1024x768 rather than 800x600 (or fluid). But that does not really detract from the design, merely the right of the publisher to cater to the audience. The small touches on the links, the beautiful typography, and the newspaper look all really make this design come together and invite reading. Amazing job to the team that put this together.

Posted by: Peter Wood

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Lovely. Congrats on the redesign. Live comment preview is a nice touch.

Posted by: Dave Rau

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Very fine work! It feels so light and airy—and live preview is amazing! We simply must see some Ruby on Rails writings very soon; some of us get PHP, but Ruby is another beast indeed.

Posted by: Andrew Beeken

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Good to see ALA back with a new look. I think most people have said everything there is to say, but major kudos to the sexy new design - some top class CSS from Eric as usual. I look forward to your future articles with glee and hope that there is any remote chance of you bringing An Event Apart to England any time in the future. All the best

Posted by: Jeffrey Zeldman

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

If you're happy, we're happy. Thanks for all the great feedback so far.

Posted by: Rene Saarsoo

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

I generally like the new fresh look, but... # I don’t really see why everyone in the comments above are so forgiving for the 1024x768 issue? I think it’s a problem. It’s not that I can’t handle viewing on that resolution, but I choose not to. Because the font looks really small on my monitor and I choose to scale the page. Happily Opera manages scaling really well and fit-to-page-width feature removes the horizontal scrollbar problem. # Visited and unvisited links look exactly the same. Why isn’t there a destinction? Not that I would claim all links should be underlined and blue and visited ones purple. But removing the ability to see where you have already been, is simply reducing this site’s usability. Happily again, I can choose to override the visited link colors with my own style sheet. # (Finally a real problem.) When I tried to register and left the not required e-mail field empty, the site told me "This e-mail address is already in use."

Posted by: Rene Saarsoo

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

There should be a *preview button* too, because the live preview isn’t always quite correct. My previous post obviously wasn’t formatted as I expected.

Posted by: Krijn Hoetmer

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Congratulations on the redesign! Looking forward to (the) next Tuesday already.

Posted by: Remi Prevost

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Very, very nice design!

Posted by: Brad Smith

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Congrats on the redesign, and glad to see another big name hosting at "TextDrive":http://www.textdrive.com!

Posted by: Steve Williams

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Five pages of 'love the site' - wow, job well done!

Posted by: Ted Drake

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

I enjoyed reading Joe's tome on the new alistapart. It was nice to see an in-depth story as opposed to a longer diatribe split between several posts as seen on many web sites. I hope this leads a movement towards more in-depth content generation around the web.

Posted by: Maksim Rossomachin

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

That's great! Tnx a lot, Jeffrey and ALA team. Wait to see new issues appear. P.S. And we'll translate them on Russian with pleasure like we done this work before.

Posted by: Patrick Haney

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Hats off to all of you for this new look in ALA 4.0. I never had a problem with the previous layout, but this new look and feel is more professional, more scholarly, and easier to read. I'm looking forward to diving into the new site soon to see what else has changed for the better. Until then, good luck and have fun.

Posted by: tuxedo mask

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Nice redesign!! more readable, comfortable

Posted by: Will Chatham

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

You guys are too cool. The new site is stunning.

Posted by: Alex Kachanov

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

the right side of the ALA page is clipped in print preview in IE

Posted by: Kevin Tamura

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

I've been snooping around the new site and have been enjoying it very much. Great work all around.

Posted by: Andrea Ca'Zorzi

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

I don't think the 1024 width is an issue, as you can read the main text of any article without problems with a 800x600 screen resolution: you only need to scroll if you want to access the small list of topics, advertising, search, etc. That seems ok to me. Very nice indeed.

Posted by: edward dredwerkz

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

not to start a flamefest, but why go with rss 2.0 over rss 1.0? just wondering...i like to get my content in my rss1.0 feeds, and 2.0 doesn't even allow that.

Posted by: daniel skrobak

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Very nice Clean design, welcome back ALA.

Posted by: Jeremy Flint

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Are you going to be pointing the www.alistapart.com to the new site? Just wondering. I went to it a few minutes ago and was greeted with the old design and content. Thought it was all a dream for a minute.

Posted by: Scott Nelle

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

The first thing I felt when I saw it was "this looks like a university site." I'm glad it was partially intentionally, or at least acknowledged. I like it a lot--very handsome. I'm looking forward to a wealth of great articles. As for the t-shirts. I especially enjoy the Count Rugen edition (look it up. ;) xHTML, indeed!

Posted by: Ronen Schmitz

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Congratulations on your beautiful and skilled design work at ala 4.0. But where is the beautiful print style sheet you had in your previous version?

Posted by: Andrey Petrov

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

- Lack of print CSS - Previous, Next links on the very bottom of the page has overlaping with page footer in Opera 8.02 (7 and even 6 are Ok).

Posted by: edward dredwerkz

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

nice rugen comment! one other small quibble: "markdown":http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/ does a better job than textile at translating text to html...

Posted by: Justin Goodlett

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Again, very slick. Very...very! Always finding a voice and this is the loudest yet. Congrats on the re-launch of something big and necessary.

Posted by: Nikolay Spassov

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

The new ALA is really nice! Glad to see it updated again. ;-)

Posted by: Steven She

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Love the new layout... very minimal, but also very classy. I miss ALA, but no longer ;)! I too prefer Markdown over Textile, however, they both work just as well.

Posted by: Steven She

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Noticed that the User Name links, strips out the slashes '/' from the URI's of users.

Posted by: Will Kessel

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

You folks all did an excellent job! Nice, clean feeling! You rock!

Posted by: Roberlan Borges Paresqui

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Really nice design, amazing. Congratulations, parabéns!

Posted by: Neil Lee

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Beautiful work, all. Damn impressive and inspirational, as a good redesign of a beloved resource should be.

Posted by: Rob Weychert

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

It's great to see ALA back in action, and that pleasure is made that much greater by the tremendous improvements that have been made, aesthetically and structurally. Congrats to the whole team; you've done a superb job!

Posted by: Jee Emu

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

All i can say is super!

Posted by: John Serris

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Not bad at all guys! Good to have ALA back again

Posted by: Greg Reimer

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

My resolution is 1024x768, but like so many I surf with my sidebar open, so count me in as another detractor for the widescreen fixed width design. I actually wouldn't complain, except that this design wastes a lot of space on the left just to make room for the logo. Kind of goes against good design sensibility, doesn't it?

Posted by: Vasil Dinkov

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

I like the new visual design and especially the mild colors. However, I wouldn't call this wide fixed-width layout good/modern.

Posted by: John Altwood

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Love the new design, but I note that your older articles no longer have their discussions available. This is rather irritating since I have some of those pages bookmarked (oh, and the bookmarks don't work either!) where people have posted some extremely useful information and web links. Is there any chance that these will return? And if not, are all the comments currently being made destined for binary oblivion?

Posted by: Charles Belov

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Nice open design, and nice that it's friendly to my 800 x 600 monitor as well for reading the articles themselves. Is Textile fully working? I tried "h1." at the beginning of a line and it didn't render as

: h1. This is supposed to be H1 text, but isn't in the preview. and bold via asterisks doesn't work if the last character before the second asterisk is punctuation, like this, which means I have to violate the rule that bold styling is supposed to carry over to the immediately following punctuation.

Posted by: Charles Belov

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

However, I see they both work once posted. The problem is only with the preview.

Posted by: Meryl K. Evans

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Old discussions should _hopefully_ return in the near future. As you can imagine the task of migrating all the old issue content was a huge undertaking, and the comments for those articles are even more numerous and expansive. But, we know about it, as well as many other hiccups. You will just have to trust we are on the job :D _- your friendly neighborhood designer_

Posted by: Adrian Rinehart-Balfe

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Just lovin' the new look, so much easier to read. Congrats to all on what must have been a huge undertaking, what with moving host at the same time and all.

Posted by: James Thomas

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Much respect, and I love the style of the layout. My only gripe is that with all the CSS experts on staff, you still put out a static width layout that doesn't even work on 800x600... Come on guys, you can try harder than that. Much love!

Posted by: Maksim Rossomachin

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Subj. Look at the Print Preview. Right side of a page cutted.

Posted by: Patrick Larson

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

I too like the muted color scheme and the general order and dynamism of the new ALA. I do however agree with several of the posters about the fixed width.

Posted by: H L

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

The new design is okay, but I find it pretty hard to read compared to the old one. Not really sure what you meant by lacked soul; I had no problem with it, heck, I preferred it.

Posted by: Eric Lim

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Beautiful design here, guys. The internet went down at my work today, and the entry on ALA version 4.0 was the last thing open on my browser, so I spent the whole day just staring at it and looking it over. A coworker even came by to look and loved the design as well. I'll be ordering the XHTML shirt now as a slap in the face at all the Flash designers at my work. Keep up the inspiring designs and articles.

Posted by: Enrique Borredá

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Thumbs up for all the design, the effort in bringing back a 'kinda defunct' ALA (now i know why), and the work to come, to make all archive articles avaliable to us on this new layout and design. I don't know how long i've been reading ALA now, but I really see this space as one of the most representative websites in my not-so-short career into website development. Keep the good work guys, you are really appreciated by the whole of us!!

Posted by: Martin Olsson

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

The new design is spiffy, but what really interests me is the new publishing platform using Ruby on Rails. I'm amazed no one has commented on this yet? I look forward to an in-depth article on the technology behind ALA 4.0, and my mouth waters at the thought of peeking at the code behind the scenes. Will the platform be open sourced?

Posted by: Matthew Blest

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Just when I thought the web was getting 'stale' and nothing new was happening and every page was looking the same, along comes ALA (again). Love the new design, classy, clean design, it just sneaked up on us.

Posted by: Bastian Spanneberg

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

absolutely great re-design. really love it and lookin' forward for upcoming new content. best wishes from germany!

Posted by: Luke Bosman

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

As one who has recently taken to browsing sites such as this with NetNewsWire, I am disappointed to find that I need to shrink my sidebar in order to read the site. Come on folks! You people taught me how to design an effective liquid layout. And now you've cocked it up. Still, it's great to be see some new content!

Posted by: Ross Bruniges

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Very nice indeed - I have been wondering what had been going on with ALA after not seeing an update for a while! Liking the new design, looks almost roman to me with the reefs and stuff and nice cool colours. Another site gets redone in a liquid layout - with stuffandnonsense doing the same is this how we are going now? We have just redesigned to a fixed width!

Posted by: Simon Jones

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

great design guys, brave departure from the old style. i second the calls for a print style sheet. for those with woes over 800x600 you could probably offer an alternative style sheet which moves the masthead logo to the top above the nav. The main 3 cols seem to fit nicely within an 800 wide window, if you wanted them to... si

Posted by: David Beale

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

I'm I the only one who prefers the old style site? Guess you can't please everyone :-) I have to agree with all the comments questioning the fixed 1024×768 display. I feel this site should be a flagship for the best practice that is talked about in it's articles.

Posted by: Jeffrey Allen

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

I really like the new design. I am also glad to see new stuff being added to the ALA feeds. I've really grown to miss the regular updates as I follow the ALA feed pretty close and hadn't seen anything new in a while. Now I know why. Here's wishing you a bigger, better, brighter future. Keep up the great work.

Posted by: Ron van den Boogaard

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

As much as I like all the improved functionality and admire the excellent, I dislike the design. It is 2005, not 19.. whatever. Real shame that such a great opportunity is missed.

Posted by: Mazza Bodwin

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Again don't wanna dampen the joy but the design only works at full screen (1024 by 768). I only use full screen when working in applications that require my full attention. Browsing the web lends it self to multi-tasking & multi screens (not just multi tabs in Firefox) - at full screen the website feels as though it is imposing itself on my desktop and it is far too easy for my boss to spot! Even in this day of larger screen resolution I still advocate designing websites to the old 800 * 600 or getting rid of fixed widths. Bigger is not always better.

Posted by: Alex Walker

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Nice to see an update to a site that helped me think about web standards and css in a new way when I first started out in the web development business, but like recent articles, somehow it is unfulfilling and doesn't grab me like the designs that Dan Benjamin, Dan Cederholm, 37 Signals and the Coudal Partners produce. Nevertheless, this site remains a regular on my bookmark list. P.S. It also does work well on my pocket pc - something I didn't expect for a revamped site.

Posted by: Kim Leidich

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

The new design is just lovely!

Posted by: Chris Hunt

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Content is King, right? And this site's content is at least an Emperor, so I can forgive it much in the layout department. It's easy on the eye, only marginally afflicted by the "tiny text disease" contemporary designers are prey to, and still usable when not full screen without excessive horizontal scrolling. A style switcher would be nice though. The absence of a print stylesheet (or equivalent) is a surprise, given that it was Eric's article on here that got many of us to abandon the old "printer-friendly version" way of doing things. I'm assuming that's work in progress. What I'd really like to do is control how many comments are displayed per page - articles often trigger good discussions, but I find paging through the comments ten at a time can be a real pain. I'd rather have the option of loading the whole lot at once, or at least getting them in bigger portions.

Posted by: Kathy Marks

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

So glad you're back. I love the new design--fresh yet classy. The article by Jim Coudal was terrific. Looking forward to Tuesdays.

Posted by: Jeremy Epstein

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Is it just me, or does the colour scheme in this first issue of ALA 4.0 reek of "zeldman.com":http://zeldman.com/ ? I'm really not impressed with the whole musty brown look for this issue - it makes ALA look like a wine-tasting site instead of a web design site - and personally I'm glad that the colours will be changing in each issue. I hope that ALA 4.0 redeems itself by looking a bit more modern and cutting-edge in the next issue. I really loved ALA 3.0, and I'm very sorry to see it go. I disagree with Jeffrey Zeldman's criticism of it as "??generic??" and "??lacking soul??". I thought it was quite the opposite: it was sleek, innovative, and full of character. I think that those criticisms are more valid for this new incarnation, than for the old one. Is there any way to look at the site (or at least some pages of it) in the old design? Has ALA 3.0 been archived somewhere, to satisfy those of us that are pining for it? I'm not impressed with: the lack of support for low-res and / or small-screen users; the removal of the beautiful paintings from the banner; and the continued use of a fixed-width design (particularly now that the banner paintings are gone - using em's to specify the width would be more plausible now). But most of all, I just don't think the new design suits ALA: it's more upmarket, but the 'upmarket' look is bordering on snobbery, and this could turn away the geek audience that has always been a significant part of ALA's readership. Then again, this new live comment preview is _really cool!_

Posted by: Norman Wingrove

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

While quite liking the new design, I find the main text column too wide for comfort. It would be less tirihg to read if it were somewhat narrower. I have tried zooming-in with Firefox but that spoils the overall appearance of the page -- by the time the column is the right width, the text is becoming unaesthetically large. I have no problem with fixed width layouts; in fact I detest liquid designs because they make the long-line problem even worse. Still, it's good to have you back!

Posted by: Dave Weeks

2010-03-09T10:00:34+00:00

Nice job on the redesign. I've learned a lot from reading this site over the years. Thanks for all your efforts.