Practicalmadness

Prepare yourselves: a redesign is coming. Big shock, right?

What you're seeing is a top-secret development version of Practical, that I'm taking the opportunity to work on for a few weeks (as opposed to my usual few sleepless hours) while I, uh, do something else that I can't really talk about. Suffice to say that Practical's TypeKey support is already in the bag, and if anyone wants to know how to make TypeKey play nicely with Smarty, I'm your monster.

The new pages have a cleaner, easier-to-read look, should load somewhat faster and will be much, much better organized. Comments will seem much less like an afterthought.

I consider this new design an evolution of the current one; all the same basic ideas are there, but moving text to the left side of the screen seems to open the whole thing up, make it seem...I dunno -- brighter and nicer. It breathes.

Fans will note that the Spaghetti Boy is absent. I haven't yet found a home for him, but he will hold a place of honor, guarding the home page from various invading forces.

Links and Photos haven't quite been worked into the new design yet, but I'm thinking that I'll work them into the same organizational structure as Movable Type, so that (for instance) if you go to /2004/03/photos, you'll get the photos from this month. There are still some minor technical challenges I'll need to work out, but the result will be that Practicalmadness will feel -- finally -- like a single cohesive website.

Woo-hoo.