Updated site layout ready?

[Fnordia]

I've done a bit more work on the layout update for the current site based on the design created by Roflcopter. It can be found here: http://nyspring.clan-sy.com.

So the question is, is it ready enough to go live? I don't think there are any show-stopping problems left, but you never know.. :)

Some things still left to do that I don't think are critical:
* Adapt the forum theme to match the new color scheme
* Improve the media page
* General layout tweaks and improvements

Some of the new wiki-based pages such as Download are a bit lacking but these can always be improved later as well.

[smoth]

I love it. I have been saving this one!

[NOiZE]

Win!

[AF]

The whole site template is built using tables not div containers.

While this works, its bad design, adds additional mark up for browsers to download, should be slower to render, and it removes possibility of allowing the template to stretch to large content correctly. Its also an issue with regards to maintenance and future updates.

If you can move the site as it is to svn I might be able to help with this regard. The current site needs to be in the svn anyway as right now only you are able to modify it or even view it, you are the only person who can fix it or even figure out what's gone wrong if it breaks.

I would also add icons to several places such as the 3 large buttons on the front page and the tabs on that video to make it clearer, as well as the download link at the top, and some css to hide download links on platforms that cant download such as iphones PDAs or other mobile phones.

[AF]

You also have various holes in the stylesheets where default formatting from the browser is seeping through

Capture.JPG

(24.74 KiB) Downloaded 59 times

[FLOZi]

Absolutely awesome!

edit: AF's concerns are valid though, as much as it pains me to agree with him

[Machiosabre]

awesome, could use some childish drawings, but thats just me.

[Forboding Angel]

Slick looking, but could you please use screenshots from something other than *a? Everything else looks great and then, oooo, letdown

[rattle]

Hmm the image and video rotation doesn't seem to work right. A moment ago there was cabbage's video and now it's back to the old one, Cabbage's won't show up anymore...

Wouldn't it be a good idea to generate a randomized list for these things per session and cycle through it on a reload/URL change?

Also AF could fix up the shadow on the font to work better in 8 bit mode.

[Fnordia]

Okay, sounds like no major issues has been identified so far at least. Guess I'll see about switching over during the week then. And yeah, I plan to commit it to svn when it is deployed..

About content such as screenshots and videos, they are mostly placeholders. If you want you can add 20 non-ta screenshots, just post them in the screenshots section. :)

The rotator is pretty simple at the moment, it just asks mysql for a random one. But if you refresh enough times you should be able to see both. :) But yeah some sort of fair session-aware rotation would be nicer.

The logo could certainly use a bit of fixing up. It should be a transparent gif since older IE's have issues with transparent png's. Should not be a problem I think, it just needs to be done properly.

[AF]

or one could use a png and use a conditional css style sheet to change it to a GIF under IE6, the only browser that would require GIF.

Besides, there's a photoshop PSD it would be easier to save as a GIF from that than taking the PNG and converting that to a GIF instead. It would help a lot with the transparency issue.

Code: Select all

<a href="/">
<img height="74" border="0" style="padding-left: 10px; padding-top: 18px;" src="/images/logo3.gif"/>
<br/>
</a>

could be changed to:

Code: Select all

<a href="/" id="toplogobanner"></a>

and then in the stylesheet

Code: Select all

#toplogobanner { padding-left:10px; padding-top:18px; background-image: url(/images/logo3.png); height:74px; width: 400px;}

and in a conditional IE6 stylesheet

Code: Select all

#toplogobanner { padding-left:10px; padding-top:18px; background-image: url(/images/logo3.gif); height:74px; width: 400px;}

I'd also consider using an unnordered list styled with CSS for the top menu bar

[Hoi]

great!
some suggestions:
- change development page, when you click it you should get a screen with 3 clickable things, engine development, game/mod development and mapping, maybe split it in 4 and add lua
-the red colored text is still annoying to read, i suggest a more saturnasised (something like that) color to make it less aggresive

is the site going to replace the current one?
well i would like to do some work on the wiki to get a clear and good unit making guide(<-- thats what i will do, not the rest), lua guide, mapping ect i want to make sure that we have a complete tut and not 15 tuts covering diffrent aspects just very simple, dev>games and mods>
one complete tut

the same tut as above but splitted into parts
ect...

[Warlord Zsinj]

I'd like to make some images and header banners with IW stuff to add to the random cycle, so let me know where to send those.

Also, there's no room for community news on this page. Any chance of having the bottom news post be removed in favour of having a community news piece there? Or even just a bunch of headline-links?

[Argh]

Looks great. So, how do I make a rotator thingamabob?

[Forboding Angel]

why reinvent the wheel? There are tons of simple scripts out there. For example, hotscripts.com

[Dragon45]

i prefer hotsluts.com

o wait

[aGorm]

I agree about to much *A... I'll take some screens this week maybe.

aGorm

[pharoph]

looks like a new homepage! finally something is done to spring that makes it stand out! all that is left is players.. lots and lots of players. and a lobby to support it of course. all stuff these fantastic code writes and there brains can complete in time. lets just hope for the best!

[tombom]

really great design :)

good job, thanks for making this! a lot better than the old design without being horribly bloated

[Fnordia]

To add banners and screenshots etc to the rotations, you can post them as an attachment here.

And yeah, we could probably cut down the developer news to just one item (or perhaps something like all items newer than a week, but at least one). The old wiki-based community news did not work out very well though.. Perhaps it could be done as a forum based one, or maybe we could just fetch headlines from sites like springinfo..