Nope to Sidebar

May 28, 2024

I decided to blow up the sidebar. I promise this wasn’t a way to get two easy posts in May.

I reexamined the design this morning with fresh eyes, I decided I didn’t like the sidebar on desktop. The mobile design still worked for me, though. I played around with the sidebar design a lot to see if I could salvage it, but decided that a nav bar across the top could also work on desktop. I also played with the header and footer design a bit while I was at it.

I wanted the ability to add more links. Having the links across the top of the site solves this just as well as along the side. I also liked the darker band of colour across the top in the mobile design, so I kept that. To balance the page, I made the footer darker — but I used a gradient there. It’s possible that the content could be too short to push the footer all the way to the bottom of the viewport, so the gradient is a way to make that still look OK.

All of this fiddling has made me want to rethink the design from the ground up. I might end up doing some redesign work in the background, but it won’t be something I put live for a while.

For posterity, here are some screenshots of the design progress from Sunday to today:

• The original design before I started tweaking
• The sidebar design I put out yesterday
• The current design