Something I've been working on...

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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OasisGames
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Something I've been working on...

Post by OasisGames »

Take a look

I'm new to this forum, so I don't expect much right off the bat. I've been working on that site for the past two weeks, started off as just simple HTML I tossed together in Notepad++.
Still have a lot to do with it.
The basic idea behind the interface is to give the user the exact same header, footer, and set of 'blocks' on each page while giving a contextual 'sub-header' filled primarily with a set of navigation links (Site > Forum > Topic, for example)
The style was just something I worked up in Photoshop to be easily tiled. As it's a set of PNGs, the background can change without damaging the effect. The PNGs don't really do anything to degrade from the usability of the site, as nearly every browser now has full PNG support (I've been waiting sooo long for IE to jump on the bandwagon and get with the program...)
Right now, the forum is mainly for usability, not for style, but I'm going to work on that.
From a release point of a view, the side bar can give new administrators the ability to add links to related sites, small ads, important news information, etc (I'm going to work on allowing blocks that are linked to other php pages like how phpNuke does it).

So, questions and comments about the interface are welcome, as that would appear to be the point of this forum.

Note: The entire site is custom including all images and code.
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pickle
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Post by pickle »

Hi there & welcome!
  • A neat idea. I like to see fluid sites rather than ones that are rigidly built for 800px wide.
  • The first thing I noticed is an overabundance of one colour. It's neat to have that colour chooser, but rather than changing just the background colour, you could come up with a number of different full styles with some highlight colours (http://kuler.adobe.com is awesome for finding colours).
  • Good proportions - everything seems to be sized appropriately
  • The layout breaks down slightly at lower resolutions (800 X 600 for example). When the text wraps, the background images wrap as well & they don't look as graceful as they do when they're not wrapping. The fix I would try is to create the images without borders, set the borders in CSS, & set the background images to not wrap on the Y axis. Then, when the words wrap, you'll still have your highlighting on the top looking sharp.
  • Other than that, it looks good - looks straightforward. You've done a good job of making the design compliment the site rather than overpowering it (though some of the colours are pretty stark ;))
Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
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CoderGoblin
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Post by CoderGoblin »

pickle wrote:Hi there & welcome!
  • A neat idea. I like to see fluid sites rather than ones that are rigidly built for 800px wide.
  • The first thing I noticed is an overabundance of one colour. It's neat to have that colour chooser, but rather than changing just the background colour, you could come up with a number of different full styles with some highlight colours (http://kuler.adobe.com is awesome for finding colours).
  • Good proportions - everything seems to be sized appropriately
  • The layout breaks down slightly at lower resolutions (800 X 600 for example). When the text wraps, the background images wrap as well & they don't look as graceful as they do when they're not wrapping. The fix I would try is to create the images without borders, set the borders in CSS, & set the background images to not wrap on the Y axis. Then, when the words wrap, you'll still have your highlighting on the top looking sharp.
  • Other than that, it looks good - looks straightforward. You've done a good job of making the design compliment the site rather than overpowering it (though some of the colours are pretty stark ;))
An alternative for colours... you may find Accessibility Colour Wheel useful.
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OasisGames
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Post by OasisGames »

Well, I've done a lot of updating. I'm currently working on making a new theme that's more color-friendly.
In the meantime, the rest of the CMS has been updated. I haven't fully integrated the updates, so here's a link to my development site (which is hosted off of my laptop, so the slow speed and tons of downtime are to be expected):

http://76.189.178.118:1337/

I've upgraded the forum a lot as well. I added read/not-read status indicators for the forums and topics. I also added private messaging. Other various improvements are on the way, especially some new things to make the site more accessible.

The site is up.
foobarph
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Post by foobarph »

This is cool

- whenever i try to add new events from the calendar, i always...... hacking attempt! ^_^
- the concept of your site is similar with other open source cms/forums out there, so what's new?
- your color scheme is not irritating that's why it kept me busy while looking for another task to finish.

all in all, i know you can do better than this. good luck on your next update. ^^
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