The Work Shell

I tend to just disappear when I really put myself into something. I don't answer emails, I barely take phone calls, and I just plain disappear when I really get on something that I want done. I focus and I eliminate distractions.

So to the people who've... you know who you are... It's not you.

Anyway, I've spent the past few weeks just trying to get the new CoffeeRev website done. I've been trying to squeeze every last ounce of creative juice out of my head just to get the right balance of aesthetics, readability, and usability in coming up with a design. I've gone through eight designs, and today I finally rolled it out: The new CoffeeRev v2.0.

I've always been intrigued by the one-column  layout. It makes everything look so clean and simple.  Granted,  the reader doesn't have immediate access to some of the deeper branches of the website, but on the other hand, it also allows the reader to focus on the featured content and facilitates a distraction-free reading experience. Once he's done with the main stuff, the footer provides the connections that the sidebar in a two or three-column layout normally would.
 

Initially, I wanted to do this grungy, collage-styled blog layout that looked really cool (which was the 7th draft), but when I stepped back to look at it, it was distracting. So I thrashed it. It kinda sucked more since I had already spliced the images and finished the CSS layout (I think I wore out my "D", "I", and "V" keys the most). Oh well... learning experience pa rin yun, haha!

What a pain.

Over the course of the past few weeks, I've been collecting fonts, stock photos, relearning CSS and PHP, and just plain trying to shake the rust off. At the same time, I've been forced to do more coffee reviews as opposed to a balance of that along with checking out coffee shops all over the metro, just so I could give more time to the website.

I think I've produced something decent.

Anyway, there are still a lot of kinks to work out... The site seems to work best with Firefox 2, but FF 3 beta 5 produces some hiccups. So does Internet Explorer. I'll just get back to it tomorrow... gots 'ta sleep now.