I has been about 3 months since the last change to the look of IAMWW. This won’t be the final realignment over the next month. I wanted to get the site running a little faster than what it had been and really minimize things.
The theme you see here is an early version of what ended up becoming Moo-Point for the Sandbox Design Competition. This is kind of a Moo-Point Lite. Unlike Moo-Point, I did edit some of the core Sandbox files.
I have reduced the overhead by compressing the CSS with gzip and getting rid of most of the JavaScript. I will probably miss the sliding drawer trick 
However, I may implement mootools or jQuery on the final design.
So please let me know your thoughts, comments and concerns on the current layout. Did you like the last one better?
5 Comments
I’ve been having, um, issues with my own theme, trying to find a compromise between what I’ve got and what I’ve built for the contest. I think I’ll end up leaving everything alone and redesign — no realign for me! a complete overhaul! — in spring.
All this is to say I really admire the work you’ve done here. I think this is a nice median between the two themes.
No wonder it didn’t look exactly like Moo-Point.
I wanna learn jQuery! Could you teach me? Ha
@Ian – I love what you have on Upper Fort Stewart. It was one of the first designs that really inspired me to look more closely at the Sandbox. The grid layout and colored bars at the top and bottom are awesome.
The current design here really is a complete overhaul from w2. Sandbox is a much more semantic and powerful theme engine. Hopefully the dust will clear eventually and a great design will appear. However, thank you for your compliments.
@BoltClock – Yeah, it is an early version of Moo-Point. Before, I really added any color and hover states.
I have done a little work with jQuery for my day job intranet site, but unfortunately not enough to be an expert on it. If I were I would be more than happy to teach you. Until then, check out the Learning jQuery blog and the jQuery Tutorials. Both are full of helpful information.
I liked the last one better! (Just kidding).
Moo-Point Light is very clean. I think I like it better than Moo-Point. Your designs are really coming along.
I don’t remember the sliding drawer trick, but I would be careful about using mootools. I’m using it now for the sidebar menu on Upstart Blogger, but I really don’t like it. I succumbed to the temptation to add the effect, but it doesn’t serve any real purpose. My thought was that I could hide some of the clutter in the sidebar, but the best way to do that is to remove everything that isn’t necessary. I’m going to redesign my site completely over the next couple of weeks using Sandbox and get rid of mootools, or use it in another way that makes more sense.
Thanks for the tip about jQuery, though. I wasn’t aware of it and it could come in handy.
I like this version of Moo-Point better for my site. The original had too many colors for me. I prefer lite, plain and ugly…
I removed all of the JavaScript from this template (aside from tracking) to speed up the site. It was using Prototype. Other people love Prototype. I really don’t care for it. Take a look at jQuery. I have used it on a few private projects and it has been great and easy to use. Plus there are a lot of great plugins already written for it.
I also removed anything that wasn’t useful from the sidebar. The site runs about twice as fast now than the previous theme.
Can’t wait to see the next version of UB. Your designs are always amazing and well thought out!