Like It Is

Similar to my previous theme, Pressrow, this one takes the same clean lines only with a tighter design. It’s by the same designer as Pressrow and I have to say I really appreciate the readability that Cutline (and Pressrow) afford. So I’m giving Cutline a whirl. I may go back to Pressrow yet…but this one may be a keeper, we’ll see. WordPress just keeps on bringing out these cool themes…

It’s amazing what you can come across when you’re blog-hopping - or blog exploring as I call it.

I came across Persephone’s BoxBlog, today, with this very pertinent (at least to me) article and even more revealing comments about being able to read some blogs. It’s called…
Attention All Brilliant White on Black Bloggers

Designers, blog owners take note.

The comment by Pony makes the most salient point, which I’ve paraphrased slightly:

If the point of your blog is to communicate, and anyone coming to your blog can’t read it because of your design - then you have not communicated.

Although I’m not a designer, I worked for a few years in web design environment with some very talented web designers - and extremely demanding clients. I write this as a blog reader as well as a blog owner. My focus, when being asked to evaluate and test web sites was and always will be about usability, and most if not all is applicable to blogs. I love good design but what constitutes good design seems to vary depending on whether you are the user or the designer. We may not design blog themes ourselves, but we certainly choose them for our blogs. Usually because we like the design and it helps present what we have to say.

Ultimately, though, don’t we want through our blogs to communicate with our readers? How easy is it for the reader to read what you’ve written in your blog? Do you know? Easy or difficult? Would you dare ask them or would you rather not know?

I do have a beef about white text on dark backgrounds, which comes in part from what I personally like to encounter and from what I know from my web days. I know many designers think light text on a dark background is cool, even funky.

Here’s some information which designers will probably, for the most part ignore because they love their cool designs:

Tiny fonts, tiny spacing white or pale text on dark backgrounds is bloody hard to read. As such, to me it’s poor design. I was surprised that, only when I changed my previous theme Regulus (which had a white background, but pale small fonts) to Press Row did some of my readers tell me that Regulus was so hard to read and that this new one was much easier. That the number of readers has jumped since changing I’m sure is no co-incidence.

But maybe as designer you’re designing only for yourself and don’t really care whether your readers can read what you’ve written, or as a blogger you happen to really like pale texts on dark backgrounds. If a blogger’s readers cannot read it, or have difficulty reading it, your reasons for designing it are secondary at best.

Readers will suffer in silence of course, or be forced to highlight your text to read it, or even, as I hear get hold of some tools to zap the colours (neat, didn’t know you could do that!). More often than not they will click away from your blog even though it may look interesting.

And if many have difficulty reading, what’s the point of writing anything in the first place? If you have the most brilliant article on your blog, it’s completely missed the mark if your readers have to squint to read the content or the comments, have to blink several times to read the tiny white or pale text on your wonderful cool dark background. If I come across a blog with pale text on a dark background I click away, sadly, but deliberately.

As bloggers we are publishers as well. This is a reading medium and blogs should at least give consideration to your readers (since they are the ones that read and leave comments - and assuming you want them to do this), more than simply being about the beloved design or template.

No doubt many designers will take the “No way I’m changing my cool design that I’ve put hours of sweat and toil into, are you crazy?” approach. But maybe some will really care about what their users want. Some blog owners, from the responses to the above mentioned article are being accommodating and changing the blog template so that readers can actually read their posts.

And if we bloggers (their users) demand themes that enable us to produce readable rather than unreadable blogs for our readers (i.e. dark text on at least a pale background) perhaps designers will take note and design accordingly.

I’m experimenting with a new theme. One of the great things about Wordpress is the range of available themes. I love Regulus, the one I’ve been using to date, however I have to say I do like the darker text on this theme. We’ll see if I warm to it or not

Mainly because we don’t have any. But my dear regular readers, you already know that. So what’s with the post title Britgirl?

Well, the other day I did a couple of new things. One was that I joined Cocomment. I remember asking a fellow blogger Range some time ago about Cocomment after being impressed with it on his blog.

He had comments he made on other people’s site in the side-bar of his Wordpress blog, using Cocomment. I thought it was neat, and made a mental note to check it out. And then Wordpress launched “My Comments”. Great, I thought, no need for Cocomment – and started using it.

Trouble is, I discovered that it seems to only track comments I leave on WP.com blogs. Maybe I’m missing something (or maybe I’m only commenting on WP hosted blogs?). So, I thought, might be worth still checking out Cocomment because I wanted to see comments I’d left on any blog I posted on. I was forgetting to go back and visit. Signed up and I’m already a fan.

The other interesting thing was that I came across a blog called Alas, a Blog (I think via Blogher) where I (without really intending to) posted a comment to an article called “My Children Bore Me To Death. I have to say this quite an interesting blog for the sheer number of articles and breadth of views. The comment I posted was on being childfree in a pro-natalist society; comparing it to simply being criticised because you had said your children bored you.

I wasn’t sure of what kind of responses I would get (if any) but the responses I did get were very interesting. And revealing. It brought home to me again that there are many women out there who are childfree and who go through exactly the same crap I do, as many childfree people do, when it comes to the Inquisition and opinions of some parents and of society at large. Note emphasis because: a) I know not all parents are anti-childfree, and b) those that are are just waiting to leap down my throat and tear me off a strip for supposedly hating all parents and their offspring.

I am fortunate in that as a childfree person I have support, both in terms of my husband, and my No Kidding and other childfree friends, whom I can call up and say “hey, fancy going for a drink, watching a film, or a bite to eat? Comfortable in the knowledge that I’m not going to be asked, if I have kids, when am I going to have them, how many I have, why don’t I have them, and what the hell did I mean I am Childfree? Not everyone has the same support, and judging from some of the responses, being childfree in the society we live in, as we know, can be very lonely.

There were also some fairly predictable comments, that proved, at least for me, that what we experience from those who cannot accept women being childfree is totally and completely real.The impression that we sneer at parents, that we present our childfree-ness as a challenge to parents, that we flaunt it. Yes, the ignorant views are alive and well.

The other part of the conversation I found interesting was the flak that even parents receive – from other parents!

Rather than me talking about the comments, though I’d like to invite you to actually read them yourself and see what you think. Because now that I have Cocomment (which by the way I am still figuring out) I can link to the conversation thread right here.

I think being able to share experiences and learn something new like this is one of the greatest things about blogging. And worth talking about.

Read My Children Do Not Bore Me To Death .

Note: Click the profile icon which (expands and collapses the thread) to see my post and the replies to it.

BlogHer 06 is over. A blogging conference for women.  From the accounts I’ve read so far it seemed to be pretty good, certainly from the reports on the BlogHer website.  I think it’s great that women’s voices are being heard on-line through blogging. They’re in every sphere of the economy so no surprise they are in blogging.

 At the same time I feel a little uneasy that women who blog are being defined as… well, Women bloggers. Why?  Not that they aren’t women and  not that they aren’t bloggers.  But why describe themselves by their gender?

Do you ever hear people talk about men bloggers? Or a male blogger? I don’t. They say simply bloggers. No gender attached. In what way is a “blogger” different from a “woman blogger?”

Does it matter anyway that women bloggers are often defined by their gender? (and by the way I know there are many bloggers who are women who prefer not to be described as a woman blogger, but simply a blogger. For this reason many remain anonymous or use an indefinable or male pseudonym).

Does it enhance or hinder women as bloggers? What  image appears in your mind when you hear “blogger” to when you hear “women blogger?”   Does it depend on what they blog about? Or does it not matter?

I view this in much the same way as I view the Poker landscape. I  prefer the term “Poker player” to “Women Poker player”. In other words it shouldn’t matter if you are a man or a woman, you are simply a Poker player.  In blogging as in Poker, it seems that bloggers who happen to be women for whatever reason seem happy to define themselves as women bloggers, rather than simply bloggers. And even BlogHer’s tag-line is “Where the women bloggers are”.

Back to my Poker analogy, with the exception of the professional  Poker players there is a big difference in how women play poker compared to men.  And many men (and some women) players consider women’s Poker as somehow “less” (less competitive, less aggressive, less in your face).

Is it the same with blogging? Are women bloggers warmer and fuzzier?  Or are we just as apt to be stroppy as men? Are we taken  seriously when it comes to blogging?  Or should we feel we have to hide our light under a (virtual) bushel?

There is an unpleasant side to blogging. I saw it today and I felt for the recipient.

Bloggers are all different and a blog is whatever the Blogger wants it to be. In my opinion, although people are trying to make money from blogging (and I am told some are successful at it), this isn’t essentially what blogging is all about. It’s about having something to say and saying it in a public forum. It’s about first and foremost interaction and conversation with people who share your interests. It’s about enriching your knowledge and understanding and more.

So there you are blogging away, as an acquaintance of mine was, enjoying people commenting on your blog. You don’t necessarily agree with every comment, but that’s fine, viewpoints are valid and disagreement is o.k. Or is it?

One day you post something on your blog that someone, somewhere does not agree with, does not like. Read the rest of this entry »

June 7th marks my first month blogging. It’s been such an interesting month and I thought a good point to share some of the things I’ve learnt on my journey so far.

1. Blogging takes effort and focus.

Like It Is – commentary from my perspective but it still requires effort and focus to develop an idea into a well written piece. The effort is worth it when your readers say things like “I know what you mean” or “I’ve been there” or “here’s my story”. And, since I’m just starting out it’s great – because I can experiment with what works. Read the rest of this entry »

This is my first Blog. It will take form as it goes along, from random thoughts and comment about life as I see and live it, to issues that catch my fancy or that I feel deeply (and even not so deeply) about. So far I am enjoying writing the travel bits - companion to my Flickr Photos and Photosets. I keep the photos on Flickr. the text is on my blog and the two are linked. I will do a post about Flickr - it really fills a need. Now, if they could only fix that Photostream inflexibility, we’d be laughing…

Finding the time to blog consistently is going to be challenge from a time perspective, however hopefully 3 posts a week isn’t too ambitions to fit in after my full time workday.We shall see.