Addressing the elephant in the room

A few people have noticed: I changed the way the blog looked with zero fanfare earlier this week.

I've changed my blog appearance, I think, six times now, although one was just a header swap. Just about all of those came with a bit of a warning or explanation.

I didn't think that was necessary this time, mostly because I've been doing this for over a decade, am pretty established, and don't think I need to justify my decisions here.

But also I thought that people were familiar with the general changes in web sites over the last two, three, four years and wouldn't be that affected by it. For the most part that seems to be true -- or, no one cares and they're all looking at pretty instagram pictures.

I've received a couple of questions though and just because I hate the feeling that some readers are lost, I'll explain what I can.

The changes, like many web site changes, are related to mobile phone use.

I've been irked by the way my blog looks on my phone for probably three or four years now. At first, the blog header looked so tiny on my phone. What was grand and attention-grabbing on a desktop computer (or a laptop) looked small and unprofessional on my phone.

I thought I could fix that by changing the header, making it larger and modernizing it a little. That's the look that dominated this blog the last three years.

This looked pretty cool on my phone. Click on the URL for Night Owl Cards and the above slammed you in the face. I liked that. No squinting or wondering what you were looking at.

However, if you were on the desktop or laptop (or probably a tablet, I don't know I don't deal with those), you always had to scroll to see if there was new content.

Like so.

I sensed that it was annoying.

So the phone issue continued to bother me.

A week ago or so I started poking around at Blogger's template features. I hadn't looked at those in awhile. When I last looked, most of the more modern templates were interesting, but just didn't seem to work for the look I wanted.

This time, I almost immediately found something I liked and it expressed what I wanted Night Owl Cards to say visually.

There it is. It's been called "spartan," but I like that. "Spartan" works with phones. "Busy" does not work with phones.

There is no header anymore. The Night Owl Cards banner, if you're not looking at it on the phone, is kind of tiny but that's OK. That's what I wanted. I would hope that everyone is familiar with the Night Owl Cards "brand" by now. There doesn't need to be a big show advertising this anymore. Collectors know what it is, or at least I hope they do.

This is what it looks like on the phone when you first log on:

I happen to love the look. It retains the dark Night Owl theme but it also has a distinct '50s vibe as far as the color scheme, the baby blue and the pinkish-salmon coloring of the links and the yellow "Night Owl Cards" banner.

The page links are all there still at the top. The ones that don't fit are under the "More ..." link, just clicky click.

For those who are wondering where the sidebar went, go to the three bars at the top right, that's a drop down for the sidebar. For those who have super-wide screens, the sidebar is probably still sitting there on the right when you call up the site. It's like that on my work computer.

Those "three bars" are standard with just about every modernized site I view at work. After seeing the "mobilization" of web sites constantly with newspaper sites and just about every major college sports program in the country, I figured it was time for me to do the same. People can't be looking at their phones wondering where half the material is on Night Owl Cards.

The sidebar has most but not everything that was once contained there. The archive is there, the links to other card blogs is there, the links to other NOC series is there. I dropped a few personal image photos because they didn't seem relevant anymore.

I've always wanted a super-dark look for the NOC theme, but white type on a black background has hounded me for years and I didn't want to go near it again. This template seems to have fixed that. It looks readable to me (and my eyes are 50 years old). It definitely looks readable on my phone. But if you're having trouble reading the type, let me know. Not sure what I can do but I'm not above fiddling some more.

Anyway, I think it's a professional look and I'm as happy with it as when I first selected the following look for the blog:

I started with this look in the spring of 2010 after a couple of blog set-ups that were not great. Unfortunately I don't have images of those first couple of looks. The first one was tiny orange type on a black background and I think half my readers went blind. The second one -- which lasted just three months -- was newspaper-themed and, it hurts me to say this, quite boring.

So when I devised the above I was pretty pleased with myself. Didn't even care that I didn't know how to center the header.

A couple of years later (you can see the header is centered now), I changed the header to jazz things up and the starlight theme background was added.

This is the longest-running look of the blog, right around five years. Then I changed it to the screaming NIGHT OWL CARDS font in 2017 until what I have now.

And that's where we are.

If you view the internet on your phone like -- you know -- almost everyone, I think you'll find navigating the site easier. Hopefully it's more readable, too. I'll probably continue to be tweaking some small things as I find them. But this is probably the last time I'll discuss the new look of the blog.

I know card collectors aren't exactly forward-thinkers, so there's probably some people that wonder why the heck I changed it or have vowed never to read this site again and put a pox on my nest. But hopefully, you've all adjusted by now.

After all, I'm someone who thinks baseball cards have been going downhill steadily since around 1992 and I can change. So all is not lost.