Today marks the unveiling of a major redesign of Heath Haussamen on New Mexico Politics. It’s the result of five months of work and a lot of consultation with other people.
In addition to the changes in colors, you probably noticed that there are now three columns running down the page instead of two. That allows me to present more information, and to do it in a more organized manner.
You’ll notice at the top of the left column several new categories of links designed to help you more easily navigate this site. The “What’s hot” and “Recent news about” categories include links to groups of specific articles organized by topic. The most recent headlines on the site also appear near the top of the left column, so it’s easier for you to quickly scan the day’s news without having to scroll down the entire page.
There are also links to columnists for Heath Haussamen on New Mexico Politics. Clicking on a columnist’s name will bring up all his articles. (I’d love to have a woman be a regular columnist. If anyone is interested, let me know.)
Those are the major changes. Adding the additional column also means that the page is wider. For some of you, the page is wider than your screen resolution. (According to my site statistics software, that applies to 14 percent of you.) That means you have to scroll left to right to see all three columns.
The vast majority of news sites on the Internet have switched from the 800×600 resolution to the 1024×768 resolution, and it was time for me to do the same. Those of you who haven’t made the switch can click here to learn how to do it. If you don’t want to make the switch, that’s fine – you’ll just have to scroll left to right in addition to scrolling down.
There are other, minor changes to the site. The headlines are slightly bigger. Some of the fonts are different. At the bottom of the page are links to help for those who are having problems viewing the site.
Overall, I hope this redesign makes Heath Haussamen on New Mexico Politics more comprehensive and easier to navigate. This is the first and largest of a series of improvements I plan to make to the site in the next several weeks. Keep your eyes open.
Take some time to check out the new site. E-mail me with any questions at heath@haussamen.com. I would also love feedback, and expect to make minor changes to tweak the design in the next few weeks. You can e-mail me or submit comments by clicking on the link at the end of this posting.
Thanks for helping make this site a success.
– Heath Haussamen