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Topic: New Website Design

Shevonar

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Joined: 2011-09-05, 21:28
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Posted at: 2012-03-25, 23:51

I don't really like the landscape as it currently is. The white "glass" effect doesn't fit. Is there a version without this effect, than I might give it a try, but this way it doesn't look good. Also the login box is somehow in the way.


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fraang

Joined: 2010-02-15, 13:13
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Posted at: 2012-03-26, 08:28

The landscape is no problem. Simply use an in-game screenshot , copy and mirror it.

When I am at home I will give it a try.

And I would not add this glass effect too.

Edited: 2012-03-26, 08:29

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SirVer

Joined: 2009-02-19, 15:18
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Posted at: 2012-03-26, 10:29

Very nice work so far, Shevonar. Here are my completley non-artistic opinions so far:

  • I like the new layout of the menu structure. Makes a lot of sense and reduces the horizontal size of the menu by quite a lot
  • I like the cleaness of the layout. E.g. the sitebar is a big improvement and also the news section is nice.
  • I find the general layout to be too dark, though I appreciate the "nature" feel to the brown colors. Especially the news boxes and the header do not seperate well enough (for my tastes) to the background and from each other.
  • The black font in the footer is not very easy to read

And generally I do not think that the news page should be the landing place - at least not without a short paragraph of introduction like we have now. The reason is that people who stumble upon this site should not need more than 2 minutes to figure out what we are all about. One site that does a pretty good job is wesnoth.org : short introduction, downloads and then the news - visible without scrolling on my laptop.

Keep it up! The website will benefit sooo much from a design overhaul. Maybe you can activate janus as well - he fixed a lot of the awful mistakes that I did when designing this page initially.


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Shevonar

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Posted at: 2012-03-26, 11:03

SirVer wrote: Very nice work so far, Shevonar. Here are my completley non-artistic opinions so far:

I like the new layout of the menu structure. Makes a lot of sense and reduces the horizontal size of the menu by quite a lot I like the cleaness of the layout. E.g. the sitebar is a big improvement and also the news section is nice.

Thanks!

I find the general layout to be too dark, though I appreciate the "nature" feel to the brown colors. Especially the news boxes and the header do not seperate well enough (for my tastes) to the background and from each other.

I am not completely happy about the news boxes myself. Maybe I find a lighter background that still gives enough contrast to the font. Not an easy task tough.

The black font in the footer is not very easy to read

Yes, I know. But I thought making it white makes it stand out to much.

And generally I do not think that the news page should be the landing place - at least not without a short paragraph of introduction like we have now. The reason is that people who stumble upon this site should not need more than 2 minutes to figure out what we are all about. One site that does a pretty good job is wesnoth.org : short introduction, downloads and then the news - visible without scrolling on my laptop.

I have been looking at a lot of pages the last days and must admit that most of them have an introduction. I also think it is a good idea. It just has to fit the design. I am still on it.

Keep it up! The website will benefit sooo much from a design overhaul. Maybe you can activate janus as well - he fixed a lot of the awful mistakes that I did when designing this page initially.

I will try to get his attention. But it seem that he hasn't been active for quite a while?!

And a little update: I currently try to create the templates for the new design. Actually most of it works already. Expect more within the next days.


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Shevonar

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Posted at: 2012-03-26, 12:27

Now with some other textures: http://shevonar.ddns.info:88/v2/

It does look completely different! It is lighter as SirVer wanted and the footer text is a bit better readable (unless you use IE whtch has no text-shadows and thus making it unreadable - I need a way to handle green on wood for this stupid browser)

EDIT: Forgot to mention: You can compare with the previous version still here: http://shevonar.ddns.info:88

EDIT2: should change my local IP address face-confused.png

Edited: 2012-03-26, 12:28

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chuckw
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Posted at: 2012-03-26, 15:44

Shevonar wrote: Now with some other textures: http://shevonar.ddns.info:88/v2/ It does look completely different!

Yes, it is "warming up". face-smile.png That lighter background for the page helps considerably.

It is lighter as SirVer wanted and the footer text is a bit better readable (unless you use IE whtch has no text-shadows and thus making it unreadable - I need a way to handle green on wood for this stupid browser)

Maybe put the text on an "inlay" of darker/lighter wood? I would keep the rest of that bar unchanged.

EDIT: Forgot to mention: You can compare with the previous version still here: http://shevonar.ddns.info:88 EDIT2: should change my local IP address face-confused.png

Coming right along. face-smile.png


I see little people.

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Nasenbaer
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Joined: 2009-02-21, 18:17
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Posted at: 2012-03-26, 19:44

Wow cool :)!!

I really like the new website design (especially v2)! Nothing more to say, just looking forward to see more :) Concerning the news article icons: As there is none yet and as this page should not be offtopiced, I will create one face-smile.png


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Shevonar

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Posted at: 2012-03-27, 15:59

Thanks for all the positive feedback so far face-smile.png

Again I changed some more or less little things:

  • There now again is a short introduction with rephrased and shortened text. I thought the current text contains to much information an average gamer is not really interested in (GPL, SDL, etc.). It is now very similar to wesnoth's introduction on their website. Their site content is really good, especially the wiki. I think we should work on that too. Currently it is not easy to find what you are looking for, some things are scattered over several articles, others are duplicates. Therefore I
  • changed the Wiki menu: It now has links to the different wiki chapters. I also dropped the "all articles" and "recent changes" because I think they are not really interesting for most users.
  • included the first picture from the Icons for the website thread. The discussion where it finally will be used is still going on.
  • The mockup is now valid XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS3 (CSS2.1 + box-shadow + border-radius). It should work with all current browsers (tested with Google Chrome 17, Safari 5, Firefox 10, Opera 11, Internet Explorer 9 on Windows 7). It should also work with earlier versions Safari 3 and above, Firefox 3.5 and above, Internet Explorer 7 and 8 (without shadows and round corners) not sure which versions of Opera and Chrome are needed. Minimum horizontal resolution is 1024px to view the website without scrolling.

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SirVer

Joined: 2009-02-19, 15:18
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Posted at: 2012-03-28, 10:48

Is the original link updated? It looks the same to me as yesterday? E.g. the wiki menu seems not be changed.


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Shevonar

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Posted at: 2012-03-28, 11:04

The current version is http://shevonar.ddns.info:88/v2/.

I played around a bit with janus yesterday and there might be a landscape in the header again. But one without the glass effect. We also talked about the width of the homepage. I remember Astuur(?) once wanted the homepage to scale with the horizontal resolution. The bad site is, that the header seems kind of empty on larger resolutions and it is hard to "fill" it with some images dynamically. Therefore janus suggested a fixed width. I am not sure which way is better.


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