Sidebar Revamp

July 21, 2006 · 13 comments

After exchanging a few design words with Mike Rundle, jet-setter and 9rules designer extraordinaire, I’ve spent most of the evening tweaking my sidebar. Since the recent realignment, I had always felt uneasy about the composure and structure of the sidebar area. Mike assured me that text-align:right; was not working. In addition to aligning text to the left, I split up the main menu into 2 columns and created a graphic from a picture (currently, the same one on my about page).

If you want to put any list on your site into columns, take a look at the basic CSS below.

.your-div li {
        float: left;
        width: 50%;
}
.your-div ul {
        height: auto;
        overflow: auto;
        width: 210px; /*in this case each column will be 210px * the width above (50%) = 105px*/
}

The height and overflow attributes for the unordered list are rather important and ensure that everything clears properly, as each list item is a floated element. Without these, things below your columns would try to sneak up and overlap.

{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Glenn Wolsey July 21, 2006 at 4:41 am

I like the new look logo :)

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2 luxuryluke July 21, 2006 at 4:44 am

I rather like the 2column idea, and seems quite innovative until all the agents support CSS3. When carefully used, columns will be very helpful.
Thanks for sharing the code!

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3 nogg3r5 July 21, 2006 at 4:53 am

I’m not so sure about the search box, I would either make the text stand out a bit more, or stick with the white background. Its kinda hard to see. I only noticed it because Glenn mentioned the logo

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4 Scott July 21, 2006 at 6:06 am

The search box seems rather difficult to locate. Like all the modifications to the sidebar except that one, as it is not intuitive at all.

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5 Blake Brannon July 21, 2006 at 8:02 am

Maybe if you just put some text, like “Search”, into the box it would be easier to see.

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6 Kyle July 21, 2006 at 8:35 am

I agree wholeheartedly with Scott.

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7 eric July 21, 2006 at 8:47 am

it seems everyone has the same thoughts on the search thing

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8 Ryan Williams July 21, 2006 at 8:50 am

Yeah, it’s very difficult to make out the text while it’s overlapping that photo. Otherwise it’s solid. x)

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9 cavemonkey50 July 21, 2006 at 9:59 am

For the search box, I would have a semi-transparent white background in the box until someone types in that. That should give it just enough to make it stand out a little more.

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10 Paul Stamatiou July 21, 2006 at 10:33 am

yeah i was just playing around with search box backgrounds. Firefox is cool with them, but safari is not. So I had to pick a color they both can show but when the text area is focused have the colors change.

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11 John T P July 21, 2006 at 11:27 am

I liked the older design more. Seeing this latest design, I was confused and thought I had disabled images on my browser.

Anyways, your site loads a lot faster now :-)

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12 Pierre Lourens July 21, 2006 at 3:15 pm

Despite everyone’s issues with the logo, the site redesign is good and more accessible. It is eaasier to get straight to the content, which is, of course, most important. Bravo.

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13 Montoya July 22, 2006 at 4:02 am

Oh, so you listen to Mike but not me? Understood :)

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