I wanted to take a moment to discuss some design changes coming to KTracy.com. In particular, you should expect to see two changes in September.

Lists O' Links Just Ain't Pretty Anymore

First on the home page, we're going to begin a few experiments with the list of updates to the website. Right now, we simply have a list of links. This worked out really well back in 2001 when I first came up with this design for http://chs1.webdare.com. However, when I made that choice, I was designing KTracy.com for a minimum screen size of 12" and 800x600. Monitors have changed a lot since then with 1080p the new minimum standard, 1440p and 4k monitors becoming more common, and all of these monitors are "widescreen" or even "ultra-widescreen". With all of these developments, the simple list of links now looks more like a waste of space. In addition to monitors, web sites are also being designed for mobile phones and viewed with extra long screens. With all of this coming together, the simple list of links has become less practical, more difficult to read, and it's just not as pretty.

When I brought this classic 2001-2005 design back, I wanted to celebrate the glory days of Web 1.0 since we were doing a static website. While I have seen other homebrew personal websites use this format, I've never been satisfied with how it rendered at KTracy.com.

Starting in September 2021, the links to updates on the main page will feature a little bit more code. My current plan is to use inline-block CSS elements across the width of available space. The team here will be experimenting with these a bit, but I plan on color coding these blocks based on category. Political opinion pieces, photo galleries, YouTube videos, web development updates, and other content will all have unique colors. Ideally, the colors will also appear faded when visited, but I'm not entirely sure we'll be able to make that happen with simple code.

I don't know that inline blocks will be the solution to the problem, but it's a starting point. However we do it, it's going to enable a lot of experimentation if I don't like how anything looks. Just because we're starting out September with inline blocks doesn't mean we'll finish September with them. This is an experiment that we're conducting on the live website. Please feel free to Contact Me with any feedback you want to share about the design of this website.

The Plan for the Sidebar

One of the biggest challenges I've had since bringing KTracy.com back is dealing with Google's "Mobile First" or "Mobile Only" design standards. Truthfully, I designed my website for monitors. We spend so much time on our phones, I really don't want people visiting KTracy.com with their phones. However, Google is going to continue to punish KTracy.com until we embrace the mobile-first format.

One thing you'll notice on your phone is that most websites won't use a sidebar on their mobile version. Believe it or not, we actually programmed KTracy.com to drop the sidebar below the content of the page if the browser window is narrow enough. I either need to figure out why this isn't working on cell phones or get rid of the sidebar.

The sidebar isn't totally necessary. In the 2001-2005 design, the sidebar was actually the navbar. It was 100% necessary back when there were only 750 pixels of horizontal space to use. The other 50 pixels accounted for the scroll bar and the window border some browsers used to have on either side of the window.

In this iteration, the navigation is all being done at the top since we have 1900 pixels to play with today; all of which can collapse into a hamburger menu if things get too tight.

Right now, the sidebar is kind of underutilized. Long term, I plan on having a lot of automated content in there. In addition to the quote of the day, I also want to have daily updates from my FitBit like how many steps I got and how long I slept the day before, my latest updates from Spotify, and whatever other content I can automate.

I really want to stress that this is a "personal website" and having some personal information that can't be used against me right front and... off center on every page. It's still my preference that we find a way to keep the sidebar, but I think it might have to go.

You have no idea how crazy it makes me that Google has any say over how my content is laid out. However, for people to discover this site, we need to make this site more mobile friendly. So the sidebar might disappear so we can have a simple responsive website.

If we do get rid of the sidebar, there will eventually be a separate page with the metrics. However, I really want to find a way to keep at least the fitness data on the front page to keep me motivated in my quest to lose weight.