Welcome to The New AisleOne
February 1st, 2010It’s finally here, after months of on and off work I’m proud to present the new AisleOne. Before I jump into some of the new features I want to give a MASSIVE THANK YOU to Emil Olsson for all the development work and for making this possible. Without him this new site wouldn’t exist. Words can not express how grateful I am for all his help. Not only is he ridiculously talented, he’s a super nice guy. So now onto the new features.
This site utilizes keyboard navigation to enhance the viewing experience. Use the up ↑ and down ↓ arrow keys to scroll through the site, which takes advantage of a nifty infinite scrolling feature. The site also has two viewing modes that can be accessed by pressing the (g) key for grid mode and the (l) key for list mode. And finally there’s a dashboard that can be opened and closed by pressing the (d) key. It contains other goodies like Twitter Hastags, inspirational links, featured articles and more.
For the design I wanted to keep it very simple, pushing site interface in the background and making the content the focus. I didn’t want to over do it with design elements that distracted you from the content. Based on the site stats over 85% of A1 viewers have screens larger than 1024 × 768 and 96% have a window width of 968px. Armed with that data, I decided to move beyond a 960px width to 1202px. Having an extra 242px to play with makes a big difference. The grid is made up of 10 columns, each 96px wide with 22px gutters between them. I usually build my grids based on the rule of thirds but this time I didn’t follow it. Mainly because I wanted to work with an image width of 450px since the previous design made use of that size.
You’ll also notice that AisleOne is now part of the Thinking for a Living Network, which will be launching a new site very soon. The Network is an alliance of like-minded individuals who are experimenting with publishing and education through a series of topic specific sites, conferences, workshops and publications. The Network includes Thinking for a Living, The Grid System, AisleOne, The Design Manifesto, Design Facts, More Substance, and Thought & Theory and is organized by Shane Bzdok, Antonio Carusone, Frank Chimero, Ian Coyle, J. Ellis and Duane King.
So that’s the new site. Please look around and let me know if you see any issues or if there’s anything you don’t like about the site or you want to see improved. This site is for you so I want to make it the best it can be.
Joey Pfeifer
Congrats, Antonio! This is an awesome, awesome redesign. I’m really diggin’ the small features you’ve added. LOVE the up and down arrow navigation. I did find an issue with that when typing a comment. I can’t use the up or down arrows to navigate through the text I’ve written in the comment form — it still navigates the entire page.
Anyway, you and Emil did a great job. Nice work.
Nikolay Vanchev
Lovely work.
As design you’ve made a great update. Aisle One was looking lovely, but this is just a fantastic.
Emil did a great job on the programming, making Aisle One one of the most user friendly blogs I’m reading.
The navigation and the look of the site are fitting great and giving a lot of pleasure.
Antonio Ono
Very attractive and thoughtfully designed site here. Excellent job!
Nick
Best one yet. Nice work.
Pieratt
Is the Fusion ad in the fixed div a requirement due to the infinite scrolling?
Khoi
It’s amazing. Congratulations, Antonio.
Prin
I’m really love this new design.
very awesome as always.
Sheila
Looks great! I love all the features you have integrated into the site. I can’t wait to see what you post next.
Alex Giron
Lovely redesign. Really liking the list/grid options.
Welcome back!
Sheila
Hmmm…it seems your site is too smart for me. I didn’t expect my little happy face to turn into an ACTUAL emoticon. Lesson learned.
christian
Nice one Antonio and welcome back. I was looking forward to have AisleOne back online. Congrats!
Loïc
Great features, looks like they’ll become new standards soon.
There’s just a little bit of text that has vanished after “since the previous design made use of that size and I wanted”.
That’s the only issue I can see by now.
Big up!
Andrei
«Mainly because I wanted to work with an image width of 450px since the previous design made use of that size and I wanted»
Looks like an unfinished sentence.
Anyway, the redesign is mind-blowing.
Sebastian
Congrats to the new website! I really love the concept and ideas behind it and I think those new feature are really great. You (all) pushed AisleOne some steps forward.
Best regards,
Sebastian
Mark Bell
I liked the old layout — but this is a massive improvement. Nice work.
Bob
Well done guys, great job, puts me to shame yet again!
B
Niek
Well done redesign making it an even bigger pleasure to read. Congrats!
David Airey
Superb, Antonio. A definite leap-up from your last iteration.
Rob
A massive improvement.
Much better having multiple articles on one page to scroll through instead of just 2 articles per page like the old site.
Dimitris
i ♥ A1
Quentin
Loving it.
Jamie Long
Well done Antonio — the design is great. Really love the option to view as a grid or a list, very helpful addition
Michel Coste
Antonio, that is wonderful as expected!
But one thing is puzzling me: I can not find how to go to previous and next articles…
Are there keys for that? I tried “p” and “n” but nothing happened.
Or you preferred zapping this now standard feature?
Anyway it makes browsing the archives an impossible task.
I also presume you forgot the word “this” in the third paragraph (“but […] time I didn’t follow that rule”).
For what is of the width, I also choose to go around 1200px BUT the iPad could make me reconsider…
Peter Crnokrak
nicely done and congrats Antonio!
Erwin Heiser
Love the design and the keyboard functionality!
One gripe though, the #34C48 (green) on white text is practically illegible for me.
David Rapson
I was nervous as I clicked through from my feed reader — I was a big fan of the last design — but I must say I’m impressed.
I love the keyboard short-cuts, particularly the dashboard.
helloMuller
Very nicely done!
Antonio Carusone
Thank you everyone for the kind words and support!
@ Erwin, can you send a screenshot on your screen? Is your contrast set low?
Emil Olsson
Hello all, and thanks for all the kind words! We had a little issue with comments telling you that you needed to have cookies and javascript turned on even though you had. This issue is now solved, and you’re able to comment again. Btw. we have a short list with other minor bugs and improvements that will be taking care of the coming days. Enjoy
Emil Olsson
I have now also taking care of the arrow Up & Down navigation when you have a text box selected, so you can browse your text (in the text box) with the up and down arrows, when for example writing a comment. Click outside the text box to activate the key navigation again.
Caleb
Very cool!
Juan Pablo Martinez
I like the redesign very much. Now I can read so many articles… There’s something wrong with the sidebar, though, at least in Opera. And scrolling is plainly wrong.
Johannes
Wow… its really lovely!
Dangerdom
Loving it! Can’t wait to explore more.
Tirstan
I think the wordpress dev done on this site is simply brilliant.
A wonderful touch of modernism applied in the design, but also in the simple, yet very elaborated UI. Modernism in all its meanings.
Good job. Definitely one of the few graphic design site I follow on a half-daily basis
The incredible Frank
A great redesign for a great web.
I love the simplicity and the view focussed on the information.
Nice new design.
LONO
lovely job!
lovely and simple!