This is a hacked version of Marian's Cologne Blue layout. I've tried to address some of the criticisms of Cologne Blue as a default skin, whilst preserving as much of the niceness as I can.

It is intended to * use the browser's native font settings for text and menu link items * show my proposed "ergonomic" layout of side menu items based on analysis of the stats from the new server * otherwise preserve the "clean" feel of Cologne Blue.

The principles for the menu item ordering are:

* Menu item groups are organised by the scope of what they refer to (global, this user, this page, etc.) * Menu groups are organised from top to bottom by frequency of overall use.

*Where there are significant differences in frequency within a group, entries within that group are listed in order of frequency of use. *otherwise, entries within groups are ordered alphabetically.

Notes/disclaimers: *This is a visual mock-up only. *The links don't work, and are generally wrong or nonsense. *This was hacked together in Mozilla's Composer module, which is a poor tool for editing complex HTML. *It still uses tables for layout. *The HTML is tag soup, and probably won't validate. *I've only looked at this layout in Mozilla 1.1beta and Internet Explorer 5.5.

If anone likes this, I can extract the design, and write some valid HTML + CSS that can be used as a template for a new server skin.

Please let me know if you like the layout.

Does it: * preserve what you like about Cologne Blue's looks? * have the menu items in roughly logical and familiar positions? * work on your browser?

Please feel free to suggest changes: this is a work in progress.

Regards,

Neil