The venerable Kottke has redesigned and I very much like it. I mean, it’s all blogs and RSS these days, so why not a sidebar with a ton of links as well?
I’ve been thinking about shifting things around here having come across a few sites still using my Scherzo WordPress theme. Scherzo was the very first mobile-first theme available in the WordPress theme directory, and it displayed a sidebar when the browser screen reached a certain width. You could put any widget you liked in this area. It’s 14 years old but still looks pretty good, I reckon. I’d up the font sizes, maybe, and tidy things up – but it obviously works.
How many posts have I read over the years decrying the “noise” of sidebars, comments etc. as if these perfectly functional components were the same as banners or pop-ups? I probably wrote a fair proportion of them. All in the name of “minimalism”. And yet, the humble sidebar seems useful, offering things like full navigation menus, links, explanatory text and search boxes, all within easy reach of whatever you’re reading.
Pointless minimalism – another thing to unlearn.