Posted on by tanster

Welcome to OfficeTally 2.0!

After more than two and a half years, I decided that OfficeTally was due for a little makeover.

A few things to note:

  • No matter what page you’re on, you can click “OfficeTally” in the banner to go back to the home page, same as before.
  • See those icons next to some people’s comments? — if you’d like your own, create an account at gravatar.com. Whatever email address you sign up with there, make sure you use that same address when posting a comment here. (If gravatars wreak too much havoc server-wise, I’ll turn them off. But for now, have fun!)
  • The “Comments” link is now at the top of the post instead of at the bottom — for easier reach.
  • You can now find the “About,” “Chat,” “Links,” “Spoilers,” and “Calendar” links at the top right corner of the banner.
  • The “Links” page now includes many more websites!
  • You can now chat directly on the “Chat” page.

OfficeTally 2.0 — it’s the same as before, but fresher. Hope you like it!

P.S. OfficeTally 2.0 looks fine in most browsers, but it looks best in Firefox.

134 comments

  2. Everything looks fantastic! I love it! I especially like how the new layout fills my whole screen. Now there’s more officetally to love. :)

    [from tanster: thanks! i figured it was finally time to expand to 1024 x 768 resolution. :) ]

  8. The new look is great. I hope it works out well and there are no problems with it unlike Dunder Mifflin 2.0.

    [from tanster: LOL!]

  9. Oh PS, guess who just went dork and tried out OT in 5 browsers just to see what it would look like? Yeah, that would be me. So congrats Tanster: you work in Firefox, IE, Chrome, Opera and Safari, with the only major difference in Safari being the font. Nice work ;)

    Also, may I express my appreciation for chronological comments? It’s great.

    [from tanster: a little bit of OT2.0 trivia — it took over 100 hours to get this redesign right, partly because I had to make sure it looked reasonable in all the major browsers. yes, i wish Safari rendered the font the same as the other browsers. a little nit for me, grrr.]

  15. It looks awesome! The first Office Tally had lots of zing and pep, but this has even MORE zing and pep!

    [from tanster: LOL! thanks matt!]

  17. I LOVE it tanster! it took me a while to find out how to comment this though.. hah.

    [from tanster: lol, yes, i moved the “Comments” link to the top of the post. i hope it’s more convenient there than at the bottom!]

  20. Lurving the redesign. I could nitpick, but I won’t because I don’t want to reveal just how much of an anal freakazoid I am.

    carl mentioned that the font is different in Safari. Maybe I’m going blind, or maybe the plethora of fonts available to me on my Mac has affected how the page renders (I consider myself somewhat of a typophile) but both Firefox and Safari are rendering the body font as Arial. So I’m not really sure what you guys were talking about. And yes, it is bugging the bejesus out of me. Aaaaaah!

    [from tanster: thanks, andrew! please, nitpick away. i’m equally anal about the details. which is why it’s taken me over a month to release this thing.]

  24. Looks solid, nice job! Took me a minute to realize I was still on good ol’ OT. Need to look around and familiarize myself with it. Looks great though!

  26. Oh, wow – congrats on the makeover, tanster! OT 2.0 – I love it! This is way more exciting to me than it probably should be. I’m now off to get my own “gravatar”…

  27. My mouth literally went agape went I saw the new site. But once I got over the initial shock (I’m not good with change), I liked it. Good job! I didn’t think the old site looked bad, but OT 2.0 does look “fresher”. I approve. :)

  29. Loving the new look, tanster! I especially like the green titles in the sidebars, it looks a lot fresher than OT 1.0. But that blog did a lot of messed up stuff. You can’t be held responsible :)

    [from tanster: thanks, nv. yeah, the sidebars look much better now. yay! :) ]

  35. oh… just want to clarify I was referencing Ryan talking about Ryan 1.0. I didn’t ACTUALLY mean OT 1.0. was messed up haha

  36. Looks awesome and clean cut! But where’s my favorite spoiler section hiding?

  38. Wow! I’m loving the updates. Now we will get to see what everyone looks like… wow, a lot of people look like Jim and Pam (wink)

  45. Wow! What a surprise. Great job, tanster! This is all very aesthetically pleasing- I’ll just have to familiarize myself so I can navigate swiftly again. I could get around on 1.0 pretty fast. (TWSS)

  47. Very nice! The only suggestion I might make would be to add a comment jump in the main page of an article, like there is on the short version of articles on the main page. Maybe it could go right next to the date (i.e. date | comments). Only because when you are scrolling fast to see the comments, they don’t stick out as much as they did on the 1.0 version. I love the new layout!

  52. Great new layout tanster – your hard work on this website really makes watching the office extra fun!

  53. I love the new layout. I’ll just spell what other have said in saying I love the sidebars and the longer banner and the wider page. OT 2.0 rocks! :)

  54. I like it tanster! :) Great job, and just an overall congrats on such a successful website. :)

  55. i’d have to say OT2.0 is a success…everything looks great, thanks for all you do :)

  56. So pretty! I was just thinking the other day that it was time for an OT facelift. I really like the new layout. :)

  57. Awesome layout! It’s very simple and fresh. I love it :)

    [from tanster: thanks ileana! that means a lot coming from you. :) ]

  61. Hey tanster :)

    I really like the layout, I like the double side info and the longer bar up top. My only complaint is the comments being all white, it makes it, I don’t know, more difficult to pick things out, same with the sidebars. But other than that, great job!

  62. Hi Tanster – Good work on your new layout! I just have one suggestion: I think it would be good if there was a little more visual difference between all the three column. If it were my site, I would probably just put a very subtle gray (or other color) background on the middle column (the one with all the links) to break up the page horizontally.

    Other than that, I love your site, and appreciate all the good work you do for us Office fans :-) Please keep it up!!

  66. I absolutely love the new layout.
    I check officetally every single day!
    Tanster, you’re the best!

  67. it took me a second to find the comments so I could comment on how nice the new OfficeTally looks ;)
    I have Firefox and it looks great…nicely done miss tanster

  68. I LOVE the new layout!! I actually like all of the whiteness. It seems so fresh & clean!
    :D

  71. Admit it: you did this partly so that you can use Ryan 2.0 quotes from that deleted scene. x3
    Looks great!

    [from tanster: lol! i did think about it. ;)

  76. default font size is still way too small.. it’s not a big deal, as I can adjust it manually in Firefox, but I’d like to not have to..

  79. Looks great! Although I have to say my eyes weren’t prepared for all the white at 5:30 in the morning. :-)

  80. It’s good. It’s got zing and pep.
    But maybe you can make and even NEWER OfficeTally 3.0 with even MORE zing and pep! :D

  81. Ahh, I just saw that 21 beat me to the punch. Ah well, the joke was nice while it lasted.

  83. I like it! But what happened to the spoiler post and the OTCR?!

    Great work, tanster!

    [from tanster: see the upper right corner of the banner. :) ]

  88. Tanster this is so cool! Congrats on updating and being the most spectacular person ever for creating officetally. I would be lost without you!

  90. Well done. Now if I could just find the old Links page…

    [from tanster: upper right corner.]

  91. Honestly, this layout is all design, no function. Everything is so confusing and over-designed. I prefer the old layout. But, keep up the good work anyway.

  100. Well, I gotta say I’m not loving the change. The borderless white page is pretty plain and it is easier to lose your place now.

    I am really not a fan of the (apparent) decision to make the blog post text not copyable. Seems like a petty decision that prevents someone from (for example) copying quotes from an episode into an email to friends.

    [from tanster: i’m considering all feedback, and learning and tweaking as i go, so thanks! oh, and since you mention quotes, the most comprehensive site for them is officequotes.net. :) ]

  104. I love change, so this is fabulous. However, I really miss the orange dates in the spoilers to show it was updated. I realize this is small and rather selfish, but it really made a dull day all that more exciting to see the little orange date be changed. Any reason why it is missing?

    [from tanster: excellent question. this was removed simply because i didn’t want to keep it updated anymore. i realize it’s a small thing, but the daily maintenance of OT is a long list of small things, and i felt it had to go. sorry! :( ]

  105. Hey tanster, I don’t know if this is a little too picky on my part, but is it possible to make the entire officetally banner (and not just the words “officetally”) click-able? isn’t that how it was for officetally 1.0?

    [from tanster: now that the “about,” “chat,” “links,” “spoiler,” and “calendar” links have been moved to the banner, i can’t make the entire banner clickable.]

  107. Yay, it looks fantastic! ‘Fresh’ is definitely the word I’d use – so clean and simple. Kudos to you for all your hard work!

    And I’ll get to working on those seasonal banners. ;)

    [from tanster: thank you, allison! your banner ROCKS. :) ]

  111. I don’t like it. At first when the background stayed white, I thought something was wrong, that my browser would not load the background for some reason. Now I realize it’s supposed to be that way, but it seems too plain. There’s no edge, so it doesn’t seem as crisp or refined, I guess you could say. The 3 column design also seems more cluttered to me, and seems to not utilize vertical space, which there is plenty of, instead of horizontal space. One of the things I do like, however, are the icons next to people’s comments.

    Sorry tanster, good effort, but personally, I liked the old design better.

  115. Fyi Tanster, not sure if others who use internet explorer have mentioned, but I cannot see the links that show at the right top banner in any of my internet explorer pages! Is anyone else having this problem? I only realized this issue after I saw it in firefox, but I mainly used internet explorer for everthing, so that sucks.

  117. I love it…takes some getting used to. But, still. Tanster…you do everything right. I am so thankful you put all this work into this awesome sight. We’re lucky to have you!

  119. Hi Tanster – Thanks for the great site redesign. I visit OfficeTally every day (multiple times!) and really appreciate all of the hard work you put into it. I can imagine that running this site is a huge suck on your free time, and I hope everyone who visits realizes what a great service you’ve done for all Office fans.

  123. Now that I figured out where the comments are, I can finally say “Well done, Fancy New Tanster!” :)

  125. Great job, Tanster! I’d say this is 100x better than when facebook did their revamp. :) Keep up the good work!

  126. There are no lines separating the comments when I use IE. If I scroll down far enough so that the 2nd and 3rd columns are off the screen, it gets a little disorienting… it’s a lot of text just floating in all that white. Anyone else have this problem?

    Firefox was fine, it had the lines, but I’d prefer to stick with IE.

    [from tanster: are you a CSS whiz? i need help figuring out how to fix this problem. when i turn gravatars OFF, the lines separating comments appear in IE, but when I turn gravatars ON, the lines disappear. very frustrating.]

  131. This is awesome. I now want to try to comment more because of the gravatar thing.

    What a silly reason to start commenting, huh? Haha.

    [from tanster: not at all! it’s an excellent reason. :) ]

  132. Hi Tanster – sorry it has taken me a while to add my kudos on the new site. Finding it easy to get around (and I hope on some level these changes will make things easier for you too!) I have no idea how you keep up with all the work this site requires, but I’m so grateful that you do!

  133. Tanster! When did you do this!?!?! I was away for about two and a half weeks; I checked once and it was the same and then BOOM! it changed. I do like it; very snazzy and rejuvenated. But just WOW! Many thanks again for all that you do; it really is incredible!! I have a lot of catching up to do… I think I’ve only watched up to ‘Business Ethics.’ I’m looking forward to ‘Office’ overload for awhile now haha!

  134. tanster,
    i just noticed the quote-a-day. nice touch! (especially for those of us without the calendar :)

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