It’s has been only around a few months since the last update of the WordPress theme here for Double-J Design. In my opinion, it has been not quite successful. I actually have got plenty of feedback and comments from lots of sources (e.g. comments on Double-J Design, replies on wordpress.org.cn, etc) Most of them are positive and a number of great designers pointed out some critical issues or bugs or problems in the last version of Double-J Design theme (Version 2). For example, browser compatibility problems (mainly about the support of IE6), HTML and CSS mistakes, etc. I didn’t really have time to modify a lot about the old version and I though the design wasn’t too nice as well.
These days, I spent some spare time to redesign and refine an updated version (V3) of Double-J Design WordPress theme. Today, after some initial tests, I am happy to officially change the V2 theme into this new V3 theme.
Here I would like to introduce further more about some of the changes in this version of the WordPress theme design.
New Logo
Firstly, I would like to introduce the new logo of Double-J Design. As Double-J Design is aiming for designing better Icon and GUIs for our clients. So in this logo, a square and a circle are simply being used for representing icon and GUI. Here I use the logo in a dark background then the typographic is in white. There are some variations i.e. simple color version and greyscale version which can be used in different situation like printing or distribution.
Homepage and Individual Blog Page
In this version, the homepage is pretty simple as only the last entry is shown in detail. The most recent five entries are shown in title list. Another section which is called Recent Featured Work has been introduced to show the most recently designed custom project. In the way, space has been saved and the recent featured work has been emphasised.
A full screenshot of the homepage is attached here.
However, I have to reorganise all the recent design projects and produce some preview images for the recent featured work section. Therefore, this feature is temporarily not available at the moment.
Since only one entry is shown on homepage, I therefore produced a individual blog page for showing more the recent blog articles. Big thanks to Nick from N.Design Studio and Icondock to teach me some of the tricks in WordPress template settings.
Other Features and Effects
Sliding Navigation Menu
Someone suggested me to insert some dynamic or animated element in my blog theme to give it some nice feature. Here I have included one of the popular animated elements sliding navigation menu. This technique is taken from jMar’s blog using jQuery to implement an animated sliding navigation.
Rounded Corner
Rounded corner is a new feature in CSS3. However currently, some browsers have already implemented this technique. For example, Safari 4.0, Google Chrome. Simply insert the following lines in the CSS style sheet. There will be nice and crisp rounder corners.
img.thumbnail, img.left {
background-color: #EFEFEF;
border: 1px solid #bdbdbd;
border-radius: 5px;
-moz-border-radius: 5px;
-khtml-border-radius: 5px;
-webkit-border-radius: 5px;
float: left;
padding: 10px;
}
I haven’t tested in more browsers. But unfortunately, it’s not working in IE (even IE8). And also, this feature is still a new feature which is only implemented in CSS level 3. Therefore the CSS validation on the bottom of this page is taken without this rounded corner feature.
Latest Tweets
I started to use Twitter about half year ago, and now there are around 100 people following Double-J Design (@doublejdesign) on Twitter. So I put a section to show the latest tweets on the footer of our website. Thanks to the WordPress plugin Twitter for WordPress by Ricardo González. It’s really simple and useful. Here is the final look of this section.
Conclusion
Last time, I actually got a number of complaints that the previous old theme didn’t work in IE6 perfectly. This time, I particularly paid some attention on this. And now, it should be OK in IE6. However, I will be testing this themes for a couple of days and make it into a proper general WordPress theme later on if all the main issued within this version are solved. Therefore your opinion and suggestions once again become very important. Please feel free to write comments on this. I will much appreciate for your advices.
Very clean and professional design this time. I like the navigation effects. Well done. And look forward to seeing the wordpress theme.
November 23rd, 2009 at 23:52 |
simple and clean.
November 24th, 2009 at 12:24 |
很喜欢你的导航和绿色的点缀！支持一下！
November 25th, 2009 at 01:19 |
very perfect !!Looks like the theme must take u long time !
And the icon are the style what i like !
November 25th, 2009 at 10:33 |
这个板子很不错，不知道是怎么样的一个设计，如果能给大家使用就好了。
总之相当的喜欢。。。
有意换一个友情。。交个朋友。
November 25th, 2009 at 14:36 |
我们中国人做的板子就是漂亮。。支持一个。
November 25th, 2009 at 14:37 |
我喜欢你。我爱你。。呵呵。。
加油国人www.china-iequip.com
November 25th, 2009 at 14:38 |
漂亮啊！
November 26th, 2009 at 05:49 |
博主的模板正好看
November 26th, 2009 at 14:59 |
博主搞艺术的吧。。审美观这么高
November 26th, 2009 at 15:06 |
IP送上。。。哈哈
November 26th, 2009 at 15:11 |
申请友链。。
November 26th, 2009 at 15:16 |
今天我还要来，天天来你这里。呵呵
November 26th, 2009 at 15:57 |
我等着你放出来呵呵
November 26th, 2009 at 15:57 |
凸！再来送一个IP给你的！看到你的友情了。描述请加：伴游网，中文伴游社区:北京伴游，上海伴游，深圳伴游，成都伴游．在伴游网里，您可以找到大学生，模特，小明星的展示作品，尽情自我;还能了解伴游的最新价格和服务，从伴游中结识感兴趣的新朋友，分享心情,传递快乐,从伴游网开始!
November 27th, 2009 at 02:40 |
纯英文？主要面向国外的么？
November 28th, 2009 at 19:27 |
I simply adore the new Doublej logo…very unique…The green texture is also very apt…Cool icons…All in all the design is very neat and vibrant at the same time…
November 29th, 2009 at 14:02 |
送一个IP得了 呵呵
November 29th, 2009 at 16:11 |
[...] of the icons have been used in the new theme of Double-J Design website already. This can be a good example to show that how to use these icons. In this set, [...]
December 1st, 2009 at 14:16 |
I would like to thank everyone for your valuable comments here. We are aiming to improve our service and design in the future.
December 3rd, 2009 at 00:56 |
will it be available for download ?
December 25th, 2009 at 17:20 |
@wordpress plugins:
We are making this theme in a general form and will be available soon.
December 26th, 2009 at 01:14 |
博主用的是什么模板啊？真好看，支持你
December 26th, 2009 at 07:58 |
模板很漂亮，也想弄个
January 6th, 2010 at 03:40 |
Design for me W3C new ICONS 88×31 CSS AND HTML if you are real good
October 21st, 2010 at 02:41 |
You made a number of fine points there. I did a search on the issue and found nearly all people will agree with your blog.
December 31st, 2010 at 15:16 |