If you regularly visit my blog (subscribe already!) you may have noticed the design has been updated.

Here is a comparison between the old and the new. Click for a bigger image:

I threw out the old design and started with a template called EliteCircle, which I have made some fairly substantial updates to. I was a little hesitant about changing the CSS too much, the last time I had done any serious CSS work was over two years ago, but everything ending up going smoothly.

Changes

The previous look was simple which I liked, but it was gradually getting overrun by tag and archive links. Tags are now displayed in a screen real estate efficient cloud, and archive links have been moved to a separate page.

The design is slightly wider. The previous design's minimum resolution was 800x600, which according to Google Analytics is used by just 0.3% of visitors these days. The new minimum resolution is now 1024x768. With the wider design I have increased the content text to match.

In the new design I have also removed a lot of what I think is unnecessary information from the blog. The focus of a blog should be the content. Details like what categories a post is in or exactly what time a comment was made aren't of interested to the average visitor and have been removed to reduce screen clutter.

Overall I am really happy with the new design and I think it is a big improvement over what was here before.

Obligatory

As always with a redesign, if you spot anything weird or broken, or just think something looks bad, let me know. Thanks!

Intergenite Andrew Tokeley recently blogged about how a Microsoft developer has to know so much more to be considered a senior dev (or even intermediate!) compared to just 5 years ago.

This graph of the number .NET types in the framework made by Brad Abrams illustrates the point pretty well:

I started .NET development in 2003 with .NET 1.1. Fast forward to 2008 and the number of types in the .NET framework has tripled!

Remembering how overwhelmed I felt when I first approached .NET back in 2003, I can't imagine how a junior developer today must feel.

Thanks to everyone who came along to the Wellington Dot User Group meeting this evening for my presentation on Silverlight 2.0. We were close to standing room only, which is an indicator of the great interested within the local .NET community around Silverlight.

If you are interested in developing with Silverlight, then http://www.silverlight.net is the one stop shop to help you get started. Silverlight.net is the official Microsoft Silverlight website and it has the Silverlight runtime, tools, examples and an active community if you are in need of assistance.

Feedback on the presentation has been great and I hope everyone who attended feels ready to jump into the world of Silverlight development!

Download the slides here.

• www.textglow.com - The TextGlow press release displayed in TextGlow (+1 for recursiveness!)

Blog posts

• Intergen Blog - Announcing TextGlow - a world first from Intergen, NZ
• James Newton-King - Silverlight 2.0 + OOXML = TextGlow
• Chris Auld - Silverlight 2.0 + Office Open XML == TextGlow
• Tim Sneath - A Great Early Silverlight 2 Showcase: TextGlow
• Gray Knowlton - Silverlight viewer for Open XML
• Oliver Bell - New Zealand’s Intergen Deliver OpenXML Viewing Using Silverlight
• Gavin Barron - Intergenite delivers in browser viewer for docx

Videos

• YouTube - Intergen TextGlow: Open XML Document (DOCX) in Silverlight
• VisitMIX - Straight from Word to Web without Office: Intergen

Radio (!?!)

• Radio NZ - This Way Up

NZ Media

• Computerworld - Intergen launches new software in Las Vegas
• Computerworld - MIX08 'fizzes' over Intergen applications
• InfoTech - Silverlight shed on Word docs
• Otago Daily Times - NZ company launches software in Las Vegas
• Geekzone - Intergen releases Office Open XML web application

(plus lots lots more from around the world)