Maniacal Rage

I only recently discovered Maniacal Rage, Garrett Murray’s weblog, and now he goes and redesigns the whole kit and kaboodle.  And what can I say, I’m floored.  So simple, so subtle, so elegant, so…

I’ve never met an abstract background image I didn’t like, and Murray’s choice adds just the right touch of atmosphere to the site without harming readability (and the subtle text shadowing is a nice touch - if you’re using Safari, that is).  The color choices are simply magnificent, and let’s hear it for CSS’ ability to control opacity levels.  Again, it’s all about atmosphere and subtlety, and me likey.  Me likey a lot.  (Now excuse me while I go back to the drawing board…)

Like a few other blogs, the navigation and search has been moved to the bottom of the page.  And while common sense tells us that navigation should be at the top, I find myself not missing it all that much.  And if I do miss it, it’s just one little click and a nice, smooth scroll away.  The “footer” is nice and compact, using some tasteful JavaScript to keep the search box and tag list out of the way until it’s actually wanted.

I also find interesting and refreshing to find Garrett taking a stance against IE, displaying a message that tells IE users to upgrade to a better browser.  I love standards, accessibility, and all that, but as someone who has been frustrated again and again by IE’s half-assed support for CSS et al, I say more power to him.  He also takes a nice little dig at Opera, pointing out its wacky ways as well.  As he says, “It’s not that I hate browsers other than Firefox/Camino and Safari/Omniweb, it’s just that I hate browsers that don’t render things correctly and require tweaking and patches and crap like that.”

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• Nov 9, 2005, 11:10am