I finally got some time to make some changes to the blog over the weekend.

Originally, I installed a fair few hacks and tweaks to make it work they way I wanted. But all that tinkering was causing problems, with a long load-time for the site, and even occasional freezes for no apparent reason.

Plus, I was hosting a lot of the javascripts on Apple’s MobileMe service, which is due to close soon, so I really needed to overhaul the whole kit and caboodle.

In the last 12 months Blogger has introduced most of the features that previously required hacks, widgets or additional coding. So I spent some time on the weekend removing them all and reverting to a standard template.

It now seems to run much faster, and has the added benefit of being friendly to mobile devices too.

I found it still loaded a bit slower on Internet Explorer — especially when opening the new table of contents page.

I’ve installed a new search function, table-of-contents, and contact widget, all located in the Pages widget at the top right.

The recent comments widget now works properly, the blog list has been trimmed and updated, and the link-tabs moved under the blog title and made a bit more visible.

And we now have a favicon in the address bar, of Lady Justice!

I still have a few more things to fix under the hood — relocating where some graphic files are hosted, changing post labels so they play nice with the table of contents widget, and add a couple of the frequently-visited-tables into pages — but the visually obvious stuff is done.

There may be a few broken links in some posts, strange formatting or malfunctioning pictures. If you find any, please use the contact form to let me know and I’ll try to repair it.

And of course, let me know if you find it works better and if you like the new layout!