My earlier theme was created at a time when OSWD focussed on designs that were devoid of images, and has served me surprisingly well over these past few years. Though it seemed rather spiffy when I first unveiled it, trends in web-site design have evolved over this time; and with rounded-corners, soft drop-shadows and splashes of colour being all-the-rage these days, it had begun to look a little long in the tooth.
Feeling a little left out, I set out to spruce it up and I present to you the fruits of my labour: “Simplicity two-point-oh!” I believe it captures the essence of the older theme, sprinkled with a dash of modernity. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed creating it. (Which, admittedly, was not very much.)
To do: Put a note somewhere around here explaining that this is entirely Free Software. Don’t fail to convey that anyone is free to download and use this design, examine and learn from it, modify it to suit their needs, and distribute it to other people, as long as they entitle others these same freedoms.
Some background
The Simplicity series of designs (a grand total of two designs, at last count) is the template I use to style my personal web-site. Wanting something simple and easy to maintain, the design was conceived to fufil that need on my initially text-heavy web-site. It has been consistently refined as my needs have evolved with time.
Important news deserves to be highlighted!
The mark-up is semantic, ensuring a strict separation of content and style, and uses valid XHTML 1.1 and CSS 2. This current incarnation is influenced by sites I frequent—Planet GNOME and Digg—and in order to illustrate the use of shiny, colourful icons, I’ve used an icon from the Tango Icon Project, released under a Creative Commons license. I believe these icons go well with the design and I recommend you use them too.
The new Simplicity—a little less simple
The purpose of this discourse, if it hasn’t dawned upon you yet, is to introduce you to some of the elements you can use with this design, while hopefully keeping you entertained. I believe it’s a lot more fun than resorting to “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit …” as arbitrary filler text. Isn’t it?
Images, like the one on the right just-above, can be positioned anywhere you want them to be. Large, central images can be subtly bordered. This is mostly useful for photographs, and the image below is a pretend example of this.
Click the place-holder image above to revisit the older design.
What’s the use of unbordered, centered images you say? Why, equations, of course!
Everything, including equations, can have captions.
For an even more geek-oriented web-site, a useful style might be the console style, which is rather useful for depicting command-line interaction and anything else of that nature.
See? I quite enjoy my caption too.
For a less geek-oriented web-site, such as one aiming to showcase a ton cool pictures, gallery would be a more interesting style. Using this in tandem with one of the many AJAXY special-effects libraries, such as LightBox, leads to wonderful results. Just try it!
Extensive coverage
While paragraphs and console windows can disseminate a lot of information, there are times when they just aren’t sufficient. But no need to fear, Simplicity can do a lot more.
Different sorts of lists, for instance
- This is a bland list. This is a bland list. This is a bland list. This is a bland list. This is a bland list. This is a bland list. This is a bland list. This is a bland list. This is a bland list. This is a bland list. This is a bland list.
- This is a bland list. This is a bland list. This is a bland list. This is a bland list. This is a bland list. This is a bland list. This is a bland list. This is a bland list. This is a bland list. This is a bland list. This is a bland list.
- This is a bland list. This is a bland list. This is a bland list. This is a bland list. This is a bland list. This is a bland list. This is a bland list. This is a bland list. This is a bland list. This is a bland list. This is a bland list.
- This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list.
This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. And it even has an image!- This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list. This is a fancy list.
Or perhaps, the venerable table?
| Microsoft Windows XP SP2 | Firefox 2 | Internet Exporer 6/7 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 | Firefox 1.5 | Konqueror 3.5 |
| Apple Mac OS X 10.4.9 | Camino 1 | Safari 2 |
Browsers and platforms this design has been tested on.
In conclusion
Like I started-off saying, this is entirely Free Software and you’re free to use it in whatever you please, as long as you allow others to do so as well. I don’t require that you link-back to my web-site, or credit me with the design, but I would like to request that you let me know if you like this design and plan to use it. Over these past few years, I’ve received perhaps a dozen e-mails from happy people telling me how much they liked my previous design, and excitedly showed-off what they’ve done with it. Each and every one of these have brought a smile to my face.
Wouldn't you like to be responsible for your very own?
Electronic mail: e-mail@address.org
Web-site: http://yoursite.org
Telephone number: +1 (555) 333–1234
Snail mail:
Delorean, BF — 12345–6789
I can’t believe you made it this far. Excellent job, and thank you. I’ll shut up now, run along and start working on your own site!