New site layout talk

For discussion of the Subeta pet site, including new colours and other features.
Seerow
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New site layout talk

Post by Seerow »

I mentioned in the AaToW thread that Keith had said on Twitter that a new site layout was in the works. It's more official now, with a post in the forums.
Here is a link to the forum for those interested: Click.

I'm rather dreading the new design, as I can just see it getting all fancy with drop down menus and popup boxes and all those other annoying little details programmers love so much but drive me crazy. Simple text links in a sidebar are great for me!
Keith also mentioned in the post that he plans to make the site fullscreen, which I also don't think I'll like at all. I think the site is fine just the width it is, and the big area to the side leaves room for pretty areas to be designed with customcss. If it is made fullscreen, I rather hope there is the option to keep it half if I end up disliking the widescreen format.
On that note, I hope my customcss still works, especially since Aqua went through a lot of trouble to fix it up recently.

So what do you guys want to see/not want to see in a new layout?
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mellaka
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Re: New site layout talk

Post by mellaka »

I'm curious what fullscreen means, since I usually play my online sites in half-windows (on the highest resolution possible) and Subeta fits perfectly for me now, except when I'm battling.

And I went back to using Aqua's custom CSS too. I didn't realize how much I missed it.
AngharadTy
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Re: New site layout talk

Post by AngharadTy »

"Fullscreen"? Full whose screen? There are still people on 800x600. If you add too much to the possible width, you alienate some users. I personally keep my browsers about 1000 px wide, and there are some sites that I have to pan-and-scan. It's annoying as hell, makes it look cluttered, and... what would the point be? How wide do you need Subeta, on a typical day? I look at pets, shops, quests... nothing that would really benefit from being wider. The only thing that I "need" to widen my screen for are poorly-thought-out V2 layouts.

I would also hate to see a lot of ever-so-fancy tricks like dropdown menus and such. Things that respond when you roll over them... they tend to be the most problematic. KISS. Fancy tricks look great when it's a site people go to once to, say, get info on a product or upcoming feature. Like checking out a movie's website and getting a cool splash page and some really great interactive menus. When it's a draw; you want people to buy your product (or give your province tourism), but they're not repeat customers at your website. Because dealing with something impressive and fancy for hours and days and months just becomes tiresome and old hat. Things have to be easy and accessible, not complex code tricks.

I would like to see better graphics. I made myself a top graphic because I couldn't stand looking at that plain, old-art thing so much. It's a very simplistic layout overall. It just looks like basic tables, nothing interesting in any way. However, I do not, not, NOT want to see any more of this goddamn bubbly shit that's infecting the world. I recently uninstalled and downgraded a program (Live Messenger) because it looked like OS X had eaten it and then vomited it out and polished it up. Apple is killing the world with annoying mediocrity through its repetitive bubbly crap. With reflections. God but I hate all the crappy, overdone reflections.

Although, not as much as I hate stupid bubbly junk.

I'm dreading re-doing code for every single pet looked I've ever made. That'll be a fun day of hell. Just the thought is enough to make me want to retire.
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Sayle
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Re: New site layout talk

Post by Sayle »

AngharadTy wrote:"Fullscreen"? Full whose screen? There are still people on 800x600. If you add too much to the possible width, you alienate some users.
I haven't coded in ages, but I believe it's possible to design a site that stretches to accommodate different sizes, and I believe that's what Keith meant. As in, Subeta will take up a good portion of your screen on a tiny laptop with 800x600 resolution, but it will also take up a good portion of your screen if you're an artist with a huge monitor. It shouldn't alienate any users; just look better to users with larger screens. I don't particularly mind the site's size now, but browsing around and comparing it to other sites, it does seem to have a lot of blank space to the side.
AngharadTy
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Re: New site layout talk

Post by AngharadTy »

Yes, I understand that, but... there's a point where a layout can't go any smaller. If the basic layout is set up so that it looks ideal at, say, 1200 px, then anyone who uses anything less than that would feel cramped (at 1000 px) or rebuffed (800 px). Talking about making a website larger is always an issue. It makes it almost impossible on portables, too; laptops have smaller screens, which generally means smaller resolutions. People using browsers on their phones (or their Wiis, hehe!) will be unable to use sites that are set up in a fashion that is unfriendly to smaller sizes. Not that I think the cell phone crowd is really a target demo for Subeta, but it's an example. Mostly I'm just concerned about that "ideal" width that I mentioned.
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mellaka
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Re: New site layout talk

Post by mellaka »

I just still get annoyed occasionally that I have to side scroll on Neo now to play the way I want, so I hope that Subeta doesn't turn out that way too.

And adding widgets also makes me think of bulky and cluttered like Neo, but hopefully they'll be optional.
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Re: New site layout talk

Post by Dollfie »

I think it'd be really nice to have the layout take up the full screen so long as it did so well with any resolution. Text links are also more than adequate to take me where I need to go. Special effects, drop menus and such will annoy me endlessly. What I want to see most in the new layout is *some* form of consideration for those users with a slow connection. No large png files that waste my loading time, certainly nothing like Misticpets. This is the biggest problem I have with the new wardrobe. I curse to myself every time I scroll over an item because I know the full HA overlay is going to have to load (I know what the stuff looks like, thanks) and all the new coding seems to be going in this general direction.
Sayle
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Re: New site layout talk

Post by Sayle »

AngharadTy wrote:Yes, I understand that, but... there's a point where a layout can't go any smaller. If the basic layout is set up so that it looks ideal at, say, 1200 px, then anyone who uses anything less than that would feel cramped (at 1000 px) or rebuffed (800 px).
Ah, I see what you're saying. About 40% of internet users have resolutions of 1024x768 or lower if browser display statistics are to be trusted, and I'm sure that will be taken into account. It would probably be a good idea to mention it in that thread if it concerns you, though.

My first reaction to drop down menus a while ago was to pout... but then I realized that some of my favourite sites have them, and they're not any more difficult to navigate. Therefore, I'm pretty indifferent so long as everything remains easily accessible. Pretty, cheerful, organized and easy to use is all I ask for.
Seerow
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Re: New site layout talk

Post by Seerow »

Keith mentioned in the thread that the new layout would most likely use drop down menus, but at least not the hover kind. He gave the example of Digg as to what to expect. I hope the rest of the layout doesn't follow Digg though, as it's not very pretty XD
While I would still vastly prefer normal links, I can live with this type of drop down menus as long as it's easy to find stuff you need. I still have issues with Neopets layout.

He also said that he hopes to make it really easy to customize, which I think sounds rather neat. That includes changing the site width, so lets hope that holds true!
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Sunwolf
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Re: New site layout talk

Post by Sunwolf »

Hmm. It's new and I fear it. Why not just make some new site layouts? Every single one still has Subeta.ORG on it, for goodness sake!

I just pray that it doesn't take a while to load or slow the site down even MORE.
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Re: New site layout talk

Post by thelonetiel »

They were hiring a new graphic designer for a reason, so I guess this is to be expected.

Keith says that it'll be as CSS friendly as possible, so that shrinkage is easy. Which will probably mean that anyone who plays on a 800x600 resolution and doesn't know CSS or that customCSS even exists will be screwed over...

I like the fact that it seems like the layout will be polled and thus allowed criticism before enabled. With luck, the new designer will be good at taking criticism and working with the Subeta public, so we'll get something good.

I'm vaguely excited about a new layout because I don't like the current ones in the least and easier to manage customCSS will be fun. Even if they do screw it up, if they do it right, it should be easy to fix.
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Re: New site layout talk

Post by Jessi »

I know dickall about CSS, so the fact that the site will be "CSS friendly" means nothing to me. A site shouldn't have to be CSS friendly to LOOK good - it should be USER friendly first.

Also, rofl, Ty, one of our chats. One where I'm acting retarded, gee, thanks. ;D
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Re: New site layout talk

Post by thelonetiel »

Theoretically, if they make it CSS friendly, users will be able to customize it to make more user friendly, if the design includes the all base components.

That alone makes me feel better, as long as they don't delete half the stuff, it shouldn't be impossible to "fix" whatever weird layouts they come up with.

'Course, that is assuming they do what they say they will do, and do it right, assigning appropriate classes and IDs, suchlike to make it easy to go through in CSS and edit stuff. And that they don't delete half the navigation links.

Let's just all hope the person writing the code is well aquainted with the principles used in the CSS Zen Garden.
klaatu99
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Re: New site layout talk

Post by klaatu99 »

Just my two coppers worth here. I really hope the new site layout/design avoids all the newfangled geegaws and what not. And for ghods sake, keep shockwave and/or flash as far away as possible. I say that because, believe it or not there are still some of us folks ount in the cyberweb that are still on dialup. It takes me long enough to load a page with just simple jpgs, add in flash, and it won't be worth visiting Subeta for me any more, I just can't see waiting five or six minutes for each page to load like it did for me over on Neopets.
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Re: New site layout talk

Post by Foghawk »

I have to say, drop-down menus are among my least favorite design elements. Small hover submenus for pages that don't really deserve their own sidebar links are fine, good even - having a slow connection, I like to be able to get where I'm going in as few clicks as possible - but click-to-open menus for every single category are not... especially as there is simply no way to create working click-to-open menus in pure CSS; they require Javascript.* Now, hover menus can be made to open permanently with customCSS... but click-to-open would require no less than Greasemonkey scripts. (While I'm at it, I would like just to mention that I can't stand horizontal menus (the ones across the top of the page). Scrolling all the way to the very top of the page to navigate is no fun, the drop-downs that go with them are no fun, and the kind that follow you down the page are worse.)

As for liquid layouts: I know liquid layouts (the kind that resize to your window) are supposed to be good practice - but frankly, in my opinion they're more likely to cause headaches than small fixed-width layouts. I happen to have a shiny little macbook with extremely high resolution, and a gigantic desktop monitor whose resolution is even higher. Yes, when I look at fixed-width layouts, there's a lot of space that goes unused. Unavoidable. But when I look at liquid layouts, there's the same amount of stuff on the screen - and the wasted space is spread over the whole layout. Sidebar menus are ridiculously far apart and stretched way beyond the width of their contents; the main content is spread the same way; long passages of text are on two or three long lines instead of in nice blocks... and when I look at the same site with very low resolution, everything's on top of everything else. Either way, it- looks- ugly. I know, I know, it can all be fixed with customCSS - but shouldn't we be able to use a decent-looking site without designing it ourselves?

I am pleased that it's going to be polled, at least.


*a simplification but true. I won't go into details at the moment.
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