Ruby Inside Gets Redesigned; Gets Twittering; and Three New Writers Come On Board
New Design
Till yesterday, Ruby Inside had been sporting the same tired design it had since launch in May 2006, but no more! Ruby Inside now has a more up to date design that focuses more on getting access to great Ruby (and some Rails) content from both Ruby Inside itself and other sites (like Ruby Flow).
If you only read Ruby Inside through the full text feed, please visit the site directly just to give it a look - pretty please? :)
Follow RubyInside on Twitter
The new design you see today is only step one of a longer-term process to make RubyInside.com more useful for all Ruby and Rails developers. Another step has been creating a RubyInside Twitter account. Now, if you prefer, you can follow Ruby Inside directly from your Twitter account or cellphone. Alternatively you can subscribe by e-mail. You'll receive one e-mail a day max and it'll feature the new posts from the current day. See the new front page for more details.
Three New Writers
As part of staying on the pulse of the latest Ruby and Rails happenings, three new writers have come on board to help both Ruby Inside and Rails Inside going forward. They are Zach Inglis of Hashrocket, Shalev NessAiver, and Eldon Alameda (known as the author of Practical Rails Projects). You'll see and hear a lot more about them soon, but please welcome them to the team. Thanks to all 18 people who applied for these positions - I was genuinely surprised by the response and touched by a lot of the nice comments.
Suggestions?
If you have any comments or suggestions regarding the new design, things you'd like to see on Ruby Inside or Rails Inside, or the like, please leave them here, or visit our new Contact page to get in touch with us. Here's to another solid two years with Ruby Inside (and if you're interested in Rails - don't forget to subscribe to Rails Inside too, as most Rails content will be over there in future!)
August 21, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Nice looking redesign! And congrats to the new writers!
August 21, 2008 at 9:56 pm
The new design is very pretty, but a little too busy for my taste. I'll stick to the RSS feed.
August 21, 2008 at 10:57 pm
It is good to know you guys keep trying to be better and fresh. However, at least to me, it is a tiring design. Too much red. I will as Pete, keep reading through the RSS.
August 21, 2008 at 11:35 pm
I certainly want people who enjoy the full-text RSS feed to keep using it. The site is definitely not an alternative to that if you like reading that way.
The redesign is not really designed to appeal to subscribers - as you're already subscribed - but to appeal to those stumbling in via Google or from other links and to get them to become subscribers like you :)
Hopefully the new design will not put you off commenting in future, of course ;-)
August 22, 2008 at 4:24 am
I personally like the design overall (the red tone could be a bit warmer/darker maybe), but I too find it very busy. Too much information on one page, maybe you could hide some info or make it clickable to toggle it.
Just some suggestions, other than that great site as always, and I am really looking forward to some additional content by the new writers. Thumbs up!
August 22, 2008 at 4:27 am
Yep, way too busy for my tastes.
August 22, 2008 at 6:38 am
The only added business from the old design is the central column on the front page and post entries. I take it that's what the complaints are about.
If so, I have no choice there. I don't want to push sponsors down on the right, and people won't like the useful links being right down at the bottom of the page.
August 22, 2008 at 6:40 am
That said, I appreciate all of the comments. One of the goals, however, was to make it look more like a professional blog, and most of the top blogs do tend to be busier than the old Ruby Inside was (look at ReadWriteWeb, ProBlogger, TechCrunch, etc).
August 22, 2008 at 7:27 am
Congratulations,
I am happy to see that Good things are shaping up for Ruby and Rails as well. It would be nice to see few more articles here by the new experienced writers joined here.
A Little suggestion... Pl. Focus simultaneously on Merb, DataMapper and Rubinius as well. They all are close to final release, and Ruby Inside would be a great platform to know and learn about them.
If it is possible to invite few more writers, specialized in Merb, DataMapper and Rubnius then please make it as soon as possible.
I hope, many rubyists would appreciate this suggestion.
Thanks
SoftMind
August 22, 2008 at 7:31 am
I actually like the design - the central column is fine for me & I appreciate that the sponsors need prime real estate & have no problems with that, since without them there would be no/less of the interesting stuff. Keep on keepin' on.
August 22, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Hey guys! congrats 4 the new design and welcome to the team Zach, Shalev and Eldon.
Will be looking forward for more interesting entries and news
August 22, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Overall, the site design is okay, but my primary complaint is that it doesn't fit in my window [width]. I realize that I am in the minority, but I'd like to humbly point out that not everyone surfs with maximized windows. :) At least the article content fits on screen, and it's the ads that are hidden off-screen... Regardless, thanks for maintaining a good Ruby news site.
August 23, 2008 at 8:23 am
Pistos: On that front I guess I've gone with what now seems to be the modern standard for fixed site widths - if the BBC News, CNN, and most of the top blogs are at this width, I figured it's time I get to use the same width.
Maximization is only needed at 1024x768 or lower, but that resolution makes up only 4% of visitors to this site. I have a netbook that's 1024x600 and I run everything maximized on it due to the low resolution. I don't run maximized on anything else but my browser tends to be at least 1024 pixels wide wherever I am.
August 23, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Yep, yep. Ultimately, I think you (and they) are justified. My beef with wide sites to date has been that lines become too long for the font size (e.g. 8px font across 1200px width), but a columnar format does away with this problem. I'm not about to start browsing maximized at 1280 or 1600 pixels wide (I use overlapping [child] windows every day to see multiple things at once), but the Fit to Width feature shall serve me for a while yet, I reckon.
August 28, 2008 at 2:54 am
If anyone still needs convincing, it's worth noting that TechCrunch has just gone live with a design with very similar characteristics to that here. I consider that at least a validation I've picked up on the right trends, even if they ultimately prove to be bad ones ;-)