Skimfeed update

Today I had a few hours over lunch to make some design changes to SkimFeed. The following experiments were completed:

• Removed Latest, Random and Popular from the front page. 3 feedback complaints almost immediately! Readded them to the front page. Personal opinion – I liked them, just thought maybe you guys would prefer just the news sites.
• Color and layout changes. In my opinion, these changes improve the look and feed and improve the site. Mostly color (red) and size changes for clarity. I’ve been reading some swiss miss (she likes the red/black/white combo) and the “mess we make” design articles (spacing and sizing for layout). See here for more info.
• Removed AddThis buttons from the top left corner. These were annoying me for a long time and I wanted them gone.
• Tried long article titles following a feedback comment. Long titles over multile lines made quick skimming the news difficult. Back to short titles.

The backend is still a spaghetti mess of code. It needs refreshing but I want to nail the design first. Today saw a big improvement (I think) in the design of the front page. I’ve not had time to roll out the design to the individual pages. They’re not that popular anyway, so it has reduced priority.

I have a good idea what I want the site to be like now. A single page, all the feeds, top menu bar to move between them, categories split on the same page. Latest, Popular and Random at the top. I’m happy with the general layout. It’s easy to do all this. I just need to find the time to redo the backend. Approx 3 hours of code estimated and scheduled for this weekend or sooner.

Quick feedback responses: The verge is not added because it uses ENTRY and not ITEM in its RSS feed. This requires custom code to parse it out. A time issue more than anything else, I might try it over the weekend.

Questions for readers who see this:

• How many links do you want to see on the Latest, Popular, Random feeds on the front page? It’s currently set to 15. Min-0, max-500.
• New colors – opinions and/or suggestions of any better alternatives? I see the red as a little too striking. Will tone it down a little after this article.
• Font – The particular mono font is not as cool as it once was. Any better mono fonts out there?
• Anything else you’d suggest I might have missed here?