I’m a bit late in calling attention to this, but it looks like I got my name on a Chinese crayon. Well, a Sinocidal crayon, anyway.
What they call “John Pasden Gator Green” is affectionately (?) referred to by my friends as “Sinosplice Green,” or, to the slightly nerdier, #336633.
I’ve been pondering a redesign lately. I won’t have time to do it until late summer, but I’m thinking… Less green. More white. More space. Wider than 800 pixels.
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Huh? I think all your readers opt for the “Chunky Salsa” option, John.
Why not if you have time…. don’t jump on a belated Web 2.0 bandwagon though, with wide open white spaces, cheeky colored buttons and “alpha” and “beta” stickers everywhere. That stuff is getting old already.
Then again….. “Sinosplicr”…. wouldn’t that give the site a new turn?
Yea personally I am all about the chunky salsa, Any re-design has to keep it alive…
lol@ben
I’ve read Sinosplice since I first arrived in China (around 2005). It was a useful intorduction to many things. Although I live far from Shanghai, certain themes and topics were a great introduction in a site of the China webosphere that was far less populated than it is just 1.5 years later.
And my point? The green interface was always associated with Sinosplice. It is yours, it is unique. If I see the style of the page I know it is yours and I know what to expect within a fraction of a second. It’s an association with a personality. While making it wider would be cool, bear in mind that the ‘uniqueness’ sinosplice has in my eyes may be dimninished by using a somewhat faceless template with a could of custom icoms here and there.
Slashdot has a re-design recently. The idea was not to change the basics of the site, but to add AJAX menu drop-downs, better corners, colour contrasts, etc. It retained the original identity of the site while making it much more attractive.
Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Next thing you know, you’ll be endorsing hand-held translators named after you on TV and in life-size cardboard form in Xinhua Bookstores!
Re: wider: I admire web pages that display well in any size window. Furthermore, as it is, some of your text overflows its div because I force my browser to never use font sizes lower than 14. However I can put up with spilled text much more willingly than a wide window.
I second Alex’s post: add some improvements, but keep the recognizable greenness. It has become “yours”.
Thanks for the feedback, guys. It never really occurred to me that anyone other than me might get attached to this design or color scheme. Good to know!
Also, changing less means less work for me, which I do like…
I added “Frostbite Purple” to the list of crayons. Remember the waitresses and servers at the Smokehouse that lived by the basketball courts? Their housing was a 20×10 room with bunkbeds and no heat, just concrete walls, floors, and the notorious flourescent glow that made you squint because the wattage was so low?
I’m a faded gator guy myself. Please, whatever you do, don’t make the site unreadable in smaller windows!