I’ve finally reached the state of neglect, as one does after a few months, before he or she is rejuvenated - it’s a cyclic thing. There are so many things going on around me (which is a lie, actually) which has forced me into a non-blogging state.

Hrm, I’ve forgotten what I was going to say.

I don’t think this was it, but it will do — Lately, I have been influenced, as you do, by all these new snazzy sites popping up all over the show. This means I get to re-design my site, again! Oh yay horray. Actually, it won’t really be a re-design as such, just moving things about, and making things look nicer; but overall, I think it will look different.

Wordpress 2.5 was planned to be released on the 10th March, which has passed, which means they such a meeting targets. Overall, the admin looks much better than the current Wordpress, but structurally, it lacks order and elegance. Check out a demo of it here: WP 2.5 Demo (U: admin P: demo)

Just a few weeks, ago I was about to write something about how awesomely awesome the One News set looked in comparison to other news broadcasting sets. Unfortunately, just last week, they revamped their set — and golly, it looks disgusting (photo doesn’t do the full credit the ugliness deserves). Not only does it look like their rival, TV3’s news set, but it also has a resemblance to the One News set of the 90’s.

The previous set (2002-2008) was a cut above many. NBC, ABC, BBC, CBS, SKY, FOX, Nine, all feature an oak-like desk with dark browns/oranges; giving an overall aged feel. On the contrary, TVNZ’s One News touted a modern teal tingle throughout the set, resulting from using many planes of glass. Additionally, they had super-awesome graphics which were much more superior to larger-budget news bulletins.

The refurbished set cost an estimated $700,000 NZD and ironically, the new set was to boost viewer ratings.

If I had 5 ‘formatting pets’, they wouldn’t be alive for very long at all. These pet-hates really jingle my bells, push my buttons and get my knickers in a twist.

Before the computer revolutionary-age came about, these formatting-hates of mine would have never existed, simply because it would’ve been too tedious to create them with pen and paper. You see, computers are always the root of the problem. Usually this appears on colloquial blog sites, and over-enthusiastic websites, but lately, I have seen these hideous eye-sores appearing everywhere.

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Forms. Often found at the bottom of pages, they are neglected and are left to e-rot. These form fields are deprived from much needed love from their designer, and understandably so, primarily due to their stubborn, rigid and rectangular design. In turn, we witness a conflicting square-circle relationship between the form field and the body content. More often or not, forms don’t need to be spruced with fancy CSS magic, but require just a little re-composition.

Negative space is our adversary. Negative space created around the fields and the layout of a badly designed form can be unsettling, disrupting the flow from the body-content, onto the fields.

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I laugh at NZ Herald’s feeble attempt the copy Trademe’s navigation bar thing. Looks shoddy, and you can no-doubtly tell it is an attempt to mimic - they even used Wises as a link to a map site as an alternative to Trademe’s recently released Smaps site.

I also found an error in Trademe’s bar. The last listing option mouse-overs to an orange colour, but the other ones don’t. I emailed them - I hope I get credit for being such a good spotter-er, like money credited to my Trademe account.

I have put up 3 new banner images which I took yesterday, Sunday. To view them, select a fast loading page, then clicking on refresh multiple times until you spot an image which you have yet to come across.