New site

Yeah, the site was down for a while in the early ours of this morning (GMT), sorry about that. As for the first round of tweaks, we're working on those as we speak based on feedback from this thread and some emails. Hopefully we'll roll those out this week.

 

"Latest news" section is again way down, I have to scroll my screen to see the whole thing.

 

Lots of changes are up on the front page, so be sure to do a full refresh to get all the changes. Lots of things that people requested, too, so let us know what you think.

 

That won't be an issue anymore.

 

Borked in Safari for me...

 

I think it's changed, a lot.

 

Hah, and pretty spectacularly to boot. Investigating......

Edit: hey maven, looks like a bug in WebKit. If I use the Safari bundled with the latest WebKit nightly (nightly.webkit.org) then it renders just fine. That's on my Macbook, 10.4.8, latest official Safari (2.0.4 419.3 for me). I'll keep working on a fix for Safari users that can't use a WebKit nightly though, but that should see you right (and you can run the nightly alongside your existing Safari with no issues, just drop it into Applications).

 

Graphically speaking, RSS is too prominent for me personally. A waste of space, IOW. News should take up that RSS column, resulting in less scrolling.

Functionally speaking, I doubt RSS for this site is all that popular but I could be wrong. If I'm right in my guess, then revert to the above para.

I see a column dedicated to press release. It doesn't look like there would be an ad below the press release. If this is the case, I'd prefer it if B3D lose that column. Very, very few care about press releases (from my experience here... plus, they're all over the Web... right?). If there is to be an ad there, then OK, I understand the reason for that column. If the various IHVs/etc want a prominent place for press releases, then OK again, I can understand why it's that important to have one whole column there but it's a big waste of space again.

Just saying what I prefer! I just think that ever since Rys became Boss, news posts seem to have re-newed priority and part to play for the site and hence I think column dedicated to news posts should have more real estate space than it does ATM.

 

It's a brand new feature, thus judging its popularity at this early stage is folly. If it turns out that it's not driving traffic to the forums, we'll maybe try something different with it. But I'd at least like to give it a chance, so it won't be moving any time soon.

There should be an ad, it just depends on your region or ad blocking settings whether you see it at the moment. And for strategic reasons the PR box is a must have thing, so it's not going anywhere. Something you'll just have to live with, I'm afraid.

 

Personally, I think all it needs is some kind of 'box-out' to make the news stand out from featured content and the like - Just something to seperate the different sections on offer on the front page really.

Other than that, I'm starting to get used to its overall feel, and I really rather like it.

 

Thoughts about site design

On my 20" monitor
I quite enjoy the site layout, though I have some concerns about a lack of graphical separators and distinct graphical cues for: posting order, separation of postings, the navigation bar selections, and distinguishing the more minor or unconfirmed news from the more significant launches/reviews/articles/major news. In other words, I think design elements that convey the above information is missing or lacking emphasis that I think would improve site browsing experience.

Some examples that might serve this end, or at least convey my thinking about it:

• Track when last visited and whether an article/review has been read, and have some sort of graphical effect that subtly highlights News, Articles, Reviews, etc., items in the navigation bar when there are items that have appeared within the last few days (e.g., a blend from yellow to the current white for age within past 3 days), and have an animated attention-getting effect when there are articles that haven't been read (e.g., a slowly pulsing tab shape), and perhaps another effect if items are new since last visit (e.g., a sort of gleam effect ending in a star sparkling on an edge of the above mentioned tab)...the idea here is that when both are true the combination is more emphatic. I think this only applies to the first 4 entries, which (see below) I think might benefit from being separated from the rest.
  This might be too complicated, but if you consider the effect I'm trying to describe, I think it might show the gist of what I'm trying to get across, of something that provides information at a quick glance about what has changed since the last visit, its nature, and quickly tells you where to click to get to it.
• And/or something of the above nature for the listings to the left that lists new articles and reviews. I think simple color coding and something simple (underlining?) for unread articles might serve.
• Indication, probably by icon would be simplest, but maybe by some sort of other thematic highlighting, of whether a news item is minor, or indicates a new article, a new review, or release of new product. I think this is important with the abundance of little snippets, informative though they may be.
  Perhaps also have major news items to maybe be bigger or in some other way more prominent than the smaller news items or rumors, but otherwise have the same news icon/theme separate from articles, etc.

Some other comments on my experience of the new site on my monitor:

I would like text to be very slightly bigger for the "Latest..." items.

I would like text to be significantly bigger for the main text of the news items.

(These two items are perhaps just a case of getting used to change, as there is no significant discomfort in trying to read the text so far, it just "feels" a bit less comfortable than it could be).

I like the RSS feed idea, but I think it needs some refining...but this seems to be the plan anyways. I'm not overly familiar with RSS feed possibilities, so I don't have any suggestions yet.

...

Actually, where I might find more use for RSS is on my tablet pc...

On my 13.3" Widescreen tablet

One thing about a tablet is that, well, it tends to be quite useful to use in portrait mode. I really like the site in the apparently stated design goal of 1280 width or higher, but it is a disaster (I'll try a complete refresh later to see if the mentioned changes affect this) for me at 800 (i.e., my tablet's screen width in portrait mode).

I think a graceful narrow width fallback, as I think has been suggested, would be quite beneficial, and have some general suggestions/questions:

• The current text size that seems "small" and slightly less comfortable to me on a large screen, seems economical and necessary to me with a narrow width. Can font size be efficiently changed dynamically with viewport sizing?
• Two column news posting...I don't see how it can work with narrower screens. Can the site efficiently determine when single column would be best, and change accordingly?
• The navigator bar doesn't look its best when it splits. Can this be improved? I would think the first 4 could remain there by themselves, and the rest could be split off and put in a different orientation or moved aside in some other way.

...

Those are my thoughts, and I hope they are well received. Oh, and kudos to the artist responsible for the logo/elements so far.

 

Good gravy, demalion's posting again! We now know the true impetus behind the site update.

I see some front-page text is embiggened, so we're on the right track to discouraging premature near-sightedness. Wait, that's not the squinty smiley? It looked like it was squinting to me--my eyes!

 

We have a planned fix for < 1024px width in the works, bear with us (again). As for any typographical settings, we might roll those into per-user controls available when you login but we're not sure yet.

Cheers for the usability-led post, demalion, it's much appreciated and we'll consider everything

 

Hey demalion, so... Mars is liveable now, right?

You still post like a lawyer though.

 

IMVHO, I would have thought there would be efforts to drive traffic from the forums to the front page and not the other way round!

My comments/suggestions regarding the prominence of the RSS section as it stands is to say what I think would make the site's front page more attractive to visit more regularly, that's all. As it stands, I want to be able to read more news or site announcements (i.e. content) without needing to scroll as much as I need to ATM. A bottom-page ad banner may not be objectional to many and may help finances... but, personally, I don't like scrolling too much.

An alternative would be to have just (linked) news headlines on the front page (with maybe the latest, and only the latest, news having some kind of summary).

Have I ever mentioned how much I like CNN's main page, the way it looks, the way it functions?

I've never blocked any ads at B3D. I only see the top banner at the main page. I'm in Malaysia, I'm sure you know.

Since an ad is supposed to be below the PR box, then I suppose almost nothing can be done then for that column.

Maybe reduce the huge amount of real estate the B3D logo (which IMO, unless some site-marketing is intended with the new site/management in place, is way too big and prominent) + top-banner-ad occupy to squeeze in more info? I almost never notice a site's logo when I visit a page; I just want to start reading as much news/content of a site without scrolling. In my experience, good regular content/news at a site leads me to remember that site's logo, not the other way round. Again, MHO.

Thanks for responding Rys. Hope everything works out the way you want.

 

I thought I typed the wrong url and got hijacked by one of those bootleg sites when I first saw the new page.

I liked the old layout better to be honest. The quick links at the top with the sections down lower was a lot more efficient time and click wise. More practical colors and less flashy. Even took me a few seconds just to find the forums link on the new page.

I guess I'll skip the main page and memorize the forum url for when not using the usual pc's. Unless the forums get cluttered aswell

 

Well, at least you gave it a fair chance to try and get used it it, right, before you decided to pre-link to the forums? I appreciate those few seconds of scanning on a brand new design to find the Forums link (it's plain as day, seriously, right there at the top in the nav bar, in a placement 1000s of other sites use).

*shrug*

I don't mean to sound overly negative, but your post says you didn't spend too long checking it out. First impressions count for a lot and if the general aesthetic isn't your thing then cool, but I don't think we've radically changed things too much in terms of how you navigate and find things. It's all pretty simple and we kept it that way on purpose.

 

Heh, your sarcasm is unnecessary. I gave you my impressions from my experience so I don't understand the hostility. Nothing about my post said I looked at the main page for a short period of time. I guess you were confused by my referring to locating the forums link as the time examining the page.

Next time I'll flesh out my post with plenty of praising and carefully weave any criticisms inconspicuously into the post rather than making a quick, to the point (like the old site), post in order to not offend you next time.

 

If I misunderstood (which I realise I did, given your response) then I apologise, honestly I do. I'm not offended at all, since I knew full well some people wouldn't like it. My concern is that I'd like the criticism to be just (I spent hundreds of hours building it after all, it's not like I can throw these comments at a design agency and say "wtf were you smoking?"), and I didn't see that.

Apologises again, both for the misunderstanding and that you don't like it.