The key to OpiWiki's layout are the two top navigation bars - they define the whole thing. They're what I've been working on during the past weeks. Although the general layout stays the same, the navibars gained new graphics, namely, new fonts. For what may seem like a small change at first, is actually a significant improvement, adding a new definition to our site. I've been searching for the perfect combination for hundreds of hours, and finally I feel ready to say that I love the result. OpiWiki's layout is now very special.
What makes it special? Usually websites use 2-5 fonts. OpiWiki is a unique combination of 15 fonts (not including weights), across the whole site. Fonts being the best of oldschool and the best of modern, made by the most talented designers. The true art was to put it all together; it's a layout designed to a single letter and to a single pixel. In fact, some fonts are used only for a few characters.
That makes even our purely-text pages look beautiful. At the same time, it's all parallel to the character of OpiWiki; elegant, neat, meaningful, modern. A few examples of topic pages:
opi.wiki/vote/t/internet-ct
opi.wiki/software/discuss
opi.wiki/health/vote
opi.wiki/politics/vote
opi.wiki/philosophy/discuss
Other layout improvements will follow. Before we're out of beta, we'll probably have an icon logo, and mainly that's why the changes - to make sure the logo is designed to our final graphics.
The layout is not fully ready for 1920px+ screen resolutions yet.
OpiWiki looks best under Opera and Chrome.
I must say: kudos to Microsoft for making great fonts - we're using 6 fonts produced by MS.
Later I'll update this post, to add some before/after screens, etc.