I just replaced my old Gila theme with a new Suffusion theme. I did not thoroughly search for a perfect theme, but I just briefly looked at several themes. I may change to another theme if the Suffusion is not my taste after playing with it for a few days. My own preference, anyway, in selecting a blog design includes:
- It must be fluid width. I don’t want to be fixed with a specific browsing environment, and the width of the site must be flexible as users have different screen resolutions and browser widths. Try to resize your browser window while you keep looking at this page, you will see that the text will reflow and some graphics will be resized.
- I like strong contrast between foreground text and background. I hate faintly colored text or text with similar background color. The purpose of text is to deliver message, then I believe it must be clear at any case. If you print, copy or capture any parts of the text, the strong contrast will benefit more.
- Large fonts: Likewise I prefer large sized fonts by default although most of modern browsers provide some mechanisms to enlarge text or magnify the whole page.
- Standing out links: The link is the very basic but most important element in a hyperlinked web. I prefer to make the link prominent against non-link text in a widely used way: differently colored and underlined.
- Self-clear, descriptive text: A string of numbers such as “010-1234-5678” in Korea could imply a cellphone number. However, without any explicit description of “what it is”, readers are probably disoriented. Expression like “Mobile phone number: 010-1234-5678” is self-clear and context independent information. I try to avoid “implied” expression in the context but pursue direct and self-disclosing information at every part of my blog.
I did not finalized retouching the new blog design yet, it will take time. I will keep the above principles as I fine-tune the new theme. Give me any suggestions on better themes or better ideas to improve readability.
