Design a Front End for the Spring Website.

[SinbadEV]

http://sinbadevsspring.googlepages.com/Spring.html

I was working on it again.

uploaded it to a seeable place... changed some images to see how it works.

I haven't been reading the thread exactly but it looks like you are moving away from this design

my idea for "scaling" would be to have 4 versions of the page, under 800x600, 800x600-1024x768, 1024x768 - 1280x1024, and larger then 1280x1024... then use browser scripting to select which to display (default to the 800x600 for people who have scripting turned off.)

[aegis]

Actually, you can use CSS to make it float to the browser window size :)

[rattle]

Yeah but it's a pain to get it right for even the main browser types (IE, Opera, Netscape/Firefox, etc).

[aegis]

Which is why I have them all installed. :)

[aegis]

Weirdest ones are IE (all of them)... and the Windows build of Safari had some weird quirks.

[rattle]

Yeah IE clearly... but Opera and FF handle things quite different as well as I had to notice yesterday.

[aegis]

Which is why I test thoroughly in as many browsers as possible.

[Warlord Zsinj]

Congrats sinbad!

[NKrypt]

If you guys are interested, I'm starting an initiative that is located in the below post:-

http://spring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtop ... =1&t=14474

Some of you will have seen it, some of you won't.

The intention is to use Drupal as the basic platform/Content Management System with which to work from and expanding upon it to give us the sort of features that we want. Drupal provides an extremely extensible platform with which to work with and a powerful tool for creating a community website. Check out some of the popular example websites produced using it in the above thread.

I've already registered http://www.portal-gaming.com on a fairly decent server (webhost is Bluehost.co.uk).

The site will support numerous games/domains e.g. http://spring.portal-gaming.com etc... such as Spring SupCom:Forged Alliance and Starcraft II and Dawn of War 2.

If you're interested in joining the movement let me know on the above thread or please feel free to give me feedback regarding it.

Hope to hear from you

[Argh]

Well... er... I guess that basically, we'd like to see you show us that you can implement the current contest winner, within the main frame of that Drupal front-end kit. I don't see a lot of point in getting behind this until you show us that you can get a working 'site built.

[Sertse]

Ok..., so what happens next? Now that the new design is more or less selected.

Guess I'm kinda pessimistic that this will never some to fruition (redesigning the site is a lot of work! I suppose), in which case, ... we should go with whats most achievable right now, just replace the current heading banner with the one Foreboding Angel linked to earlier.

Almost as important I think is jazzing up the "features" page, which is probably the *second* page anyone remotely interested will click to.

How about giving it a more exciting description and some pictures? Its a wiki page after all.

[Warlord Zsinj]

Well, it's pretty much been done, it just needs room for some community news, and for someone high up to approve and implement it.

[Vadi]

Which gods do we pray to have the design approved?

[Hobo Joe]

Which gods do we pray to have the design approved?

Seriously though... Who does approve the final design?


Because this one rocks, and the current one sucks!
So what are we waiting for?

[SwiftSpear]

Tobi and I sort of I guess, also Fnord... We kind of need a whole new site though, not just a new frontpage. While I don't really mind implementing new stuff, if it requires alot of work for our web admins it basically just won't happen on the basis of the fact that they don't have endless time.

We need something where we can basically just redirect the domain name, and import the forum database, and call it a day.

It's not that this isn't a useful effort, it's just it sort of is more of a starting point for something bigger than a competition where we can apply the winning design immediately.

[Argh]

You don't need to worry about the Forum... this is just a front end. Stuff like a revamp of the screenshots, a section for would-be developers, etc., can be fleshed out when the front end works, imo.

The only tricky part, imo, is coming up with some code to present the games and the News. Part of why I presented the design I did was to make it easier to implement- it'd mainly be cosmetic stuff, you'd literally just have to edit some minor CSS stuff to do most of it.

If we're going to use RoflCopter's design, which is favored by the vast majority here, then somebody needs to step up and make a PHP script that will present the data stored elsewhere (Wiki, RSS submissions, etc.) to users, provide randomization, etc., so that the page is functional and has tie-ins to some sort of pre-existing sources of data, to make it easier to maintain. It's waaaay easier to simply say, "the PHP will read a Mod's entry from the Wiki, but it will come out borked if not formatted in a specific way" than it would be to design yet-another database, etc., etc.

[AF]

Am I the only one who doesn't see this design and its functional problems through rose tinted glasses?

What about outside the front page? You cant honestly expect us to see this as an improvement if the rest of the site does not match? What about the wasted space? Imagine that front page on a large wide screen monitor, just how much of that monitor is going to be background?

How about pulling mods/games from the wiki? Aren't there going to be problems there? I cant remember a single wiki entry that's updated regularly, yet this is what would be expected of all our content developers, and should one not take up this responsibility it will pull down everyone else.

As of yet no mention of the technical aspects of such a design or the logistics has been put forward in any real sense, and all we have are static html mock ups.

[PicassoCT]

How about a Smallsizewiki per Mod ?

Not Unitdescriptions or complexe tactic tips - just three pictures, Backgroundstory & InstallInstructions + Link

If People have no time to update it - shrink it till it is timeless...

[Argh]

What about outside the front page? You cant honestly expect us to see this as an improvement if the rest of the site does not match? What about the wasted space? Imagine that front page on a large wide screen monitor, just how much of that monitor is going to be background?

1. You can compete, if you wanna. Meh, I brought up all of this as part of the reasoning behind my design, but it would appear that the popular vote is strongly in favor of something that looks cool, and I think it's wiser to listen to what people actually want to look at, myself- that's why it's a competition.

2. "The rest of the site" is a very broad area, using a lot of different technologies at the present. Changing the background color for the Wiki and the Forums is trivial, but meh, why even bother? A front end does not have to be graphically similar to the Forums or Wiki to achieve its purpose.

Now, should there be some specific "first stop" areas designed, for the download center, etc.? Sure. But that's fairly trivial stuff, imo.

3. Wasted space is a problem, but meh... the alternative that I proposed, which could be resized laterally without huge problems, was rejected- people didn't like how, because of technical necessities, everything had to more-or-less just get stacked on top of each other. And if we made frames or cells that sat side-by-side, we'd run into the same problems.

Again, voice of the people... we should probably listen, this is about popularity, not making us happy.

How about pulling mods/games from the wiki? Aren't there going to be problems there? I cant remember a single wiki entry that's updated regularly, yet this is what would be expected of all our content developers, and should one not take up this responsibility it will pull down everyone else.

Well, first off... if it actually mattered... then I'm sure the Wiki entries would get edited, promptly. And we could always deadhead the crappy ones, by putting in some line that, when read by the PHP script, caused them to be cut out of the random display loop until repaired and properly formatted.

IOW, it's a non-issue. We don't have a method to do that, we don't have a standard format for presenting it, we don't have a front end to support it. If the technology exists, I will promptly have a Wiki entry for P.U.R.E. and NanoBlobs that meets spec, and I suspect everybody else who cares about promo at all will do so. We can just deadhead the rest of them.

[Vadi]

I don't see a problem with 'wasted space' on widescreens. Attention needs to be focused, not spilled over the entire screen.

Edit: and as it stands, the forums atm are already 'wasting space', there are big bars on left and right.