I really, really like the Hemingway theme. It focuses on the content, it’s organized, and just as importantly, it makes use of most of the available screen space. Just what is the strange obsession with blog themes to squeeze everything into a central little reading window, anyway?
The only reason why I’m not using Hemingway at the moment is because the colors were hard on my eyes. Thus it had to be hard on others’ eyes, as well. White (or worse, dark grey) text on a black background is just not the way to go. Unfortunately I am no web site designer and I could not create a color combination that didn’t absolutely suck. So I’ve switched back to something else. Which could be absolutely anything by the time that you’re reading this.
If I knew how to design a theme then I would make it simple and generally minimalistic, like Hemingway’s, but easier on the eyes. The theme would make use of the entire screen space, and it would have no header graphic. I dislike those things, they do nothing but eat up valuable space and add to load time.
…and woa nelly did I ever let my tea seep for too long. ackh! *insert funny faces here* I have definitely got to get some honey for times like this.
Anyhow, it would focus on the content in much the same way that Hemingway does. I like how Hemingway shows only the two summaries and then gives the rest of the vertical screen space to the titles of the other posts, instead of dumping everything down the front page. You can see at a glance what’s there and tell if the blog’s contents are interesting.
There would need to be an organized way to list Pages, categories, and links. Perhaps a horizontal line for each that stretches the available length of the screen versus a vertical line that forces vertical scroll, or is that just a crazy random idea? A blog or author synopsis would need to be on the front page, too, I think.
It doesn’t even need to be a three pane theme. Frankly, I’m getting kind of tired of the right hand menu.
Oh yeah, an appearance that fits the blog’s name would be great too.
Anyhow, figured that I’d ramble a bit. Go here to check out the Hemingway theme for yourself.
~Mysk
January 18th, 2006 at Jan 18, 06 | 2:45 pm
Thanks for the kind words Mysk. I assure you that I do agree white on black is not for everyone. It has, and still is a high priority of mine to port a white version of the Hemingway (as well as a couple of other color combos). I originally released the WordPress version as a quick hack, but as you can see it’s kind of spiraled out of control in terms of popularity. A great thing–but it just means that more people are seeing it in a state I wouldn’t quite call complete
By the way, if you wanted to know how to invert the colors, I got about 90% there on my Typo test blog (Click the Black on White link about 1/2 way into the post). In future releases (soon) you’ll be able to chose black on white, or white on black, as well as dead-simple addition of custom styles. If you are interested in updates to Hemingway, you can just subscribe to the feed.
Thanks again for the compliments
January 18th, 2006 at Jan 18, 06 | 3:16 pm
Hey there Kyle,
No problem, the theme deserves the comments in my opinion. Apparently wordpress.com thought so, too, because that’s where I first noticed it. Probably as many others did.
The inverted color scheme is coming along nicely. The main text color may be a bit light when used on a white background, but as you say, it’s not finished yet. All in all I wouldn’t mind using that color scheme at the moment.
It’s a clean, simple theme and I think that’s why it became so popular so quickly. The content is focused on, the design loads quickly since there are no needless graphics, there’s no real clutter on the screen… I can see how you hit on something with this design.
I put the feed link in my Netvibes home page.
Thanks for the update, I appreciate it. G’luck with it.
~Mysk