We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Welcome to the brave new Samizdata.net!

As our regular readers will notice, Samizdata.net has had a major re-design and functional upgrade. The old site was great but things moves on and it was time for an upgrade. Take a moment to examine all the new options and links! Also see the revamped domain page and blogging glossary!

We would like to thanks thank the Dissident Frogman for his really great work.

81 comments to Welcome to the brave new Samizdata.net!

  • Slowjoe

    Can you have a look at the site in Mozilla?

    The page is roughly 175% of the width of the screen. Considering the work gone into the change (and I love the Popper + Browning graphic ) it would be nice if you could fix this.

  • Julian Morrison

    Works fine in my mozilla. Perhaps because I have a very large screen resolution.

  • bear, the (one each)

    It has a nice fresh look, but I have one MINOR beef. What is that black thing between each comment? The dark blue hides whatever it is supposed to be. Throw in my being a big colorblind, and I just can’t tell.

    Looks good! I still have to do a <+> once to enlarge it, but that’s a function of Mozilla and I have to do that on most blog sites.

    Hope it all went together easily.

  • Ted Schuerzinger

    Could you please update the print format site? I read Samizdata that way since the regular site takes forever to load with my slow dialup connection, and this article isn’t available there.

    Also, does the permalink for each article have to contain the entire blogroll??

  • BigFire

    Re: Slowjoe

    Yep, this new design is quite un-readable in Mozilla Firebird. And my screen resolution is 1280×960.

  • Twn

    It looks great, but on my Mac (running Netscape 7.02, OS 9.2) the postings are pretty narrow — much narrower than on the old format. Don’t know if that’s a feature of my system or the new format, but it would be nice for the posting area to be wider — perhaps shave a little off the far right hand collumn?

  • Looks great here. Well done to Mr Frogman for his design. I actually mentioned on Michael Jennings’ blog that I felt the Samizdata design was part of it’s ‘brand’ if you will, and thought it shouldn’t be changed. However this design is enough to persuade me that it is an improvement. So congratulations all round!

  • Doug Vaselaar

    I have Mozilla 1.3 and the main page looks rather too wide, and the column the postings are in is very narrow (3″ @1024×768 resolution). Otherwise, very good looking.

  • Thanks for the praise, ladies and gentlemen. My pleasure, really.

    It is now 5 AM and I have been switching the templates, rebuilding almost 5 000 Samizdata posts accompanied with more than 40 000 comments (twice) and fixing bits and pieces here and there. I’ll be back tomorrow (er, well… Okay, today) for the necessary polishing, but here goes some ‘first aid’ information for those who seem to have problems with the new design:

    Empty your browser cache and make sure you force a reload. Possibly twice. (I can’t reproduce Slowjoe’s glitch – in fact, the site is identical on 3 PCs here in IE, Mozilla and Firebird, and I know that Perry has been testing it on the Mac as well.)

    All templates rebuilt now: and yes, that includes the new print version too.

    Now if you’ll excuse me… Let the sky fall in the next couple of hours. It won’t wake me up anyway.

  • toddk

    Congratulations, you now have THE most attractive blog around. very cool

    ….and great job Frogman.

  • I love the colors, but I also have Slowjoe’s problem in Netscape 7.

  • Gorgeous. Within about 2 seconds of seeing the new format I knew the dissident frogman was involved. So if you are reading this, d.f., my hat is off to you as you are a true stylist. My one humble suggestion would be to add some nudity.

  • Hingo, much as I like Perry and the guys, I really have no wish to see them nude.

  • “this doesn’t work in mozilla” is the most commonly heard complaint regarding websites. Yet somehow, those same people always insist that mozilla/firebird is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

    please explain?

  • cerberus

    I have mozilla firebird (screen res 1024×768), and it looks fantastic. I very seldom encounter sites that make me go “wow” the first time I load them, but this is one of them. Nice, nice work!

    P.S.: Okay, as I’m previewing, I am noticing one minor thing. When I select text, the highlight background is a blue that’s only a couple of shades darker than the page background, making it nearly impossible to see what I’ve selected. Other than that, I love it. 🙂

  • Tony

    Whoa! – very nice piece of work. I’ll try it out on more browsers later, but it looks beautiful in Safari!

  • Verity

    W-a-a-a-y too black! Ugh! Designwise, it looks elegant, but it’s difficult to use. That desert of black between the comments, and that white type mean the reader has to fight every inch of the way. Also, your logo, which was such a strength, looks fuzzier and weaker.

    I liked the previous format of the broad, magazine-like pages for the articles. I admire and adore the DF, but I think this new format is too difficult. It was welcoming before. Now it’s an assault course.

    Apologies if I have offended the lovely Samizdats and the DF, but, while indisputably elegant, I don’t think Samizdata looks self-confidently distinctive any more! Par contre, I think most of your male readers will bask in the DF’s technological brilliance … so swings and roundabouts.

  • Super design. I’ve always liked the Frogman, both for his design capabilities and his incisive posts. Quite a combo to have Postrel and Popper with the gun.

    I don’t know if it was there earlier, but the social responsibility statement is a hoot.

    Well done chaps!

  • We have tested the new design using Windoze XP Professional and Mac OS 10.3… and the latest versions of the following browsers (as broswers are upgradeable for free, we have made no attempt to design for legacy versions):

    Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla, Opera & Safari.

    Other than a minor bit of non-critical strangeness with column spacing on Opera on the Mac (only), there were no problems so far that we could reproduce which could not be resolved by either just resizing the window to fit the screen, clearing the cache a couple times or reloading the page a couple times. Ultimatley however, there are so many browser/OS combinations that no design will look as intended on every single box.

    We can only seem to get the push-button comment formatting to work on IE, which is a pity but I do not see what we can do about that

  • lucklucky

    Cool! my congrats for this nice upgrade.

    No problems here 1280×1024 IE6 W2k

  • Gonk

    verity, what ‘black between comments’ is that? all I see is that cool handgun (a SIG?) & eye-in-the-pyramid design between each comment! looks fine to me in netscape and ie on my pc!

  • Verity

    Gonk – The whole background is deep black. And what gun? What eye-in-the-pyramid? Why aren’t I seeing what everyone else is raving about? Waaaah!

  • Outstanding!

    Looks great in Opera 6 1024×768

    Congratualtions!

  • Ron

    Gonk – All I see between comments is some kind of black harp-shaped thing with a white diagonal streak in it. (1024×768, True Color (32 bit), Win98SE).

    Also, it would be nice if the links in the left column could be checked. For example, Peter Cuthbertson’s “Conservative Commentary” link doesn’t work (should be http://www.truthunvarnished.com – or more directly http://concom.blogspot.com)

    Also, there’s a small typo in the comment instructions – “shall not harness to power of” should be “shall not harness THE power of”.

  • We will be stamping on bugs, correcting typos and continuing to investigate glitches through today, so keep ’em coming… but please, make sure you clear your browser cache and reload the page and please note that the page is fully resizable.

    If you are still using Netscape 4… we cannot help you

  • Verity

    Perry – All I am getting is a sea of black. There is the ghost of some little thing that looks like maybe a pen between the comments, but whatever it is sinks into this profound black.

  • Verity: what are you using (browser/OS)?

  • I like the new look. It’s nice and noir-esque which is good by me. Very legible as well. A nice job done by DF.

  • Ted Schuerzinger

    Yobbo wrote:

    “this doesn’t work in mozilla” is the most commonly heard complaint regarding websites. Yet somehow, those same people always insist that mozilla/firebird is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

    please explain?

    I can’t explain for Mozilla, but I use Opera, and know that a big part of the problem is people using non-standard code that works only in IE, and only testing their pages on IE.

    Even worse are the twats at Microsoft. MSNBC are using a browser sniffer so as to deliberately send broken pages to Opera. (Those who have set up hacks to have Opera identify itself as, say “Oprah” instead of “Opera” get the same pages IE gets, which work just fine in Opera.)

  • Julian Morrison

    The gun between comments does mean it takes longer to read thru them all, and they eat a lot more space.

    I was able to replicate the moz bug by partially clearing my cache (shift-reload). To fix, I fully cleared my cache (edit->preferences->advanced->cache->clear cache and then shift-reload).

  • Front4uk

    Hello guys,

    I just *love* the new design, especially that cool Sig P226 on the eye…. great job from Frogman!

    Keep up the good work guys!

    PS. Mozilla… bwhahah hah. Get on with the program guys, IE is the only way…

  • Ted:

    I can’t explain for Mozilla, but I use Opera, and know that a big part of the problem is people using non-standard code that works only in IE, and only testing their pages on IE.

    We are not using non-standard code and the site renders perfectly for me using Opera on the PC (WinXP Pro) and almost perfectly using Opera on the Mac

  • cking

    Very nice, gentlemen.

    Using Safari on a Mac. No problems.

  • (…) Perry – All I am getting is a sea of black.

    Let’s try to work it out Verity. After all, who could better investigate the black sea than a frogman?

    (…) That desert of black between the comments, (…)

    Okay. Forget what I just said.

    Anyway, sorry for the bad experience Verity (and everybody lost in the sea. I mean desert).

    We cannot reproduce the peculiar behavior that’s affecting you and we will therefore need your help: I’m having quite a hard time figuring out how it look on your side, so we could use a screenshot to boot.
    If anyone among the cursed could send a nice picture of the scenery, either to Perry or myself (dacha – special sign that I won’t type here because of the filthy spambots and I think this is really going to puzzle them this time – thedissidentfrogman.com) we would appreciate.

    Please keep it clear albeit fit: while I could probably enjoy a 1920×1600@32bpp 24Mb picture of your screen, a modest 600 or 800px wide jpeg focusing on The Glitch will do. Thank you very much.

    My guess, just by reading your comments, is that it has something to do with a nasty combination of browser cache misbehavior and ISP proxy server stubbornness, ending with a display of previous graphics or styles into the current page code.

    In fact, I left the previous template resources on the server, to keep an emergency rollback option, in case something would really go wrong with the new ones. (Hope you will forgive the rude expression, but I will never go hunting without both my dick and my knife. You never know what may lunge out of the woods.)

    As far as the cache is concerned, a forced emptying and reload apparently did the trick for some of you. If your ISP is connecting you through a proxy and if it happens to be the root of the problem, then I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until that brat gets it clear that something did change at samizdata.net.

    Please note as well, that various ‘security’ and ‘privacy’ software (Norton Internet Security and the likes) are known to take some liberties with what’s being transferred – and what they decide is transferable – between you and this huge, vast cyberworld. Despite all appearances, Samizdata has no web bugs or spying features of any kind. You can add it to your safe list, if your ‘security’ software offers such feature.

    Anyway, these are just assumptions. While he can do wonders otherwise, a frogman is not exactly the best choice for a desert exploration.

    Even with a knife.

  • I’m a long-time Mozilla user and also a part-time webmonkey.

    Mozilla is a far, far better browser than IE. Tabbed browsing and popup-blocking alone make Mozilla the only possible choice, and it has far more to offer than that.

    A a webmonkey, Mozilla just renders pages in a more sensible way than IE. It does what it should with stylesheets, where IE’s behaviour is sometimes simply bizarre. A five minute tweak to produce a nice layout change in Mozilla can take hours of painful trial-and-error in IE.

    Oh, and as the Frogman said, clearing your cache fixes everything. Great look!

  • The first time I loaded in in Firebird it was too wide – I reloaded the page and now it is fine. Looks great.

  • Excellent – you have raised the bar again for blog design.

  • Update – I have to load every page twice for it to render properly. I cleared my cache too – didn’t change the behavior. The first load of each page is way too wide. Firebird 0.6.1 on Win XP Pro.

  • Verity

    Perry – Explorer. I think it’s 6, but I don’t know how to find out for sure.

    OK, Dissident. I’m lost in a sea of ignorance while wishing I could spot the pyramid in the desert like everyone else. But it’s such a black hole to climb …

    I can see now that the main page is a dark blue – very dark. though. On the main page, the logo is now coming through clearer and much stronger. Comments page unchanged and even though someone said it’s a gun between comments, it still look like a fountain pen from here.

    I will try to take a picture of the page, although I don’t really know how to do it. I suspect others will manage it, though.

  • Slowjoe

    The “reload” thing seems to have cured my problems

    Now renders correctly using Mozilla 1.5b on Windows, and 1.6b on Linux, both running at 1024×768

    The separator graphic is pretty unclear though. I may be that I need to run at higher resolution?

  • buck smith

    Great new look, just need more commentary from and photos of Natalija Radic 😉

  • The blog will look somewhat darker blue on a Mac (it is deep sea blue) than on a PC (where is it a slate blue)… that is just a Mac/PC thing we really cannot do anything about.

  • I’m lost in a sea of ignorance while wishing I could spot the pyramid (…)

    We all are Verity. Anybody telling you anything else is trying to sell you something.

    (Here’s sneering at all the despicable scum who, nonetheless, buy that story about the 70+ virgins payback from the outerworld. Ha!)

    I can see no reason on the code side why the new design would fail in IE, so there must be another issue.

    Depending on your operating system, a simple push on the “Print screen” button could do the trick. Be advised that if you’re running XP, the print screen key works, although it’s not obvious: it does copy the picture in the clipboard. Open any graphic editing application (including the good old MS Paint) and paste the screen capture into a new document.

    As for the gun question, if it is indeed displaying another picture then it’s very likely a cache issue.
    In IE, you can try the following: go to “Tools” -> “Internet options” -> on the first tab (General), spot the “Temporary Internet files” subsection and straightforwardly push “Delete files…”. This will empty the cache. (You don’t need to delete the Cookies though).

    Then close the Internet options dialog and reaload the page.

  • Tyler

    I got really excited when I saw Instapundit’s comment that Samizdata had gotten an upgrade. “Ahhh, at last!” I thought. “They’ve ditched the unreadable white-on-blue text scheme and I can finally start visiting the place again!”

    Alas, I clicked the Insta link and wound up at the same old illegible place as before.

    I don’t know how else to say it: White-on-blue is not natural. It is very difficult for some of us to read and is, in fact, a turn-off. Maybe some people don’t mind — I mean, OBVIOUSLY some people don’t mind, including the site’s designers — but there are many of us who do. It’s the reason Andrew Sullivan offers a standard-looking alternative to his own white-on-blue page.

    One would think that Samizdata, being a political site, would be keen on attracting as many readers as possible. If you turn people off, it should be because of your impossible views — not because it’s impossible for them to view.

    Count me disappointed. And count on continuing not to see me much of me here. It’s too much work.

  • My, very dramatic indeed. I quite approve, except what is that ghastly plastic nazi gun doing up in the top graphic? Colt M1911 .45, as all reasonable people must agree, is the true firearm of freedom.

  • Tyler… We seem to be doing rather well for an unreadble site, and is there something you don’t like about the black and white print version, which we have always had? It will soon even have the ability to enlarge the text as per the main page.

    Evan… I choose the SIG because for me that is the true tool of liberty. And it is alloy, not plastic… pure Swiss quality… the Armani of handguns if you ask me.

  • Amelia

    Looks great!

  • Slick, very slick. Love the new look.

  • Huzzah for the Popper book … just be manditory reading for EVERYBODY.

  • Well, I have tried it out on both IE 6.0 and Mozilla Firebird 0.7 (on XP Home) and it works great on my big (1920×1200) screen. When I switch the screen to 800×600 mode it still works great on both browsers. And the best thing about the redesign compared to the old design (besides the Social Responsibility statement) is the fact that it scales properly to whatever screen size is appropriate. The old design only used up half the screen and didn’t scale to the full width. Well done the frogman.

  • Very nice. But I’m happy I use 1600×1200 resolution. And I’m also happy to report it looks great at that resolution; no squinting or difficult reading, excellent contrast.

  • Gustave La Joie

    Ohhhh la belle bleue!!!!

    About time les Anglo-saxons harnessed proper design principles!

    Vive le dissident frogman!

    Vive Samizdata!

  • Antoine Clarke

    Great job.

    The site was down yesterday but this is great.

    I’ve just re-set my home page back to Samizdata because of the links down both sides.

    OK Perry, I’ll have to earn my re-instatment as a principal contributor, won’t I…

  • Harry Payne

    Looks great in Opera 7.1. Great job, Frogman.

  • Ron

    DF – “Depending on your operating system, a simple push on the “Print screen” button could do the trick.”

    This copies the entire screen to the clipboard.

    Pressing “Alt+PrtSc” copies only the current window.

  • Does this mean you have to be taken off Sekimori’s client list?

  • Stacy @ Sekimori still gets plenty of business from us via the Big Blog Company(Link). We think she is wonderful.

  • Mashiki

    All hail DF and his glorious redesign. This is a hell of a kickup.

    Firebird 0.7 w/sun Java 1.4.2 on cable no-proxy on XP SP1a All pages renders good, no weird things even using the agent switcher.

  • Tyler

    Perry, I respect your work here quite a bit, so on one hand I feel kind of petty quibbling about this. On the other …

    Why the defensiveness about the color scheme? You may indeed be “doing rather well” with the site as it currently appears. But the bottom line is that white-on-blue is a problem for many readers. This isn’t just some lone “Tyler” spouting off with a personal peeve. Just hit Google for a quick search: This sort of design has been increasingly poo-pooed by Web design professionals. There is increasing empirical evidence — and a ton of anecdotal evidence — that white-on-blue is difficult for many Web users. Light text on a dark background is not the environment in which people are accustomed to reading. It never has been. And this is 2004, for heaven’s sake. We long ago learned what works and what doesn’t on the Web.

    There’s no reason to get riled up about my comments. Save that for the political philosophy debates. I’m simply one guy — presumably speaking for a least a somewhat significant minority — who finds the site’s appearance daunting.

    The Internet is about communication. For those with a cause — as is ostensibly the case at Samizdata — communication should be as efficient as possible. The signal-to-noise ratio should be high. So why place an easily avoided impediment between your message and its potential readers?

    Point me toward one site of note — besides AndrewSullivan.com — that employs light text on a dark background. (And, as previously stated, Sullivan offers a standard-design alternative because he recognizes the need to communicate efficiently.)

    You just mentioned something about hitting the “print version.” I have no idea what you’re talking about, and I doubt such a move is intuitive for other users as well, and I’m wondering too whether such an option is available on these comments pages, where the real action goes down.

    This isn’t something about which you should take personal offense. (Or “offence,” where you guys come from.) On all other matters, I am on your side. I want your message to get out. Hell, truth be told, I just want your message to get out to me. I lament that I instinctively skip over “SAMIZDATA” in my bookmarks simply because I don’t want to deal with the labor involved.

    I’m pretty sure at this point you’re not going to do anything about it. You seem to have a tenacious devotion to the white-on-blue thing. I remember, back when I visited here more often, seeing plenty of commenters lamenting the look of the site. Their appeals didn’t seem to make any dent in your thinking, so I doubt my complaint right now, on the heels of a proud “redesign,” is going to change your mind.

    But I will sign off with a final, if bombastic, metaphor:

    You are at a theater (or “theatre,” where you guys come from). There is a grand performance taking place on stage. The show is phenomenal, groundbreaking, heart-stirring. And somebody decides to drop the curtain in the middle of it all. The performance continues — there’s something extraordinary happening onstage — but there’s a curtain, an impediment, between the performers and audience.

    The grand performance continues, yet the curtain remains. Grand as the performance may be, it’s hard to see, it’s difficult to absorb, and the audience hits the aisles (or “hit the aisles,” where you guys come from) and leaves (or “leave”) the venue.

    What a waste — especially when it would be so easy to take the curtain out of the way.

  • Very narrow column down the middle of the page here (with iCab on OS X). I know the three-column layout is popular right now, but it can be kind of irritating to have the actual content squeezed into a narrow band to make room for the repeated elements…

  • Tim Haas

    Overall it’s really snazzy. Can’t seem to find a happy medium on my 17-inch screen, though — with Firebird 0.7 (XP) at 800×600 the Perm, Track, and Comment buttons are stacked two atop one and crunched together, and at 1024×768 the type’s too damn small (and when I increase the type size, it gets too damn ugly). Will keep fooling around with it.

  • Andy Danger

    Aaaaaaargh! I’m sorry guys, but I’m going to have to be the minority here: it loads up perfectly, but sadly, I hate it. But rather than write a rant which will only be ignored since you guys have put so much work into this and aren’t about to change it for one ungrateful bastard, I’ll just give you my one biggest objection: huuuuuuge font. I am stuck with an old and small 15″ monitor. 800×600 here. Have mercy on me, guys.

    Please do something about that, and all the other niggling points I can live with.

  • Taken as an aesthetic assemblage, the new format seems attractive enough, but taken as a vehicle for actual communication or publication, I have to tell you that this format nevertheless seems very “busy.” The old format, however stodgy some might have felt it to be, emphasized the blog: the reader got right to the blog, and there was little to distract his or her attention from the blog. To my eyes, the blog now seems lost, or at least very crowded, among all the competing elements of the new format. Don’t hide the steak under the parsley!

    I wish you folks all the luck in the world with the makeover. Maybe others will have a better time with it than I have so far. For my admittedly unsolicited advice to you, I will borrow Mr. Einstein’s quote:

    Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler.

  • Looks great in Firebird 0.7 on Win 98. I love the larger font (although I am used to commonly adjusting font in my browser anyway for many sites: Ctrl-plus or Ctrl-minus depending on if you want it larger or smaller).

    For those who were wondering, I found the “print” version mentioned above on the upper right-hand menu under the “network” header. Clicking it results in a very clear black-on-white display of the blog text only (no sidebars) filling the screen.

    Andrew Sullivan’s alternate alternate display site is annoying because it’s a different URL: permalinks and even some internal references point to the main (white-on-blue) site. Better would be a cookie-based design, saved like the comment personal info.

  • Sorry, didn’t preview carefully enough: ‘alternate alternate’. Sigh.

    Oh and a minor annoyance (unchanged from the previous site): I often forget to enter the anti-spambot Turing code the second time after previewing text. I guess it is because I am assuming that header area info (name, email, etc.) should be unchanged after being first entered. A definite UI “gotcha”. Not having it for the second post would be a security hole unless alternate arrangements were made (one-time URL?).

    (Looking at the comment page source I see:

    <input type=”hidden” id=”code” name=”code” value=”13″ />

    <img src=”http://www.samizdata.net/mt/mt-scode.cgi?code=13″ width=”70″ height=”25″ style=”margin-top:5px; margin-bottom:4px;”>

    Hmm, an index of premade gif’s (and corresponding numbers)? What is the total pool? 50? 100? This could be cracked. And here I thought you (or more precisely Movable Type) was using ImageMagick or something similar to generate the gif’s on the fly.)

  • Mary Contrary

    Perry and DF, congrats on the new design which obviously took a lot of work and equally obviously a lot of people like. I have a few points of what is intended as, and I hope will be received as, constructive criticism.

    * The initial graphics take up nearly half the screen when running at a common resolution of 1024*768 or even 1152*864. This is IMO too much, and will increasingly seem so when the novelty of the new design has worn off and the logos revert to their proper function of “background branding” instead of being an interesting topic of conversation in their own right.

    * The “Read More” link somehow seems small and fiddly, even though I know that it isn’t really. Perhaps it is just visually overpowered by the repeat of the gun&pentagram motif.

    * Insofar as an aim of the site is to proselytise the libertarian message, the prominence of the handgun motif is a hinderance. Many people, especially many British people, with mild libertarian tendencies interested in knowing more (i.e. ripe potential converts) will take one look at the gun&book and say “American gun nuts” as they leave, before reading the opinions. Substituting Popper for a Bible in no way diminishes the negative reaction. Let new visitors find out we are gun nuts at the same time as they find out why, not before they know a thing about us. A gun as one of many symbols would be an improvement. This particular point is admittedly irrelevant if you are only interested in preaching to the converted. For myself, I’ve always wondered why Samizdata with its Illuminatus logo and in particular the Libertarian Alliance with its swastika logo have always insisted on being so deliberately offputting to the uninitiatied.

    * The tips and advice following the comments entry box is just messy, visually speaking; did the great DF get bored or run out of time on the meter?

    * Oh, and HTML unnumbered lists (bullets) are not permitted in your cutdown HTML in comments, which is a minor point but a pity nonetheless.

    I expect the negative comments about the gun will fall on deaf ears. If you intend to even consider them, do not weigh my points against its the popularity amongst the commentariat but fieldtest it with people who are not card-carrying libertarians (and, preferably, are not used to you and your “eccentric” (in presumed view of your non-libertarian acquaintences) views). Nor should you fall into the trap of unduly comparing the old site with the new; the commentariat has clearly been seduced by a talented graphic artist, but DF could as easily invent an alternative motif with just as good a professional glossiness.

    All in all though, I tip my hat to DF once more in his technical accomplishment. The sidebars are also much improved. The “Don’t tread on me” reworking is excellent too; by antiquing it the reader’s mind is turned to its historical significance.

  • Mary: fair enough but I think it boils down to ‘well we can’t please everyone’. I accept that some people will never share my maximalist design tastes, but such is life.

    As for the illuminati symbol… memorable is the name of the game, which I think has been rather a success. There is a bit more to it than that but that is all I am prepared to say

    Our views are so far out of the statist mainstream that I must confess that if some people are put off by the handgun, well, so be it… judging from our e-mail and comments we do in fact attract a significent number of readers who know ‘where we are coming from’ and keep reading us regardless of the fact they clearly do not share our views (though curiously more people who disagree send e-mails rather than comment. Unclear to me why that is). I doubt the gun will scare them off but we will see. I think those books and that weapon are a really very good visual summary of what we are all about. Truth in advertising.

    Cheers

  • Mary Contrary: Popularity has never been an issue here. We write for ourselves really and if people like it, great. If not, well, that’s the way it is.

    I am now aware of Samizdata.net pushing a libertarian message. We removed ‘libertarian’ from our name and blurb in sidebar long ago and that should be a giveaway. True, some of us are happy to be associated with libertarianism but some would object to it. So your point about ‘preaching to converted’ and ‘not putting people off’ or whatever, does not really apply. We have our own message, that you will find in the top left-hand corner.

    Most of the pleasure of blogging on Samizdata.net comes from debunking both sides of ‘mainstream’ opinions and from being attacked by both sides as a result. Well, at least that is the point for me. Democratic is certainly not the flavour of the month on Samizdata.net…

  • Although the site seems to work well for most, we are working to resolve the ‘oh-my-God-what-giant-text’ issue that a few of you are having…

  • Holy cow, I blink and this happens. It looks great!

  • Dave F

    Sorry, I must dissent with the chorus of admiration. The gun and book stuff is schoolboy chic. Skull and crossbones would be just as subtle.
    The actual content looks pretty similar to me.

    Perhaps I could be persuaded if it was a picture of Adriana on a motorbike waving the gun in one hand and her Popper in the other, missionary like.

  • I will have to have a word with Adriana about that next time I see her, Dave.

    When I was a schoolboy, I sure wished I had a gun…

  • Good job, all! I liked your previous design, but it’s necessary to be cool and modern and reinvent everything often in order to keep your audience alert.

  • beamsplitter

    The new site looks quite polished, but I’m afraid that you’ve sacrificed functionality! The left and right columns are way too wide, and the center column is way too narrow. Also permalink, trackback, and comments buttons are less readable (possibly ’cause they’re too small).

    My 2 cents…

    beam.

  • Tim in PA

    Well, the layout looks fine from here – it atually takes up the whole width of my screen now – but then I run my monitor at 1280 x something.

    Nice SIG, is that a 220? Just got a 226 myself.

  • Jorhe

    Mozilla 1.4 has a problem with the new design. When javascript is enabled, all of the articles are scrunched on the right side of the screen (past the edge, so I have to scroll), when it is disabled, everything is fine.

  • Andy Danger

    we are working to resolve the ‘oh-my-God-what-giant-text’ issue that a few of you are having…

    Thankyouthankyouthankyou!

    After getting over the shock of the redesign, I nolonger hate it. To be fair, it’s actually rather slick and pretty… but also large and runs the risk of overshadowing the actual content (which is usually top-notch, BTW). On that note, another problem I’ll echo from an above poster: the graphics at the top are a bit large. Maybe shrink them by about 40%?

    The gun motif itself is a bit, eh… “offputting,” shall we say. I’m a firm believer in the right to bear arms, but fetishism concerning a device whose main purpose is to kill strikes me as just a tad perverse. But hey, it’s your site.

  • I love it! How much would it cost me to have a similarly cool treatment done on my own blog(Link)?

  • Dave F

    Perry: Ludd knows how many guns, Spitfires and explosions I drew in my jotters at school. Exactement!

    Thanks for being a good sport about my dig. Perhaps you could just photoshop the Adriana-on-a-motorbike photo we all appreciated here a couple of months ago …