Well... was not active much in www for some time. the reason being, trying and customizing this new layout for my blog.

But first, why new look? mmmm... i just felt that this blog has been looking the same for quite a long time. and that was the second main reason. first reason being, i felt there are few info in www, which i update (if not regularly, at least occasionally), which were just scattered in different places and there was no proper place or the info flow is missing between these. hence wanted a place, where all these are integrated and is presented in a consolidated way. hence, was checking on few themes/layouts for my blog, which serves this purpose and finally got this layout.

Then, the first challenge i faced, was with customizing this layout, for my needs. placing the details and then testing how user-friendly it is. once it reached a considerable shape, opened my testing arena to very few friends, and made changes as per their valuable feedback. few feedbacks were totally opposite of how i viewed them. so, it took a little while, to test their suggested changes, again nd again nd again nd again..., till i'm totally convinced with those changes.

Once the changes are done, next major challenge, was to make this layout compatible with different browsers. Few widgets, which work seamlessly well in one browser, was not even working/does not work the way which i wanted to. so, had to modify those widgets and scripts to work well with atleast major browsers like Firefox, Chrome and IE. this ate considerable amount of my time, to compromise on the way few widgets gets displayed across the browsers and test it extensively.

Now that, the whole layout is ready, then came my biggest challenge. The issue now was, it was taking too long time to load the page. Mainly because of the image stream at the top. i once got a comment, for my old blog, that, its taking too much time for loading. This new layout was taking triple the time it took for my old blog. i was like, this is not going to work. After few modifications to those images, without compromising the visual quality of those images, i was able to reduce considerable amount of loading time, at least 40% of what it took previously.

So, With all those modifications, changes, testing, thanks to my friends, here it is... the new layout/look of my blog, live...

I will stop this talking about some non-sense right now, with the following pics..

It comes with the announcement banner "Go beyond status messages!!!". I would rather put it as "Go towards Facebook!!!". And as soon as i saw this banner when i launched Gmail, it just reminded me of something called "Google Wave", something which has become the past now (atleast for me). Seriously, it took lot of requests for me, sending to lot many ppl, to get into Google Wave community. But now, i hardly (almost not at all) type "wave.google.com" in the address bar. A separate url, just for some 'broadcasting' yourself stuffs, was the main reason, for me not to visit there often. 

Google Buzz, exactly solves that problem first, by direct integration into GMail. I don't have to go anywhere else, to Buzz, which gives me total relief. They say Its "a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting and share updates, photos, videos and more.". I agree with all those words in that sentence, except "new" , just because these features that Google Buzz offers are already tried, tested and a big hit in one of the most popular Social Networking Site, Facebook. 

Still, one big feature, which differentiates this with its competitions is, "Built Into GMail" thing. GMail has transformed communication in www, by evolving from just another email site, adding chat (i still 'Unlike' the Invisible mode feature in that :( ), video chat, and lot other stuffs, now this Buzz. I really like this Buzz, just for this feature. But there are really lot more features coming with this Buzz. You can check it here.