More on A List Apart’s Redesign
December 5th, 2005 by Martin LambertJason gave us a look at his sketchbook, shared some early comps, and detailed some of the back-and-forth that led to the final design. The wider-than-ordinary fixed width was a reflection of ALA’s user base - web professionals who almost always have better than average computers and large screens. He also joked a bit about some of the more colorful reactions that appeared after the design was unveiled.
Eric is now talking about his part in the redesign - taking Jason’s comps and translating them into functioning HTML/CSS. (Interestingly, Jason said quite sincerely that the design would have been very different if he hadn’t known that Eric would be doing the coding.) He broke the pages down into general regions (of course), laid them out, and then drilled down into greater and greater detail.
Interestingly, a simple layout table wasn’t completely ruled out until relatively late in the process. And that was only because the audience for the site would have been… disappointed.