Site Redesigned

Welcome to the new improved Baekdal.com. Finally some would say, at least those who knew how long this redesign has been underway.

In March 19, 2004 I re-launched Baekdal.com - in a graphic style that was simple. It was created with 95% functionality and 5% design. This new design is a bit different - it is still based on functionality over design for most parts, but the design is now a more prominent factor. I would say that it is 30% designed and 70% functionality.

Did you just change the CSS file?

Well, almost. In order to create the new design I only added a single div "<div id="body">" to the template - and that was only added because of some strange browser bug handling relatively placed <li>'s with negative margin. I tried working around this in the CSS file for about an hour - but eventually gave up.

The front and section pages were a different matter altogether. They changed from being coded as any other form of content - to being purely gateways to the content. This required a rather drastic remodeling of the underlying code. The front page in particular was recoded from the ground up.

New things

Search is a very important, and the old site did not feature such functionality. It did not even support it since the underlying data core could not integrate its data into a single search function.

The search function also features a technology showcase - a Knowledge Analysis System. It is a system that analyzes what you search for and - apart from showing you the search results - provides you with specific knowledge. This is an early alpha prototype and it needs a lot of additional work before it can be used effectively- but it is the next step in making information systems useful.

Try searching for "Thomas", "usability" or "email" - and notice how the white "knowledge box".

I plan to write more in-depth article about some of the new features. So as they say on TV - stay tuned.