In addition to exploring the nature of mastery itself, this blog is a way for me to continue my own pursuit of mastery in the technology and techniques of blogging (believe me, I’m still learning). When I decided to make the switch to , I realized that even though I had learned a lot about the technology behind blogging while using , in many ways I was going to be starting over. Not the least of my concerns was the selection of the right template.

I first got involved in web design in 1997. Of all reading and researching I did when I was first learning, the lessons that stuck with me most were from and his website . Nielsen’s guidelines appealed to me because of their minimalist nature, with an emphasis on the content and easy navigation over flashy graphics and complicated sites. This was due partly to the audience I was designing for – technophobes who were not overly happy about having to use the web at all – and partly to my own personal preferences. To this day, I still subscribe to Nielsen’s newsletter and have his book readily available on my desk (right next to ‘s and ‘s ).

One of the key lessons I remember is that of making the pages somewhat screen-resolution independent. Or, in Nielsen’s words:

Fighting frozen layouts seems a lost battle, but it’s worth repeating: viagra cost. People with big monitors want to be able to resize their browsers to view multiple windows simultaneously. You can’t assume that everyone’s window width is 800 pixels: it’s too much for some users and too little for others.

Nielsen updated that guideline in today’s Alertbox:

One of the most frequently asked questions in my is “What screen resolution should we design for?” The full answer is a bit tricky, but the basic advice is clear:

• viagra cost because screen sizes vary among users. Window size variability is even greater, since users don’t always maximize their browsers (especially if they have large screens).
• viagra cost that stretches to the current user’s window size (that is, avoid frozen layouts that are always the same size).
• viagra cost, which is currently the most widely used screen size. Of course, the general guideline is to optimize for your target audience’s most common resolution, so the size will change in the future. It might even be a different size now, if, say, you’re designing an intranet for a company that gives all employees big monitors.

Currently, about viagra cost of all monitors are set at viagra cost pixels. In comparison, only about viagra cost use viagra cost so it’s obviously less important to aim at perfection for these small-display users. What’s equally obvious, however, is that you can’t simply ignore 17% of your customer segment by providing a frozen layout that requires more screen space than they have available.

When looking for a WordPress template, I kept many of these things in mind. After a quick search, I came across Scott Wallick’s “experiment out of control” . I was originally planning to use his , which is nice, but was actually looking for something even more minimalist. As I was finally getting this site up and running, I saw that Scott had released the and knew that I’d found what I was looking for. In fact, I fit quite well Scott’s stated audience:

This theme is for (a) those who want a truly minimalist theme, and (b) those who want a simple theme with varying layouts to play with while developing something new.

I realize that this level of ‘simplicity’ in a theme isn’t for everyone, and in fact I’m not sure you can call it a ‘theme’ at all. For other projects I will not be so minimalist. To be perfectly honest, I’m not really expecting (or hoping) for a lot of visitors to the site itself but rather am hoping to get people to use RSS or e-mail feeds to keep up to date. Maybe that’s not the best way to set it up, but it is an experiment I’m interested in seeing the outcome from.