When I first purchased dirtyDogStink.com and moved my blog over from Live Spaces, I knew that although the blog is the focal point of the site I didn't want it to be the landing page. I wanted a quick-loading, pleasant and simple design for the default page. My first attempt worked, but I wasn't too happy with it.

I wanted to create descriptions that would change in the main content area as you highlighted each menu option. Initially, I did this with images. I thought about doing it with JavaScript, but really wanted to try to do it without js while maintaining valid CSS. After several searches I found Eric Meyer's demonstration, pure css popups and it works! By using absolute positioning I was able to get all of my elements exactly where I wanted them with a changing description in the center of the page whenever a menu link is hovered over.

I like version 2 much better. Obviously I'm not a professional web UI designer, but I like this one's simplicity. My next to-do is to make some alternate CSS stylesheets that you can click on for different looks. That's for another day though...

~tod