Website design: The curse of white on black

Regular readers will have noticed the radical new look of Macfilos. Many of you will not like it — we have already had two complaints-so I can tell you that work is in progress. I need to provide a little background. Two weeks ago we changed to a “new” Squarespace template which we preferred to the one we have been using for the past couple of years. There were no complaints and we were reasonably happy, bar a note to have a look at the typography in the cool of a convenient evening.

Then we had a minor problem and asked Squarespace for advice. They told us the template we’d had chosen was redundant and would not be upgraded or supported in the future. Apparently it was one of the first designs and had outlived its shelflife. As a result, over the last weekend, we searched for another way of viewing Macfilos.

We have a few essential requirements for any design, one of them being a clear author’s byline at the top of the post because, from time to time, we have additional contributors. Surprisingly, this is not available in all templates. In some cases the byline is at the bottom, in others it isn’t even an option.

The current design is clearly not acceptable. From a personal point of view, I have to say I have never liked the white on black layout of sites such as Dpreview and my experience over the past couple of days has only confirmed this.

Please bear with us for a day or two. There are two choices: To modify the colours of the current template (which, from a layout and information point of view is pretty much right) so it reverts to black type on a neutral background. This is easily done. Or, perhaps it will be better to choose yet another template. None is perfect for Macfilos, it is a matter of choosing the best of the bunch and then tweaking the detail.

Update: Now modified to show black type but on a lighter background. Any comments would be appreciated.