Here's a glimpse of the upcoming blog theme I'm developing for Pure UX. I'm still tinkering and it will be a while before it's pulled out of Photoshop and made into real HTML/CSS/JavaScript and attached to BlogEngine. Of course, the content is just bits and pieces from various posts so don't think that it actually makes sense when you look at the specific text.
I wanted to go with a dark theme for the whole site, not just a dark edge like FamUnit has, because dark themes are just fun to design and lend themselves well to the technical feel. I also wanted to simplify things and put the advanced features one click away but not in the way. So I'm trying out split buttons, like in the Office 2007 ribbon, but using the overall navigation similar to the control bar across the top of Apple's web site. The dropdowns will function similarly to Amazon.com where the arrow drops down a mini-list of items but clicking the actual full button will pull back a full set of results.
For instance, the comments button would default to go to the comments already posted but would have a split dropdown of "View comments" and "Add comment". The feed button would default to go to the RSS feed but would have a split dropdown of "Subscribe via RSS" and "Subscribe via Email". The recent posts button would default to go to the home page, which is the top 10 or 15 or so recent posts but would have a split dropdown list of links to each of the recent posts. The Twitter and del.icio.us buttons would default to my account on those web sites but the split button would have a list of recent bookmarks / tweets.
I also wanted to not have the blog look like every other blog out there--main navigation horizontal across the top with all the blog post navigation pieces in widgets on a vertical sidebar, typically on the right. I felt I could make an intuitive yet different interface that could compact that and organize it to put the focus on the right functionalities.
I wanted to let people access my del.icio.us bookmarks because I find more great information than I ever post and I'm also trying out Twitter so I thought I'd make those both available.
As for the individual blog posts, I went with a single header bar that has a "save" split button on the right that will incorporate the AddToAny.com freeware script. It does all the work for you to let people add interface with their own accounts on del.icio.us, twitter, digg it, stumble upon, technorati and much more.
I'm debating about whether it makes sense to have calendar navigation on an IT blog. Personally, I look for recent posts or posts that have a keyword/category/tag. I never think, "Wow, I know this blog had a great post two months ago but don't know anything about it so I'll look it up by date". That only makes sense to me for a personal blog when a more chronological sequence of events would happen, describing a person's life.
Suggestions are welcome!
In particular, what do you think about having date navigation as an option? I'm thinking it's not worth it if I have keywords, recent posts, and categories/tags. If no one is going to use it then it's just in the way. Maybe there's a reason someone would use it that I'm not thinking of, though. I'd be interested to hear how you typically navigate IT blogs.
