Hello. As of yesterday there have been some major changes around here. I’ve spent the last two weeks adding a search engine, tweaking the layout and typography, putting in place a robust tagging scheme, creating a big master archive page, and adding lots of other little bits of functionality.

Apart from the tags and the search engine, which allow the slicing and dicing of Panopticist content in all kinds of new ways, the biggest change is to the layout itself. Inspired by the brilliant work of Khoi Vinh and the people behind the Blueprint CSS framework (which itself was inspired by people like Khoi), I’ve killed the cluttery left sidebar and added some code that allows me to run much wider graphics and videos by pulling them out to the left using negative margins. Videos like the one featured in “High-Def Backyard Shootout” can now run almost 600 pixels wide, when previously they were limited to the 380-pixel width of the center column. This opens up some great new possibilities, like the ability to run the magazine covers much larger than I could before:

Underlying everything is a nine-column grid that has been subdivided into one or two smaller grids.

One genius aspect of Khoi’s approach is that it solves a great web-specific design conundrum: When a column is wide enough to accommodate large graphics, the type size often has to be scaled up so it matches the proportions of the column width—and this can throw off the balance of the whole layout. In print, big graphics don’t have to mean big type, but on the web they often do. By keeping the type in a relatively thin column and pulling graphics out into the whitespace (er, brownspace) at left, these two priorities no longer clash—and it also results in a much more dynamic and exciting layout, because visual elements can burst through the boundaries of the columns. Imprisoned no more!

There have been some other major changes here too. Inspired by the fun all the cool kids are having with their Tumblrs, I’ve tweaked Movable Type to allow me to post some new kinds of content quickly: first, a linked, styled quote I’ve dubbed a Callout; second, embedded mp3s, which I can now post with a few clicks; and third, Five-Word Links, which used to be a separate element but are now integrated into the larger blog, with their own archive page and everything.

That’s it for now. If you notice anything awry, I hope you’ll email me at hearst@nyc.rr.com and let me know.