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General Discussion

Looking for thoughts on the new theme.

bart
Saturday, July 9, 2011 - 13:06
bart's picture

Can I get people's thoughts on the new theme?  Things are still kind of in flux at the moment, so this is a good time to leave feedback. 

  • What do you dislike about the new theme?
  • What about it do you like?
  • Do you miss anything about the old theme?

For the record, this theme isn't set in stone.  I'm still making adjustments to it, and if it turns out to be widely disliked by the community, we'll get rid of it and use something else.

Bart

 

 

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Myckel
joined 13 years 11 months ago
Saturday, July 9, 2011 - 13:54
Myckel's picture

default drupal favicon should be replaced.

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bart
joined 13 years 10 months ago
Saturday, July 9, 2011 - 14:00
bart's picture

Yeah, I'm trying to fix that. :)

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Myckel
joined 13 years 11 months ago
Saturday, July 9, 2011 - 14:05
Myckel's picture

Much better :)

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Robin
joined 16 years 1 month ago
Saturday, July 9, 2011 - 14:18
Robin's picture

This is certainly different. It will take some getting used to, although I bet it will be much better than OGA 1.0 when the rough edges are taken care of.

EDIT: by the way, I think the layout is too wide. Some headers, text and other elements look as if they are going to fall off my screen.

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Myckel
joined 13 years 11 months ago
Saturday, July 9, 2011 - 14:26
Myckel's picture

Yeah, I do also have a horizontal scroll bar in my screen, just a bit too wide.

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zero (not verified)
joined 0 sec ago
95.208.151.71
Saturday, July 9, 2011 - 14:39

The search form on the top right is out of focus(has to be looked for). What about displaying the "Search Art" form as currently displayed on the sub-pages "2D Art" etc also on the "Home" and "Browse" page? I think I'd even give it a more prominent position, like an always visible/accessible vertical box on the left or right side of the website. People will have a lot of horizontal space available given the prevalence of wide screens nowadays.

One could also consider to expand the Browse drop-down list to make it more accessible: Home, Forum, Art, 2D Art, 3D Art, Textures, Sounds, Music, Documents.

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eleazzaar
joined 14 years 7 months ago
Saturday, July 9, 2011 - 14:43
eleazzaar's picture

I like the direction you are moving in general.  Some observations:

 

Fonts:

* The small-caps serif font for the buttons (with effects?) isn't working well.  The letters go mushy and blend into each other.  Also some of the words are capitalized and some aren't  Probably you should be using some version of the sans typeface you used elsewhere.

* The OpenGameArt logotype at the top doesn't match anything else.  Either use that font elsewhere for headings, or replace it with something more logo-ish.

 

Viewing art:

Using a colored background is generally a bad idea for viewing random images.  Any color you pick will clash with some images, and leech the vibrancy out of others.  Of course with low-saturation colors this effect is lessened, but if you think about it, any top of the line website or application for viewing random images will surround that image with grey or black.  It's the only way to present each image at it's best.

 

Edges:

Sites that run all the way to the edge of the window like this bug me somewhat.  There's no visual confirmation that i'm actually seeing the whole thing, and there's not more icons or buttons just outside the window.  Also without some sort of side edge a site doesn't stand out as well from the other windows on the desktop.

 

* I'm glad you got rid of all that glowing.  It was a nifty effect, but wearying on the eyes.

* Do we need such a large type "Top" button on every comment?  Do we need it at all?

* Avatars are good.  Please don't allow super-large and/or animated avatars

* Why such a wide column for avatars on pages such as this?

 

 

 

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manwesulimo2004
joined 14 years 3 weeks ago
Saturday, July 9, 2011 - 14:56
manwesulimo2004's picture

Great to see some updates on the site. I bet things look much better under the hood but the design definitely needs some more polish. Here are some random points:

  • It would be cool if we could read comments on news items without having to click on "Add new comment". Maybe change the caption to "Read comments"?
  • Is the side bar really supposed to disappear after clicking on a forum post? It makes the design feel less consistent and it makes forum posts way too wide. Many professionals agree the optimal text column width in print media is roughly 60 characters. Maxing it out to the browser window width seems way out of proportion and makes reading stuff difficult.
  • I can't find a decent way to navigate in the forums. After clicking on a post how do I get back up a level? I know I can use the back button of my browser but that only works if I didn't reach the post from a different link (such as a search or from the front page). I can't even tell which forum this thread is in.
  • I miss the drop-down forums menu. Why was it scrapped?
  • The default theme is blue. Everything is blue. Of the three colours a human can perceive (red, green, blue) we perceive contrast in the colour blue worst of all. Putting blue links on a blue background might not be such a good idea.
  • There are only six art tiles on the front page. Considering art is what this site is about maybe you could add some more to highlight that part of the page.
  • The search box is a bit small.
  • Margins and padding could be optimised in various places (i.e. the "Add new comment" heading above this comment box is currently touching the left edge of my screen).

I love the plans and ideas for OGA 2.0 and some great stuff has been implemented already. Yay for avatars! The smooth highlighting transitions are also cool.

Thanks for your work on the site. I look forward to the further development of OGA 2.0.

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Marcelo (not verified)
joined 0 sec ago
189.91.100.247
Saturday, July 9, 2011 - 15:10

For the good of our eyes, please change the color theme!

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qubodup
joined 16 years 1 month ago
Saturday, July 9, 2011 - 15:13
qubodup's picture

Good suggestions.

+1 on the many thanks of working on OGA dear admins, mods and helping hands! (And submitters and artists and lurkers and developers...)

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Gaurav
joined 14 years 6 months ago
Sunday, July 10, 2011 - 11:29
Gaurav's picture

Dislike:

  • Feels like the blogs are now the focus of the site, not the art. The art should be central. Perhaps going back to 15 pieces of art on the front page instead of 6 would be better.
  • Look and feel of the site now feels too modern. I'd prefer something casual, artsy, with a medieval fantasy look and feel for a site of this type.

Like:

  • Searchable forums, Yay!
  • Wider columns go well with today's widescreen monitors.

Miss:

  • The pixel art mascot.
  • Most popular this month.

 

HTML5 Canvas Old School RPG

HTML5 Canvas Old School RPG

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hc
joined 14 years 10 months ago
Saturday, July 9, 2011 - 16:20

My likes and dislikes:

- I like the art pages: left metadata with fat tags, license-icons and all | right art and description.

- I don't like how this add new comment text-field at the bottom of the page spans both columns - actually it looks as if the format has gone wrong - especially the bullet points below "TEXT FORMAT".

- I would prefer it more if the area below "Add new comment" would resemble the format of the finished comment: left name | right text and with taller textarea

- Too few art on the frontpage, missing featured, rotating/random art, etc. (guess partly not yet implemented, no ratings/favorites yet?). Seems like design over content.

- I like the background colors - especially for the preview thumbnails :)

My Problems:

- I see a horizontal scrolbar (just about 10px scrollable) all the time, regardless of window size.

- In my profile clicking "Bookmarks" results in:

Debug:

'Exception: SQLSTATE[23000]: Integrity constraint violation: 1052 Column \'uid\' in field list is ambiguous'

in views_plugin_query_default->execute() (line 1380 of /var/www/sites/opengameart/sites/all/modules/views/plugins/views_plugin_query_default.inc).

- In my profile clicking "OpenID Identities" splatters text over the buttons (wip?).

- In favorites the "next" links sometimes disappears - may be related to having a lot of favorite pages (12).

- Some art may need a default "art" icon in preview list thumbnails - eg. for audio or mixed content without preview in compressed files

 

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bart
joined 13 years 10 months ago
Saturday, July 9, 2011 - 20:45
bart's picture

Those of you who are seeing a horizontal scrollbar... I've git my window at 962 pixels wide at the moment, and I'm not seeing one.  If your window is wider than that, what browser and OS are you using?  It could be that there's a problem in my fluid width javascript.

Based on this feedback, I've made some plans about what I'm going to do with the theme (for now).  I'll post those in a separate forum post.

Those of you who have commented, thank you for the help -- I really appreciate it!  My ultimate plan is to make OGA as pleasant and usable as possible, so any feedback we get will help move in the right direction.

Bart

 

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nubux
joined 14 years 7 months ago
Saturday, July 9, 2011 - 21:47

I think that previews are much to small, why doing a large frame around small pictures ?

And yes,  "Too few art on the frontpage, missing featured, rotating/random art, etc...Seems like design over content"

But thank you for your work !

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hc
joined 14 years 10 months ago
Sunday, July 10, 2011 - 03:48

Regarding the scroll bar problem:

Ubuntu LTS, Firefox 3.6.18,  any browser size up to full screen on 1680x1050 (but I prefer browser sizes similar to your intended resolution). However, the border of the page seems to fits pixel perfectly into the visible area. Maybe this firefox extends the scroll pane in those cases? BTW I wouldn't mind if there was a border on the right side (an no border on the left), too.

 

Another Problem just appeared when I hit "Preview": The textarea has the same size like the right column but begins in the left column.

 

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Buch
joined 14 years 8 months ago
Sunday, July 10, 2011 - 03:50
Buch's picture

Where's written the number of favs? I liked that feature...


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marko
joined 13 years 11 months ago
Sunday, July 10, 2011 - 06:08

I find the grey text on blue rather hard to read - and the highlighted red text on blue looks particularly glaring.

I'd suggest a simple black text on white (or at least two colours with a big contrast), and keep the blue theme for areas not involving text.

Incidentally, is the page views figure broken? It shows 0 for all threads.

Also, the text box seems rather small, and with rich-text, ignores line breaks. And if I disable rich-text, the text box becomes so tiny to be unusable (I typed this in notepad, and pasted it in). I'm using Opera 11.50.

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bart
joined 13 years 10 months ago
Sunday, July 10, 2011 - 10:29
bart's picture

@mdwh:

I'm not experiencing any of these issues with the text box.  What OS are you using, and how wide is the content are of your web browser, in pixels?

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Pompei2
joined 15 years 6 months ago
Sunday, July 10, 2011 - 17:20
Pompei2's picture

You already improved it from a few days ago, but I still find links difficult to spot due to their low contrast with the background and normal text. I have no better alternative to propose though, as I am not very creative with colors :/

I agree with whoever said that it's less relaxing to read that wide lines of text. But here again, I have no constructive feedback...

Edit: in the "edit post" window, the whole edit field is misplaced in FF4. (it is below the "your name" and spans both columns.

Edit2: I could not find a "mark all forums as read" link anymore.

Edit3: I also would like more art in the frontpage. But either you make the theme of fixed width, or you put them centered, because having them on the left and then the right side empty just looks bad. I have a fairly low (widescreen) resolution (1300 or so) and still lots of empty space up there.

Edit4: The reply buttons in the blogs are out of place, they are at the right place in the forum though.

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marko
joined 13 years 11 months ago
Monday, July 11, 2011 - 14:17

It's only when I go to preview or edit. The Rich Text box is 7 lines high; the non-Rich Text box is 5 lines high. This is on Windows 7 (both 32 and 64 bit). My screen is 1680x150, with browser window full screen - but I had same problem on my netbook at 1024x600.

Also some other issues I've noticed (on my other computer at the moment with Opera 10.10 - I can try testing with the latest version if you like):

If I type some text in non-Rich Text, then go to preview, it's reverted back to Rich Text - but line breaks are removed.

If I only use the Rich Text editor, and post (even without previewing), it strips out the new lines.

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