I’ve taken to noting the current design iteration at Wizbang as 2.0 even though it’s a bit 1.5 for my tastes. Given that I wanted to give you a sneak peak at what – for lack of a better identifier – I’ve termed Wizbang 2.1. The design is slowly being applied to a new Wizbang page – Wizbang Headlines.
The design isn’t anywhere close to being done; in fact several functions are broken at the moment as I work through a change in the divs, classes, and ID’s. It will end up looking a lot more like the current design than it appears now. That said there are a couple design features that I want to highlight. The first, obviously, is the wider format. The screen will be scaled for 1024 and higher displays. It will still work at lower resolutions, but there will be a lot less wasted space for most readers. The design is also going away from fixed font sizes and toward scalable fonts, otherwise known as em units. The should allow for a more robust font scaling experience for readers who set their own font size display options in their browser.
The Wizbang Headline site itself is a new portion of the main site where you control both the content and display. Registered users will be able to add stories to the Headline page and be their ratings will drive the content display. It’s a few weeks away from the first beta tests, but it’s a feature that will be integrated into the Wizbang front page. There will be more information on the Headlines section coming soon, I really just wanted to give everyone a look at the wider design and to let you know that I really am listening to your suggestions.
Wizbang 3.0 – our massive overhaul – is proceeding nicely. We’re a few weeks away from starting to show mockups of that design.
