First website, tailored to IT ppl, could you please review/s

It doesn't matter if you do all the error checking in the world, or if you have the most beautiful graphics, if your site or application design isn't usable, it's not going to do well. Get input and advice on usability and user interface issues here.

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spatel85
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First website, tailored to IT ppl, could you please review/s

Post by spatel85 »

Hey all,

Me and a buddy made this website, our first public website, and was hoping to get reviews and/or suggestions on it. The site is http://www.TechiNews.com, basically a simple, easy to use site that collects various technology news sites together. We were so tired of going through so many sites, wading through popups and flash videos just to get to our favorite news.

Let me know what you think, and I hope you like it!
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onion2k
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Re: First website, tailored to IT ppl, could you please review/s

Post by onion2k »

Too many adverts. I'll stick with Slashdot.
spatel85
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Re: First website, tailored to IT ppl, could you please review/s

Post by spatel85 »

onion2k wrote:Too many adverts. I'll stick with Slashdot.

Thanks for looking at it and giving your opinion. Do you think it would be better with one image ad on the side like slashdot? Did you like the rest of the functionality like the news/publisher tags?

Thanks again!
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pickle
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Re: First website, tailored to IT ppl, could you please review/s

Post by pickle »

I don't know if you've reduced the number or changed the type of ads, but I don't find it too much. What I do find too much of is text. When I first opened the page I was hit with a wall of text. Cut the amount of text associated with each article in half. Add some whitespace around them as well. The About Us/Contact boxes are not lining up properly in OS X FF3.5. They look like this:

Code: Select all

+----------+
| About Us |
+----------+------------+
           | Contact Us |
           +------------+
Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
spatel85
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Re: First website, tailored to IT ppl, could you please review/s

Post by spatel85 »

pickle wrote:I don't know if you've reduced the number or changed the type of ads, but I don't find it too much. What I do find too much of is text. When I first opened the page I was hit with a wall of text. Cut the amount of text associated with each article in half. Add some whitespace around them as well. The About Us/Contact boxes are not lining up properly in OS X FF3.5. They look like this:

Code: Select all

+----------+
| About Us |
+----------+------------+
           | Contact Us |
           +------------+

Thanks for the reply pickle. We have turned the side ad into a image ad to reduce the amount of text on the page like you were referring to. But when you actually click on a video, the text ads will stay there. I agree with you on the text, i'll play around with reducing the amount of summary per news/video.

Also the boxes were meant to be diagonal, that wasn't a mistake, or browser mess up :D
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kaszu
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Re: First website, tailored to IT ppl, could you please review/s

Post by kaszu »

1) link color should be a little darker IMO
2) Top navigation link color doesn't make enough contract (maybe white?)
Active item is not highlighted.
3) Pagination links and selected item color should be swapped to be the same as in rest of the page: links - blue, text - black.
Pagination links should be larger, it's hard to click on them.
Next page, Previous page links are missing (I prefer using them than clicking on a numbers)
4) "Show/Hide ..." animation is to slow
spatel85
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Re: First website, tailored to IT ppl, could you please review/s

Post by spatel85 »

kaszu wrote:1) link color should be a little darker IMO
2) Top navigation link color doesn't make enough contract (maybe white?)
Active item is not highlighted.
3) Pagination links and selected item color should be swapped to be the same as in rest of the page: links - blue, text - black.
Pagination links should be larger, it's hard to click on them.
Next page, Previous page links are missing (I prefer using them than clicking on a numbers)
4) "Show/Hide ..." animation is to slow

Thanks for the review kaszu.

I wanted the site to be a little brighter thats why the link colors are like that.

Good call on the highlighted category, definitely put that in.

I kept the page changer black because there was too much blue in that section, this way it has some contrast. Agree with the page changers size, making that bigger, and adding <prev next>

I kind of like the slow animation, but its a little too slow, especially if you click on it often, so we will speed it up by 25% and see how that looks.
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kaszu
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Re: First website, tailored to IT ppl, could you please review/s

Post by kaszu »

5) When I click on a tag (or publisher) it takes from 1 to 3 seconds before content changes, some indicator that something is happening would be better
6) In the ajax response I saw this

Code: Select all

onClick='changeTagPage("publisher", 9, "Ars Technica");' class='page-numbers' style='margin-left:5px;'>9</span><span id='publisher_top_10' onClick='changeTagPage("publisher", 10, "Ars Technica");'
That's bad.
7) In logo "n" is larger than rest letters
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omniuni
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Re: First website, tailored to IT ppl, could you please review/s

Post by omniuni »

The site looks "old", and I can see why, when looking at the code... it's all tables! Too many tables!

Bring in some soft gradients, and make it scalable, and definitely, get rid of the tables!
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onion2k
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Re: First website, tailored to IT ppl, could you please review/s

Post by onion2k »

spatel85 wrote:
onion2k wrote:Too many adverts. I'll stick with Slashdot.
Thanks for looking at it and giving your opinion. Do you think it would be better with one image ad on the side like slashdot? Did you like the rest of the functionality like the news/publisher tags?

Thanks again!
I've got such a high level of karma on /. that I get the "Thanks again for helping make Slashdot great!" Ads Disabled box. I don't get any ads at all. Which is just the right amount.
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