The only way I can read web sites these days is either using the Readability bookmarklet, or Instapaper. The rest of “web design” (mostly) strikes me as a distraction from what I want: the text.
I’ve been meaning to update the theme on this blog for some time, along with sprucing up some of the aboutish stuff too (still in process).
I played around a bit with some other minimalist WordPress themes, but this one – Manifest, by Jim Barraud – seemed to most closely match what I want these days out of a web page. Namely, to get the hell out of the way, and leave the text to do what it’s supposed to do.
I’ll likely be doing some little tweaks and fiddles over the next while. Though the beauty of this Theme is its constraints: there’s not much fiddling to be done, without a bit more than my rudimentary html skills.
In any case I like the look.
Now I just need to write a bit more.
I couldn’t agree more with your first paragraph. I can’t even read stuff in Google Reader anymore it so cluttered.
Yes its amazing now that there are tools to strip everything away, you realize how much distraction is built into most design.
Very good looking Hugh.
Have you considered turning off WPTouch now that this is your theme? It strikes me as pretty compatible though maybe the font looks small (change it to a user-defined default?). I came in from twitter on my iphone and saw the super-generic version from WPTouch.
Let me know if you want to beta-test the new Global Voices and tell me if its readable enough ;) I’ve kind of been obsessing about big comfortable text and compatibility with text resizing.
Jer, thanks … while WPTouch is indeed generic, it does exactly the right thing: gets out of the way and lets you read the text. This theme doesn’t reflow properly on a mobile, so it’s not nearly as readable as the WPTouch version. So amma gonna leave it as is.
Re: Global Voices – would be happy to beta. let me know.
Yes, way pretty. Will be stealing this theme promptly for related projects. Now, about writing a bit more…
I was about to post almost the same comment as Jeremy: compared to this theme, even the wptouch theme seems cluttered.
Makes one wonder whether the consistency of design for all those wptouch-enabled sites isn’t going to set a new design standard… just out of habit.
seems to me access from a mobile should result in a default CSS that reflows text based on a mobile column-width – as wptouch does.
the specific “design” doesn’t bother me much – i just want the text and nothing else, reflowed properly for a mobile screen.