Author Topic: New site layout  (Read 9346 times)

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Offline sensoTopic starter

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New site layout
« on: January 01, 2014, 04:33:03 pm »
Just to say, what a hell is that?
Tons of white(and black) space!
Does the top bar really needs to be always there using almost 1/4 of the screen just to have Sugest, Help, Episodes in it?
And I have to click to see the list of topics that you talk about, really?
And that huge logo on the right, could be a bit smaller, and can only read one commentary a time, white space everywhere, for someone so nit-picky about everything that site layout is total BS  |O
 

Offline ChrisGammell

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Re: New site layout
« Reply #1 on: January 01, 2014, 04:45:37 pm »
 Starting the year year out right with some constructive criticism, eh? If you have suggestions on what you'd rather see, feel free to suggest them. But since you made this comment here instead on on the post we have about the new site, I'm going to assume you don't visit it that often.
 

Offline Bored@Work

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Re: New site layout
« Reply #2 on: January 01, 2014, 06:26:18 pm »
Starting the year year out right with some constructive criticism, eh? If you have suggestions on what you'd rather see, feel free to suggest them. But since you made this comment here instead on on the post we have about the new site, I'm going to assume you don't visit it that often.

Very professional way to handle criticism ...

I just had a quick look at the site and I have to say senso is right. It doesn't look great. And it doesn't behave well, esp. on wides screens/windows, but also on on rather small windows. It wastes a lot of space on top,  and on the right (for wide windows). It uses a "porn-site dark" background theme. It has a lot of social junk. Fonts look too thin. Too tight integration with googleusercontent (for the fonts?), giving google even more opportunities to track users. The detailed contents descriptions of the episodes are hidden, there is no  clear visual/textual hint (like "more ...") indicating where to find the rest (behind the title link ...). The contrast of the link color compared to the white text background is bad. Etc.

Ok, it follows the modern paradigm of having a fixed-width main content-area. Which is, see above, a pain for people using wide screens.

I hope you didn't pay that much for this layout.
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Offline c4757p

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Re: New site layout
« Reply #3 on: January 01, 2014, 06:33:18 pm »
Starting the year year out right with some constructive criticism, eh? If you have suggestions on what you'd rather see, feel free to suggest them.

.......

Just to say, what a hell is that?
Tons of white(and black) space! Rearrange things so they aren't all crammed into small spaces with a vast sea between
Does the top bar really needs to be always there using almost 1/4 of the screen just to have Sugest, Help, Episodes in it? Doesn't work well at low resolution; consider unfreezing the nav bar so one can scroll it away
And I have to click to see the list of topics that you talk about, really? Try to have at least the most recent episode in full text right on the front page.
And that huge logo on the right, could be a bit smaller, and can only read one commentary a time, white space everywhere, for someone so nit-picky about everything that site layout is total BS  |O You're using more space for decoration than for content!

Those look like suggestions to me!

IMHO, the old version was utilitarian in a good, engineer-friendly way. This version, to put it somewhat bluntly, looks like a graphic designer farted on it...
« Last Edit: January 01, 2014, 06:35:24 pm by c4757p »
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Offline mariush

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Re: New site layout
« Reply #4 on: January 01, 2014, 06:50:26 pm »
I agree with most of what senso said, especially regarding the quality of the font (thin, dark gray, weak rendering).

Why do i have to scroll so much when there's so much empty, dead space?
At least the last post should be more than a single paragraph on the first page, if not the full post. After all, the show is weekly so it's not like content gets added daily.

As for posts themselves... see picture... i've highlighted the actual useful content by making it negative:

 

Offline sensoTopic starter

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Re: New site layout
« Reply #5 on: January 02, 2014, 12:04:37 am »
Well, I visit the site every week, been listening to the amp-hour since episode 80 or 90, and got a couple friends hooked up to it.
For my little 1366x768 screen, its a LOT of wasted space, are you going after the HaD style?
It was a one click job, a nice list of links for the relevant topics, why change what was a very functional layout?

I decided to open a topic here because the discussion is a bit more organized than over the comment system on the site(dont get me wrong).
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: New site layout
« Reply #6 on: January 02, 2014, 12:26:09 am »
Should I even dare think about changing my ancient EEVblog.com wordpress template?  ;D
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: New site layout
« Reply #7 on: January 02, 2014, 01:34:21 am »
I'm sure I can dig up some incriminating comment made by one DLJ about Agilent changing things just because they can.

I wouldn't do it just because I can. It's been on my to-do list for a long time. There are quite a few annoying limitations with my current template.
 

Offline SLJ

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Re: New site layout
« Reply #8 on: January 02, 2014, 01:40:44 am »
Have to agree with most of the comments above - and never put links on the far right hand side unless you really don't want everyone to see them.

Offline peter.mitchell

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Re: New site layout
« Reply #9 on: January 02, 2014, 02:04:39 am »
Holy cow (or yak), that font is hueg, you could read it from across the room! Make it smaller, and align it more top right, inline wiht the comments tab.
Automatically expand the most recent post.
Clamp down on the unnecessary spacing. White space is good, wasted space is bad.
The logo on the right is good, but i think too much of a sacrifice is made to accommodate it, possibly move the menu on the left side, vertically, rather than top, horizontally, and move the content box over to make up. 
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Offline cidcorp

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Re: New site layout
« Reply #10 on: January 04, 2014, 03:51:09 am »

<hesitantly raises hand in the air>

I liked the change.... :-//

I always view from a desktop, and I liked the layout.

Chris
 

Offline liquibyte

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Re: New site layout
« Reply #11 on: January 04, 2014, 04:12:02 am »
I don't do the *tube videos because I find the trend disturbing and intrusive of my time.  I'm not saying that others shouldn't, just that I don't.  I prefer to read my content slurps.

You guys do what you will with your sites but I want to show you how I see things.  Stop using javascript to serve content dammit, that's just annoying and unnecessary.  :box:  It's like the big flash bandwagon of the last decade and it's annoying to the users that don't like to be tracked.  Wordpress in my opinion is a overbloated solution to a problem that didn't exist.  It was supposed to make it easy to "blog" but it just ends up being a maintenance nightmare.

This is what I see by default because I choose to not let the scripts through.  First party until I see that I can't use (or abandon) the site without it, and third party always unless I specifically want to give the site owner clickthrough.  I've done this for Dave specifically but no one else on the net so far.
 

Lurch

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Re: New site layout
« Reply #12 on: January 06, 2014, 06:37:09 am »
If there is another way than just scrolling all the way down and pressing "next" repeatedly then I would greatly appreciate knowing it.

Have you tried clicking the episodes link at the top?

How would you find all the episodes with Jeri Ellsworth for example?

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=jeri+site:http://www.theamphour.com



 

Offline owiecc

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Re: New site layout
« Reply #13 on: January 06, 2014, 09:09:59 am »
In my opinion the new layout is much better than the old one. Font rendering looks superb on a high ppi screen (iPad). Possibly lower ppi displays will have problems with this font. The layout is responsive to tablet orientation. Everything is clear. Really nice design.

The only thing I do not like is the fixed header in horizontal orientation. On tablets with 16:9 display and with smaller screen diameters the header will take considerable ammount of space.
 

Offline Matt_Heilman

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Re: New site layout
« Reply #14 on: January 09, 2014, 11:16:09 pm »
Is there an issue with the show notes? as that is the reason why I visit the site while I listen.
 

Offline AlfBaz

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Re: New site layout
« Reply #15 on: January 09, 2014, 11:53:01 pm »
Is there an issue with the show notes? as that is the reason why I visit the site while I listen.
Click on the show title.

Probably a huge task but a single index of all the show notes ever would be a great way to search for a particular topic. On the other hand I could just create/keep my own bookmarked topics of interest
 

Offline jonwilhelmjr

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Re: New site layout
« Reply #16 on: March 02, 2014, 07:43:59 am »
Any chance can make a tab dedicated to books and go to reading material. I imagine a large portion of the books would be from forest mims but it seems every guest star has a book, I would rather browse a page of books then few hundred links in the show notes. Love the show guys keep up the great work.
 

Offline electr_peter

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Re: New site layout
« Reply #17 on: April 11, 2014, 11:39:52 am »
I have few reservations about new layout.
1) I would suggest to make screen wider (too much empty space from the sides)
2) I would suggest to make screen taller (remove that black bar on the top or make it narrower)
3) I would suggest to change font of text used in this page. I had to turn Javascript off just to make text more readable!!! (without JS - font similar to Times New Roman or basic ASCII; with JS - some weird big and rounded letters, very annoying). I use Firefox 28.0

Otherwise, please keep podcasting.
 

Offline Rigby

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Re: New site layout
« Reply #18 on: April 11, 2014, 12:59:37 pm »
I like the new design.  The site isn't super heavy on content, so layout & design have a bit of room to play.
 


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