Front page design: feedback, questions, bring 'em here.

hustlertwo

Want to take a look at part of the NPT redesign? This link brings you some answers. And just think, next week we'll have some comics to go with these saucy new skivvies.

_________________
"Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity."

Jakkun

Gotax worked on the site too? Did he work on the current site or just the new one? The new design looks good.

_________________
Been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding
the cretins cloning and feeding and I don't even own a TV

hustlertwo

Just the new one; I knew he was well versed in site design and such, but this was the first time he's done so with this site.

_________________
"Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity."

Wavtu

Mmm, looking schweet.

_________________
　／l、
（ﾟ､｡７　
　l、 ~ヽ　　　
　じしf_, )ノ

thetruecoolness

	Jakkun wrote:
	Gotax worked on the site too? Did he work on the current site or just the new one? The new design looks good.

So are you saying mine sucks, cause we'll go right here. Yeah I can't say that with a straight face, though my design was unique sort of. But of course I can't draw so... But the new design will probably be up in a couple of days, unless people have wild objections. Just need to take his code and integrate it with the backend for the site. Then I'll make a new style for the boards with that style as the template.

Of course he cheated and used a website design program. Kids and their autogenerators, mine are made fresh from scratch, just for you Smile

. But at least the code is standards compliant, so I can't complain.

_________________
Hurray, my site is back online and up again.
http://www.thetruecoolness.com/

"The universe is hostile So impersonal
Devour to survive, so it is So it's always been

We all feed on tragedy It's like blood to a vampire"

Silas

I like the new one, though it needs more cowbell.

gotax

	thetruecoolness wrote:
	Of course he cheated and used a website design program. Kids and their autogenerators, mine are made fresh from scratch, just for you . But at least the code is standards compliant, so I can't complain.

Cheated with a website design program!? Don't you dare insult me! I code my stuff by hand. I don't waste time on bullshit apps like Dreamwever or Frontpage... Every single webpage I've done I did using HTML-Kit... And the visuals, the gradients and orb-looking ball was done using Photoshop. Check my code, no program can do that clean :p

_________________
Rule #9
On issues relating to my daughter, I am the all-knowing, merciless god of your universe. If I ask you a question, you have one chance to tell me the truth. I have a shotgun, a shovel, and five acres behind the house. Do not trifle with me.

gotax

	Silas wrote:
	I like the new one, though it needs more cowbell.

What do you mean by "cowbell"... you mean bells & whistles like a Flash-based website?

_________________
Rule #9
On issues relating to my daughter, I am the all-knowing, merciless god of your universe. If I ask you a question, you have one chance to tell me the truth. I have a shotgun, a shovel, and five acres behind the house. Do not trifle with me.

hustlertwo

It's a reference to a Saturday Night Live skit, so don't worry, it's not an actual criticism. Does anyone have a link to the Cowbell sketch for Gotax?

_________________
"Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity."

Wavtu

This is the best I could grab on a moment's notice.

http://www.ojai.net/swanson/snlshows.htm

_________________
　／l、
（ﾟ､｡７　
　l、 ~ヽ　　　
　じしf_, )ノ

hustlertwo

I don't think it works. Might just be me, though

_________________
"Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity."

thetruecoolness

	gotax wrote:
	Cheated with a website design program!? Don't you dare insult me! I code my stuff by hand. I don't waste time on bullshit apps like Dreamwever or Frontpage... Every single webpage I've done I did using HTML-Kit... And the visuals, the gradients and orb-looking ball was done using Photoshop. Check my code, no program can do that clean :p

I just noticed the generator comments (so I knew it wasn't dreamweaver or frontpage). I figured you had gone back in and edited it. I looked up HTML-Kit, and it seems to make some things for you, no. Of course I'm just playing around anyway. I knew the images weren't autogenerated, you are an artist after all Smile

.

I can't say too much as I use an IDE for most of my stuff as well. Eclipse, if your interested, it has some really good plugins for HTML, CSS, and PHP. Basically just autocomplete and jump to definition of functions, and of course syntax highlighting. Though all my HTML I write using a class I wrote in PHP. Takes care of all the formatting and tag closing for me so I don't have to worry if I missed a space or a tag.

_________________
Hurray, my site is back online and up again.
http://www.thetruecoolness.com/

"The universe is hostile So impersonal
Devour to survive, so it is So it's always been

We all feed on tragedy It's like blood to a vampire"

Silas

http://www.ojaiwan.net/audio/cowbell.wmv

Right Click -> Save As...

I've got a fever and the only perscription is more cowbell!

Jakkun

I write my stuff in crimson editor. I can't exactly call it from scratch since I copy parts from other documents. I won't bother memorizing all the doc type crap.

_________________
Been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding
the cretins cloning and feeding and I don't even own a TV

thetruecoolness

Well guys though it still needs a little work before it goes 'live', check out the test and see what you think.

Test Site Design

So let me know what you think of the subtle changes (obviously the Vote For Us and Navigation words will be spruced up but I'm tired at the moment so they'll be fixed tomorrow). Also only the Home and Cast links work.

_________________
Hurray, my site is back online and up again.
http://www.thetruecoolness.com/

"The universe is hostile So impersonal
Devour to survive, so it is So it's always been

We all feed on tragedy It's like blood to a vampire"

Last edited by thetruecoolness on Mon Oct 30, 2006 4:27 am; edited 1 time in total

Silas

Looks fantastic. I like clean sites and this one doesn't have any distracting gibberish all over it.

Jakkun

When I go shopping I see a nice silver toaster that has a nice little design etched into it that makes it look kinda like the logo one. If I needed another toasting device I might get it, but I already have an extra.

The new look is good. Looks nicer.

_________________
Been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding
the cretins cloning and feeding and I don't even own a TV

thetruecoolness

Getting closer to complete with dummy pages setup for the ones not finished yet (Story and Links). As you will notice the comic moved back to the center and the navigation bar is now to the side of it.

So it's pretty much done barring a couple of minor changes, and the obvious changes to the story and links page. Probably will wait to put it up till Matt tells me what he wants for the links page.

So feel free to continue to make suggestions. I fixed some of the subtle issues with some padding and headers.

After this gets done I'll work on a new skin for the forums to reflect the new site design.

_________________
Hurray, my site is back online and up again.
http://www.thetruecoolness.com/

"The universe is hostile So impersonal
Devour to survive, so it is So it's always been

We all feed on tragedy It's like blood to a vampire"

gotax

Just checked it out, nice, though I've noticed a bug in the top menu. When hovering over a link, theres a slight (1 pixel) change.

And for suggestions, I would personnaly prefer the thumbnail navigation bars to be horizontal and under the comic itself... cause sideways sort of blows the fluidity.

I noticed in the Extras section that the height remained at 850... maybe head over into the CSS and remove the height ajustment, so the page would fit better with the small sized comics. Though, not sure if it would react well with the AJAX, you'll have to test it out.

The Vote-For-Us section could also become horizontal and go right under the top menu... or between the comic and No-Sense-Zone.

And last thing I would change would be the HTML/CSS and 1&1 buttons. There a bit big, and in the case of the W3C buttons, they are down-right ugly. I got a few small discreet buttons worked up which I used in one of my previous designs http://archives.kemryu.com/kemryu6/ that could work okay.

Other than that, nice choice of colors for the No-Sense-Zone blocks, looks way better.

_________________
Rule #9
On issues relating to my daughter, I am the all-knowing, merciless god of your universe. If I ask you a question, you have one chance to tell me the truth. I have a shotgun, a shovel, and five acres behind the house. Do not trifle with me.

Jakkun

I agree with changing the direction of the comic scroller. It is a bit confusing vertically.

_________________
Been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding
the cretins cloning and feeding and I don't even own a TV

thetruecoolness

I guess so. Just trying to be different and keep the navigation near the top. I might still put it on top of the comic (or maybe just the dropdown) so that way people can easily get to it without having to scroll, and maybe have the comic centering button. I personally don't think it detracts too much from the fung shui of the page but to each their own, and if someone who's used to it thinks it's confusing I can't imagine how a new person would feel.

As for the buttons I guess I can go for the indie buttons, though I don't think they look too ugly. So you think you can whip up some quick ones gotax, or find some for me.

The pixel thing is because I forgot to take the underline off the top links. The whole cascading part of CSS. So that'll be a quick fix.

So I'll have most of these fixed within a couple of hours (mainly because I'm going to eat now).

_________________
Hurray, my site is back online and up again.
http://www.thetruecoolness.com/

"The universe is hostile So impersonal
Devour to survive, so it is So it's always been

We all feed on tragedy It's like blood to a vampire"

Jakkun

He has them on his site that he linked

What the hell is the doc type declaration for 1.1 anyway? My site is compliant with it but it doesn't have the right declaration.

_________________
Been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding
the cretins cloning and feeding and I don't even own a TV

thetruecoolness

Well it's not in the correct color scheme Smile

.

Oh and the 1.1 is
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">

You could have just looked at the source on the pages.

Well all the new stuff is now up, and I think you will like it.
All of the stuff mentioned has been fixed except the buttons at the bottom.

_________________
Hurray, my site is back online and up again.
http://www.thetruecoolness.com/

"The universe is hostile So impersonal
Devour to survive, so it is So it's always been

We all feed on tragedy It's like blood to a vampire"

gotax

Not quite fixed for the top navigation.... its somehow, looks likes its overflowing the bottom-border. I remember having this problem, though I'd have to give your CSS a thorough check, though I'm in class right now.... did you take my CSS Sheet, or did you do one from scratch?

_________________
Rule #9
On issues relating to my daughter, I am the all-knowing, merciless god of your universe. If I ask you a question, you have one chance to tell me the truth. I have a shotgun, a shovel, and five acres behind the house. Do not trifle with me.

thetruecoolness

Fixed it. And the stylesheet is a bit of a hybrid at this point. I used a lot of yours but renamed some things and restructured some of it. The height on the nav bar was just 2 pixels too short.

_________________
Hurray, my site is back online and up again.
http://www.thetruecoolness.com/

"The universe is hostile So impersonal
Devour to survive, so it is So it's always been

We all feed on tragedy It's like blood to a vampire"

Wavtu

Looking good.

_________________
　／l、
（ﾟ､｡７　
　l、 ~ヽ　　　
　じしf_, )ノ

thetruecoolness

As an update this is now live, so disregard the test pages as they are not updated very often, and are only so I can make sure all the changes I make locally also work with the site.

_________________
Hurray, my site is back online and up again.
http://www.thetruecoolness.com/

"The universe is hostile So impersonal
Devour to survive, so it is So it's always been

We all feed on tragedy It's like blood to a vampire"

Silas

I kept clicking "Extras" when I meant to click "Forum"... I don't know why... I can't even recall what order the buttons were in the previous version of the website (memory of a goldfish, I know) but I think the Forum button was a bit further right is why... doesn't matter, I'll get used to it. :b

Jakkun

You can compare the forums to the main site. The forum still has the old layout.

Is there any reason there is a little space on the left of the Home tab that has a border extended around it with nothing in it? I just noticed it earlier at school.

_________________
Been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding
the cretins cloning and feeding and I don't even own a TV

thetruecoolness

No idea, but I'll work on fixing it later when I write up a new template for the forums. Something to do with tables maybe I'm really not sure. The templates aren't exacly XHTML 1.1 friendly, they like tables for layout, because IE does. So I'll likely be looking at SubSilver and write a completely new one based on that. This'll probably be next week as I'm preparing to move at the moment, and have another project I've been neglecting.

Actually the site wasn't supposed to be updated yesterday, but I accidentally overwrote the stylesheet, and found out Branches in CVS apparently don't all the files in a hierarchy, only the ones in the main folder. This really pissed me off as CVS usually does for doing anything besides normal committing and updating. Wish it wasn't so damn confusing to use, and wasn't so destructive. So it will be nice once I finally figure it all out and am able to make successful branches, until then looks like backup zip files before major changes.

As for the old layout it was

Home Comic Cast Forum Extras

So you probably just got used to Forum being next to last as it is still in the same number slot (4).

Ha ha ha, 69 posts.

_________________
Hurray, my site is back online and up again.
http://www.thetruecoolness.com/

"The universe is hostile So impersonal
Devour to survive, so it is So it's always been

We all feed on tragedy It's like blood to a vampire"

Jakkun

I'm guessing the new bar is not as wide as the old one and for some reason it did a right align. So comic was replaced with story since the comic page wasn't all that useful? The main page probably should have always had some navigation.

_________________
Been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding
the cretins cloning and feeding and I don't even own a TV

thetruecoolness

Fixed, forgot about the auto padding on the left on <ul>s. On most of my pages I turn off margin and padding on all things but p tags.

_________________
Hurray, my site is back online and up again.
http://www.thetruecoolness.com/

"The universe is hostile So impersonal
Devour to survive, so it is So it's always been

We all feed on tragedy It's like blood to a vampire"