Con­sider this design a place­holder as its pur­pose, while tem­po­rary, is meant to replace what would oth­er­wise be an unstyled tem­plate. I don’t know about you but I’d much rather see a sparsely-styled lay­out than the bare min­i­mum, default browser style. The lat­ter can be quite the eye­sore, espe­cially if you sud­denly have blurred vision or if that tune in your head, yes that one, is pre­vent­ing you from think­ing straight.

For weeks I’ve con­tem­plated whether I’d do this redesign live or behind the scenes and while I can weigh the advan­tages of keep­ing it behind close doors, per­son­ally I’ve always enjoyed see­ing designs flour­ish live, even if live means “a span of 30 days or more.”

Since I’m par­tic­i­pat­ing in CSS Reboot, I won­dered if doing the redesign live would be against the rules, but see­ing as though Nathan Smith pulled the cur­tain back early, it seems as if I’m in the clear. Regard­less, the offi­cial unviel­ing will occur some­time in Novem­ber, so I’ve got plenty of time to fid­get with things.