Rearranging the website

[julesjones]

My website's been neglected for far too long, so I thought I'd Do Something about it. I need to do some actual updates, but the first thing I've done today is what might look like a trivial change to the index page. Please play spot the difference and tell me which one you prefer:

ETA: consensus was that the third option was best, so I've switched to that and shortened it even more.

Something I did a while back was add the word count to the main page for one of the books. The plan was to do this for all the books if I could get it looking reasonably uncluttered, but I haven't got around to doing it yet. So does this look too horribly cluttered?

http://www.julesjones.com/fiction/details/promisestokeep.html

And I'd fiddled with the index bar on the Main page to add "This page:" to the row of links for content on the page itself and related pages, to help distinguish it from the row of top-level links to other sections of the site:

http://www.julesjones.com/main.html

Any comments?

Comments

[hafren.livejournal.com]

Please play spot the difference and tell me which one you prefer:

Even by putting 2 windows up next to each other and looking at both at once, I can't spot the difference...

[julesjones]

Good.

What I did was remove the "recently published", "just out" tags from the book covers, add a few words to the descriptive text above, and spilt up the text into more paragraphs to make things clearer.

The text tags on the book covers were there to make things easier for disabled users, and to make it easier for everyone to spot when something changed status from "forthcoming" to "now out". But they were untidy looking, and did horrible things to the page layout when the page was viewed in a small window. I've decided that they're more trouble than they're worth, and removed them.

[fiona-glass.livejournal.com]

The second one is a little more spaced out, isn't it? With a break before the explanation about the book covers. I think that makes it easier to spot what's what on the page, but otoh the nav bar at the bottom of the page is then off the screen... Hmmm. *scratches head* :)

[julesjones]

See above for what I did. Is this any better for the navbar?
http://www.julesjones.com/test_index2.html

I may just cut out the "exit to Google" text -- I think at this point people should know how to get out of a warning page.

[fiona-glass.livejournal.com]

Erm, no, I'm afraid it still falls off the bottom.

And I think anyone who doesn't know how to hit the 'back' button shouldn't have their own computer, frankly. :D

[julesjones]

I originally started building the site in 2002, after I sold my first short. And back then it was still common to have a "boss key" link because there were a lot of newbies who *didn't* know how to hit the back button. :-) But I really don't think it's necessary nowadays.

I'll redo the text to make it shorter, but if you can see enough of the book covers to click on, it'll do for now. Serious editing of the welcome text can wait until I'm feeling more with it, as there's a link to the main page in the body of the text.

Speaking of which, I've just done a serious prune of the main page. It's still utilitarian, but at least it's a bit tidier.

[fiona-glass.livejournal.com]

Yup, the book covers show up just fine. It's only the text links at the bottom that are cut off.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I'm all for keeping things simple, but I found your site a bit *too* bare-bones for my taste. The problem with main.html is that once you get beyond the covers, you're faced with a long list of text, peppered with links, and nothing to break them up. It's hard to read, and it's hard to work out what is important.

I think you need to be more radical in your approach to redesign. You're polishing; you need a rewrite.

[julesjones]

I know I need a rewrite. :-( But I need to sit down and spend some time thinking about it. In the meantime, I need to upload some updates, and fix a couple of really obvious things like the index page while I'm at it. While trying not to break anything in the meantime...

[lisabea.livejournal.com]

Jules I have to agree. The further into the site, the more utilitarian. It needs to be trimmed.

Of course, please consider the source here: I am she of the nekkid hot mens and LOL cats...

[julesjones]

Hey, I like the nekkid men and locats. :-)

But the site's five or six years old now, and... um... I now have 14 titles at Loose Id and a selection of short stories, and the site's creaking at the seams. I think the basic site structure is still okay for the moment, but I really need to do some work on the layout. Time to learn some CSS...

[julesjones]

Main page any better now? It's still utilitarian, but I've pruned it heavily. (Making it pretty can wait -- I need to tackle the basic structure and info first.)

http://www.julesjones.com/main.html

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I like the ones where the book pics are higher up the page so they appear on the first screen without scrolling.

[julesjones]

Thanks. I'm aiming for something where it's all on the first screen for anything bigger than a VGA display.

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

I like the third one: it pretty much fits one screen, so I don't have to scroll down and see if I'm missing something important.

[julesjones]

That's what I'm after --trying to find a balance between it being one screen for most people, but still *enough* information for people to decide whether to click through.