Mac360 Gets Busy With New Mac Tools For Life.

I thought that spring would bring a more leisurely time from the hustle and bustle of a Mac user’s life in winter. Not so.

I’m trying to imagine how much different my life would be without my Mac. It’s either a wonderful paradise or not a pretty sight.

For the last couple of weeks Ron and I have been busy on a combination of personal and business projects, some involving Mac360, some not, all involving Mac software, a Mac360 reader, and our Macs.

It started a few weeks ago when Ron received an email from a reader named ‘Walt.’ He wrote, among other things:

“Maybe you should occasionally bump up your text size (command-plus under Safari) to see how ugly the site can be.”

Not even a hello? After that introduction, Walt disparaged Mac360 in a variety of ways, none of them kind or sensitive or befitting a bona fide Mac user. Bona fido, maybe.

Ron shared the email and we began a dialog, cross continental and cross Pacific (or, half way across) about the Mac360 site, other sites, web tools, Mac utilities, which ones are good for this or that and so on. The email thread must have been about 36 inches long.

Walt wasn’t quite accurate with his newfound way to make a site look ugly. It’s shift-command-plus key combo which simply increases the font size. Try it. Two clicks and most sites get rather ugly. Unless you’re using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer which starts off ugly.

Mac360’s current basic design dates back to co-founder Tera Patricks and very early 2004. As I understand it, she wanted a unique site design with an online magazine look and feel, hence the graphics and tight headlines, and multiple column layout.

Unique is what we have. Tera did most of the coding herself and the end result is a distinct look at a price—we have multiple graphic element links embedded into the summary and body of every article and review and in multiple fields.

As Ron tells it, in MySQL (the database which stores Mac360’s site) terms, it’s messy.

Still, we want to work on a change to update the site’s look and feel without major surgery. I worked on some designs, Ron gathered the Mac utilities we’d use to work on the new look. We’re still working. Learning and implementing XHTML and CSS into a site design could fry a brain.

So, what we would like is a little feedback from the Mac360 faithful. What Mac sites do you frequent and why? Which Mac site designs do you favor and why? Do you prefer single column, triple column, graphics or no graphics?

In a separate article I’ll outline the tools we’re using and update our progress. In the meantime, feel free to criticize what we have, but also let us know why, and, very importantly, give us some examples of what you really like… and why.