Redesign 2007

The 2007 redesign has come early, while the 2006 redesign came late. The 2006 redesign wasn't so well received, and now I know why. I have to be sick when I redesign. I caught a cold earlier this week and used the opportunity to redesign.

This design has more of a mature Web 2.0 feel rather than the 2006 design that just rounded corners and used graidents for the sake of it. I've blended common Web 2.0 design elements with the old fashioned ABS design to create the current look.

As usual, you can still browse using the old design if you wish.

Problems to address in the redesign.

The old design was too dark. Too much use of black and dark gradients caused people with old CRT monitors to complain.

People complained of colours clashing, and this came out of a bad attempt to "brighten" up the site with colour. This time around I used more grey to brighten up the site rather than colours. Designers should make note of this. Electronic equipment with a grey base always sells better in pawn shows than the plain black models. Black is making a comeback in the market, but it has to be glossy this time around. When it comes to Web design, you can use image filters to achieve that effect.

The continuous header is gone!

OH NOES! The current header is actually supposed to be temporary. I've made it big with a lot of blank space. I want visitors to be able to submit custom headers or patterns in the background of the current header. 776px by 173px if you are interested, and I'll send a large sheepy logo on request. I'll take care of the gradient edges, so don't wory about that. Maybe I can even impose the old ABS community-created header into the new header if that is missed.

New Sections

The ABS Forum members had the first shot of getting them, but I didn't mention there are only 300 ABS T-Shirts created, so they were in no rush to order. I made sure to order T-Shirts with very high quality material. The first people who order are welcome to model the shirt for the Store section.

I hid the new ABS Map in the forums for about a year, and have been keeping my Myspace page semi-secret. They are now in the Community section, with a new flash-based map. Feel free to add yourself to both sections.

I've also added a "Featured" area on the main page. I'll change what shows up in there every once in a while, but it should be useful for uncovering old files for new visitors.

This design has been tested on IE6, Firefox 2 and Opera 9 so far. Feel free to submit bug reports.

January 26, 2007

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