23 Oct, 2007, Asylumius wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
Ladies and Trolls,

Over the next few weeks (or months I'll be working on a new skin / theme for MudBytes. Right now, I don't necessarily know if it will become the new default or not, but it's possible.

If anyone has any ideas or input regarding the current theme, layout, usability, etc., now would be a great time to discuss it. I have a couple of questions for the community, so please do offer your input on the following:

1) "Recent" lists. Right now I think we have 8 "Recent Something" modlets. Which ones do you use, which ones could we do without (if any), and do any of them need to change?

2) Are there any areas that you feel have any serious usability issues? Does it take too many clicks to do something?

3) Although I won't be putting a lot of time into new functionality, if there are any minor back-end changes that you think we need to make, I might try to tackle some of them while I'm hacking away the templates anyway.

4) We currently have two rotating banners in the header which use a somewhat unusual resolution. In the interest of design and better use of homepage space, how many of you would be opposed to only showing 1 per rotation and/or using a smaller (maybe more standard) sizes?
23 Oct, 2007, Brinson wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
I think the code comments are kinda useless. I think moving recent mud listing to the frontpage would be more beneficial.

Other than that, I can't think of much. If your changing the colors up I'd reccomend something darker…and maybe not orange, but its obviously not a huge issue.
23 Oct, 2007, Guest wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
I'll probably get shot for suggesting it, but I like having the sidebar links available from any screen. Having to click through back to the homepage to get at it again is annoying. There are a few people who seem to like their horizontal space left alone in the forum, but there are ways around that problem.
23 Oct, 2007, Brinson wrote in the 4th comment:
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A couple scripts I've seen have arrows you click to minimize and maximize the sidebars from any screen, but they don't come back/down until you click it again even as you browse the site. I think this is very helpful.
23 Oct, 2007, Fizban wrote in the 5th comment:
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Shot for suggesting a change to your own site? (Yes, there are other Administrators, but seeing as you host the site and the domain it is still your site.)
23 Oct, 2007, Asylumius wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
The design I'm tossing around is a 3 column layout. I too prefer at least one sidebar.

I tend to stray away from fancy menus, especially ones that involve complicated CSS hacks or Javascript. If at all possible, I'd like the site to perform 100% correctly with Javascript disabled. Obviously the fancy textarea tools and whatnot wont work, but a person should be able to log in/out, post, upload, etc. with Javascript off.

The problem we ran into last time was that we had too much information that we wanted to display on the homepage, hence the Javascript div switcher on the homepage, which I know doesn't work with JS off.

I'll definitely try something other than blue/orange. Suggestions welcome.

Depending on the complexity of the change and how much actual PHP changes to support it, the current theme may very well remain the default or an option if people don't like the new one.
23 Oct, 2007, Tyche wrote in the 7th comment:
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I'd suggest creating a thicker skin for the site.
23 Oct, 2007, Guest wrote in the 8th comment:
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Nah. Thick skin leaves things tough and leathery looking. They tend to come out mean and cruel, caused by the skin itself restricting their movement and frustrating them, causing them to lash out in strangely disjointed ways.

A thinner, leaner skin is healthier all around. It's more adaptable. Able to change more easily. Easier to work with. Not fake. And looks better too.
23 Oct, 2007, Conner wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
I definitely use the recent lists, almost all of 'em, actually, but the main ones I watch are: posts, uploads, comments, and updated files - but the rest are handy too.

Having a forum-wide sidebar, especially a retractable one, would be very handy too. As for the colors, the blue is fine, the orange could go, but wouldn't have to as I've had plenty of time to get used to it.

I don't think there are any serious usability issues, especially if we restrict the criterea to serious.. but I've also had plenty of time to get used to the layout and such here.

I have no objections to changing the way banners display, though it might be a mild PITA if we all had to come up with new banners to meet a changed dimension requirement.
23 Oct, 2007, kiasyn wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
I want a giant propeller overlay on the site, that spins whenever you try to click something and blocks it, also bouncing hats that follow the cursor, occasionally knocking it out of place. Oooh, ooh, and a ban stick that sometimes thwaps your screen shaking everything for hours, or a GIANT RED BUTTON that popups when you least expect it, and deletes your user account!

BRILLANT.
23 Oct, 2007, Omega wrote in the 11th comment:
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do the new skin in flash/actionscript :) superpower, thats my suggestion :)
23 Oct, 2007, Tyche wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
Not skin related, but usability related, this topic.. http://www.mudbytes.net/index.php?a=topi... doesn't appear in the recent posts list (from the link in the upper right).
23 Oct, 2007, David Haley wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
Samson said:
There are a few people who seem to like their horizontal space left alone in the forum, but there are ways around that problem.

I think I might know at least one person Samson is referring to. :wink:

It's not horizontal space that I truly care about. It's having a lot of content displayed vertically. Clearly, reducing horizontal space will reduce the amount of content you can display in the equivalent vertical space. Furthermore, adding vertically stacked buttons in the posts will further reduce the available space.

Either way, I'd be very happy if the current skin were also available as a default.
24 Oct, 2007, Darwin wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
In no particular order…

In the code repository there is a link for "Discuss" which would read better as "Comments" since clicking on one without any discussions brings up the message "There are no comments to display for this file." Also, if there are comments to the code or not, a number in parenthesis should appear beside it. Example: Comments (0)

Three column layouts are nice as long as the left and right columns aren't overly large. This would actually help reading for forums as it tends to read like a news column in the paper and your eyes don't have to wander as far to the end of the line and back to the beginning of the next.

I've noticed that sometimes when clicking the 'last post' icon that it brings me to the page before the last page and isn't always where a new post appears.

The colors are ok. I can't suggest anything better.

Quote
I have no objections to changing the way banners display, though it might be a mild PITA if we all had to come up with new banners to meet a changed dimension requirement.

Keep the current banners in addition to a new banner. The current banners could be placed at the tops and/or bottoms of the left and right columns or side by side above/below the middle column.

The emoticons could use some touching up. The blue ones are a little fuzzy around the edges.
:surprised: :thinking: :rolleyes: :cyclops: :tongue: :stare: :smile: :smirk: :cool: :wink: :sad: :mad:
24 Oct, 2007, Tyche wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
As if you needed to be reminded, I'll reiterate earlier suggestions…
1) Graphical emoticons are gay. Thankfully we can still turn them off. Unfortunately these suckers still appear in the editor box gaying it all up. :farts:
2) The Mud banners are gay. We ought to be able to turn them off as well. Not just because they are gay but because they take up valuable screen space which could be used for glorious text. Sorry but net even nekkid elves would tempt me to click on them. Know your audience.

24 Oct, 2007, Brinson wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
Tyche said:
As if you needed to be reminded, I'll reiterate earlier suggestions…
1) Graphical emoticons are gay. Thankfully we can still turn them off. Unfortunately these suckers still appear in the editor box gaying it all up. :farts:
2) The Mud banners are gay. We ought to be able to turn them off as well. Not just because they are gay but because they take up valuable screen space which could be used for glorious text. Sorry but net even nekkid elves would tempt me to click on them. Know your audience.



The mud banners are one of the most important parts of the site in my opinion. I click on ones all the time if they look appleaing, just to see a mud I've never heard of.
24 Oct, 2007, Asylumius wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
I believe that when we first introduced them the Administrators agreed not to add an on/off switch. As they are now, the banners are a little wide to include in a side bar, so aside from at the bottom or in the header, there's really no good place for them.

Forcing people to resize their banners to a more standard size might be too inconvenient, although a few of the banners we have now are just big images scaled down in the HTML.

I haven't talked to any of the other Admins about it recently, but to my knowledge the consensus is the banners will remain present, free, and forced upon your eyes.
24 Oct, 2007, David Haley wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
The only thing that bugs me about the banners is that they strongly suggest a minimum page width. I like having a narrowish browser window (another reason why I don't really like sidebars too much) but that means the top third of the window is taken up by banner#1, newline, MudBytes logo, banner#2.

That said, I think the banners should stay… it's part of the point of the site IMHO.
24 Oct, 2007, Asylumius wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
Although I tend to design for larger resolutions, I make sure that everything works as long as 800x600. Granted, in most cases the banners we have now don't fit 800 wide. And like the current layout, the new one will be as fluid / elastic as possible.

I think I have a layout that addresses this well without asking people to resubmit banners or scaling them in HTML.
24 Oct, 2007, Guest wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 0
Tangental question - suppose when a banner gets submitted we have something that generates a "thumbnail" version of it that conforms to our dimensions if the image doesn't fit? From my experience with the Sandbox image gallery the code that does that there seems to do pretty well scaling down the image to a thumbnail size without making a mess of it, unless you're talking about something really big condensed into something really small.
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