Darren Hoyt Dot Com

December 2007

Thu 27^th

Results of Eye-Tracking Studies on Websites

VirtualHosting has published a list of lessons taken from eye-tracking studies over the years. As applied to web design, eye-tracking is a method of analyzing user interactions according to how information is oriented on the page. It’s especially vital in layouts which are complex but also expect users to focus on different elements in a specific order — this applies to advertising in particular.
Tue 11^th

Vertical Columns, Horizontal Content

About halfway through the newest post by Andy Rutledge is a section called “How Big is My Silo?” The premise is ridiculously simple: newspaper and magazine layouts in the print world do not translate necessarily into good layouts on the web…
Wed 5^th

More Mimbo Customizations

Lots of great theming tips are being exchanged over in the forum, and plenty more excellent Mimbo customizations are popping up around the web:
Sat 1^st

Mimbo Pro – A Premium Theme?

Awhile back, I reviewed a premium (paid) Wordpress theme which sold for $99-$250 per download. Premium themes have continued taking root — I’ve spotted five other similar themes since then, all in that price range, all in the news and magazine layout style…

Tue 20^th

Mimbo News from All Over

Since its release in August, the numbers for Mimbo have been shaping up…
Sun 18^th

The Fuss Over Grids and CSS Frameworks

A protracted discussion about CSS frameworks like Blueprint has broken out over at Jeff Croft’s blog. I respect everyone contributing to it, but the energy spent on that topic seems ridiculous with a capital R. One of the only comments which spoke to me was by Jon Hicks: I mentioned CSS frameworks on The Rissington [...]
Sun 18^th

A New Phase for MSNBC.com

MSNBC.com launched their new design this week. It was nearly two years in the making, with outside design assistance by big names in the industry like Cameron Moll and Greg Storey. Much of the redesign process was chronicled at Alpha Channel, the user-collaborative blog run by MSNBC’s team and their Creative Director Ashley Wells…

Tue 30^th

Feedreaders and WordPress Themes Vs. The Design Experience

One of the many reasons I prefer Netvibes to other feedreaders is the amount of options — headlines, summaries, tabs, thumbnails, widgets, and audio controls for podcasts. It’s a much richer experience that what we got in the early days of RSS, which was just a few headlines. Rich Ziade from Basement.org recently saw how Google Reader could detract from the visual experience…
Wed 10^th

Cleaning up Grainy, Low-Quality Digital Photos with Photoshop

Before mocking up new homepage designs for a client, I make sure I’ve received proper design assets such as a vector logo, text, photos, and any other digital materials they’d like to see in the layout. If the photos are coming straight from the client’s digital camera, they’re rarely received in optimal condition – they might be dark, grainy, bland or unbalanced. But if they’re the best the client has got and there’s no budget for stock photography, it’s our job as web designers to improvise.

Sun 23^rd

Preliminary Sketch of Mimbo 2.0

Last month, I released a magazine-style theme for Wordpress called Mimbo. I’m excited to say that since then there have been over 500 downloads and at least 100 working Mimbo-enabled sites spotted around the web. I’m currently sketching some layout ideas for version 2.0…
Tue 18^th

New Charlottesville Panoramas Plus Photomerge Tips

A year ago I bought the Canon Powershot S3 IS after comparing about ten different cameras and driving the Best Buy staff to distraction. I mainly chose the S3 for its 12x optical zoom and Stitch-Assist (panorama) function and right there ends my entire repertoire of digital camera jargon. The Stitch-Assist has been easy to [...]

Sat 18^th

Styling Your WordPress Comments

A fun part of customizing Wordpress themes is designing a comments format which complements the rest of the site. Here are three examples from recent projects, including code samples and downloads to the original .PSDs…