New Squidoo Page Layouts go Live
The Squidoo HQ team has obviously been very hard at work behind the scenes the past few months and yesterday evening the new page layouts went live on the site.
The new layouts incorporate a lot of dark blue and other bold colors while keeping the main content area white and easy to read. There are also ‘author boxes’ for lack of a better word in the upper right hand corner of the screen that show some of the lensmaster’s accomplishments.
There are some nify ‘rollover’ effects as well that allow the page to hold more information without cluttering things up. A great example of this is the selection of which ‘view’ of the page you want to see
Following the Discussion about the new Layouts:
Please feel free to leave your thoughts, comments, and rants on the new Squidoo layout below. If you are looking for more information to digest there is a sizable forum thread as well as a lens on the new layout
The Captain’s Take:�
I like the new layouts. I think that you can access more information easily. I also really enjoy the ‘you may also like’ section on the bottom of the lens (Hint: I’m pretty sure it uses the Primary Tag in a big way when selecting these *nudge* *nudge*) . The ‘mini-column’ has a slightly annoying way of pushing down any pictures you have ‘above the fold’ in your module, but that’s not a deal breaker for me. Having the bio hidden means I need to re-think my bio strategy a bit, but again I think it looks good. I love the new badges and am super interested to see if I can sneak into that ‘Top 1%’ Designation whenever it’s released.
All in all I give the first run a solid 7.5/10. HQ’s commitment to changing and tweaking the layouts over time is what is really going to contribute to the sucess of these layouts and I look forward to seeing that happen.
What’s your Take?
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Comments
I don’t know what a rant is, but I am going to say what I feel and thats ok as long as this comment gets published. There are a lot of things about the new format that I do like, and a couple of things I just can’t get over but I will comply, conform and work with it. By putting my content on the left of the screen, has left my content formatting in an awkward situation for some of my lenses. This will equate to lots of hours of editing to get my pages to look like I want them. Some of my lenses due to the placement of the content on the left has made them to me harder to read than they were before (only on some of them. Is editing a curse? It might be good that I will have to go through each lens and make sure that my content is understandable and readable, right now I have a little over 100 lenses so I should be done getting them just right maybe by the time I’,m 40, but hey… so it goes, I liked the placement of the text in the middle or however it was before and feel that whoa… thanks for taking into consideration my lenses before making such a tremendous change. So what? Right ? NO big deal… It does look good and for a majority of my lenses especially my short and sweet Japanese vocabulary blaster series lenses that I am working on, the look and format of the new Squidoo pages works out great, fantastic, but for some of my other stuff it looks like winnie the pooh and honey together with peanut butter… NO big deal, I am just ranting I guess a little. Sorry and no offense I will be blessed in the end by all the editing I plan on doing. Either that or something… I’m sure.
TO see an example of my Japanese Vocabulary blaster page copy this into your browser and at the end of it replace or type any number from 1 to 33. These have now a superior, clean shine to them. I will not direct you to the peanut butter I must go back and hammer, edit, proof and format almost from scratch again.
http://squidoo.com/japanesevocabulary33
http://squidoo.com/ghettogrammar116
http://squidoo.com/japaneselearn
http://squidoo.com/japanesejoy
All in all, I like the path that Squidoo is on with this new layout. I do have a serious concern with SEO optimization of this new layout, tho. Hopefully, this will be ‘tweaked’ quickly.
Bless my lil’ heart tho, I can not find the ‘change view’ option to save my soul. It MUST be right in front of me!
Ohhhhhh…… I found the ‘change view’ option. I was looking for it on a lens that was not mine (duh). This option is very easy to find when on your own lens from your tool box.
So glad I showed by not-so-brightness right here on the internet for ALL to witness….lol!
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I am anxious to test out these new themes. I keep having great success with Squidoo.