Things are looking a bit different around here, and the work has only just begun. The site’s been streamlined into this new design, which consolidates primary navigation into the drop-down menus under the header. (Incidentally, if you’re viewing the site on Safari, Firefox, or Opera, you should see those menus appear slightly translucent.)
Relocating the navigation system to the menus opened up some significant real estate on the right side of the site, which has been folded into the content area. The reasons for this widening of the site’s main body won’t be apparent yet, but this was necessary to pave the way for some big new features still in the pipeline that simply wouldn’t work on the old design’s 500 pixel wide content space.
One of those big new features is a totally remade Urban Living guide, which is under development now. The new guide is powered by Google Maps, and will allow users to fly around urban Fort Worth viewing urban living properties arrayed on the map. Optionally, the system may allow users to overlay other data on the map as well, such as the location of restaurants, cafes, bars, grocery stores, schools, five minute walk zones, transit routes, and even on-street bike paths and trails. In addition, it may be possible at a later date for users to comment and rate restaurants and such on the guide. A lot of this is still in development, but I hope to have a beta version up on the site in the not-too-distant future. The Urban Living guide will still be viewable as a neighborhood-by-neighborhood list for those who prefer it, but with Google Maps integration as well.
Speaking of Google Maps, I plan on using it extensively in new posts on the site, thanks to the new wider content area. Development news and updates will include integrated Google Maps and Google Maps Streetview viewers.
The design as a whole now reflects the basic feel I was going for, but there’s still plenty of tweaking to be done. Once complete, I hope the site will feel much more sleek and streamlined than before, with a greater focus on content display.