After 13 years (that can't be right, can it?) The TV Calendar is getting a design update! But don't worry too much, this really is an update, rather than a makeover. The basic designs and colour schemes will still be in place, they are just updated with a bit more of a modern sensibility and to enhance features already in place. Today I'll briefly talk you through the front page changes, though there might be things added or removed in the final version.

You can help with the development of the update with a Lifetime Premium Account, get new backgrounds and an Ad-Free experience - Just £81.00 until Cyber Monday!
https://www.pogdesign.co.uk/cat/go/2025-cyber-monday

While at first glance it doesn't look like much has changed, almost every element has been tweaked in some way. The HTML has almost entirely changed and if you want to get technical, the layout is now CSS Grid based, instead of Flex. This allows removing some unneeded elements in the code and a simplifying overall.

The page is still PHP/JS, but the latter has been moved to native code, now it is more robust and user-friendly than in 2012. JQuery is gone, as well as the massive packages used on the site. For instance, the current episode hover pop up is 12Kb. In the update, the hover pop up, the marking off of episodes, scrolling header, image lazy loading, and all the JS on the summary pages totals 10.4Kb! And doesn't require a 60-200kb JQuery download. This might only affect you on a fresh visit, but it's definitely nice to have.

The header menu is now also simplified, though some of you might not like this change. I've removed the dropdown "mega menu" and now the links go to the main page of that section, with links to further sections found on that page. So Profile will just go to the main profile page, News will go to the article overview, etc. This is admittedly a change made for search engines. It removes a lot of very static content from every page and eliminates a fair amount of blocking content that people very rarely interact with anyway.

Part of this section is the Search bar, which will no longer be "on page". The search bar will be on its own page from now on, as the data on the site expands, with actors and other searchable content coming in the update. The extra options make the search a bit more complex and no longer fit into the simple "one bar for one content type" ideal.

Visually the text is a bit more legible, the colours are a bit bolder, especially the new "multi-angle" backgrounds (I'll talk more about those soon), corners of content boxes and tick boxes being rounded feel more comforting, CSS transitions are smoother and more consistent - it's just generally a nice "place" to be; I do hope you'll agree.

This is a very brief overview and it was still quite wordy. I'm not even going to the problems I've documented with CSS Containers and transitions, mix-blend-modes, and fonts STILL in 2025. I hope you can see and understand why this "simple" update is taking some time.

In a few days I'll talk about the Summary pages, and how I developed the start of a new layout paradigm - Oh yeah, there's a crazy cuckoo rabbit hole to go down!

Once again - you can help with the development of the update with a Lifetime Premium Account, get new backgrounds and an Ad-Free experience - Just £81.00 until Cyber Monday!
https://www.pogdesign.co.uk/cat/go/2025-cyber-monday