New Look

[drippydick]

Awesome new home pa ge, Keep up the great work. Happy New Year to all

[submatt]

I don't care for it.

1. Most of the text is so small that I literally can't read it.
2. I like having a random tease come up. I often go - hm, what's that one? And I guess the random topic incorporates that, but the thumbnails are so small that I can't tell what I'm looking at.
3. You've put the random topic front and center, but I think the main thrust of the site is the webteases, isn't it? The whole Urge/Encyclopedia thing doesn't do anything for me.
4. For me, when I first check in, I look for two things - are there any new webteases and are there any interesting forum posts.

My two cents,

Matt

[Incubo]

I'm with submatt here.
I liked having a random tease pop up. Some of them were things I never would have looked at if I hadn't seen them over there.

I'm also curious if all this "tinkering" is messing with the flash editor because I'm having all sorts of problems with it today. See my thread in the Tech Support section. Curious if anyone else if having problems as well.

[flyingKiltSlave]

The pics for the related teases are a little small, not that it bothers me that much i access the site straight to the /webteases/ section.

Text to small guys? so many jokes.... I'll be helpfull instead of smartass this time...

Hold CTRL and move your mouse scroll wheel. The text should get bigger or smaller depending on which way you go.

[seraph0x]

1. Most of the text is so small that I literally can't read it.

When you put it that way: That's definitely a bug. The smallest font size we use is 12pt by default. For comparison, the forum uses 10pt in most places. If you can read this very sentence and the text on the rest of the site is smaller, then we have a technical problem going on here.

Try the Ctrl-0 I mentioned in the other thread. What browser are you using?

2. I like having a random tease come up. I often go - hm, what's that one? And I guess the random topic incorporates that, but the thumbnails are so small that I can't tell what I'm looking at.

Agreed. I'll see if I can make them bigger somehow. I'm also planning to add a mouseover effect, so you can hover your mouse over one of the thumbnails and get all the usual info about the tease.

3. You've put the random topic front and center, but I think the main thrust of the site is the webteases, isn't it? The whole Urge/Encyclopedia thing doesn't do anything for me.

Yes, I see your point, it has caused many sleepless nights for me. Here's what I ended up with. I think in the long run the Urge can do two things. First, the ability to browse teases by topic can help to make our increasingly large archive more accessible. It's kind of like a tag system on steroids. And second, it could become a great research tool for tease authors. The Urge will eventually contain techniques, ideas, stuff to try and also media content, videos, pictures etc. on any topic. So when you're writing a tease and you run into a roadblock, you have a great place to go for inspiration and material.

We may very well decide to one day split off the Urge and put it onto a separate website. But I think first we have to build it up until it can stand on it's own.

I think this is an issue we'll be discussing quite a bit in the next months.

4. For me, when I first check in, I look for two things - are there any new webteases and are there any interesting forum posts.

That's exactly what I had in mind when I was designing the Webteases section. You got as many teases as possible on the screen and then on the left you've got the editor, TOTM, random tease and latest posts boxes.

Most return visitors come in through the webtease section. I'm assuming that's what they have bookmarked.

The front page is mostly for first timers. So what exactly do they get to see?
- A very brief explanation of what Milovana is
- Big box featuring the TOTM
- A number of randomly selected teases around a certain topic
- Some other useful functions
- The latest news and announcements

I hope that makes the rationale behind some of the changes a little more clear. (Consider also that the front page used to contain nothing but that stupid boring-ass text I wrote years ago. )

Thanks for your comments, I really appreciate the honesty!

[Arianna]

Have to say I don't get familiar with the new look too.
I do see the intention behind it and indeed it might have advantages. Nevertheless I'd suggest to enlarge the box for the random topic so there is more space for the text and thumbnails.

Also it might be an idea to place the box for the newest forum posts directly underneath the random topic and use the whole width of the page for it. At least on my screen (1280X800) most of the page is empty while I have to scroll the boxes on the left.
For new visitors to get a good overview on the first look, I guess it might be better to have as much of the boxes as possible on one page.

The box for the links I'd kill completely, unless you have a deal with those sites Better put those links into a subpage accessable through the navigationbar, like the webteases, forum and so on.

Arianna

[Alison]

These are all great suggestions... but there is one piece of information missing: it's not completely done. In the next few days, and the next few weeks, some great things are coming.

Seraph0x has been working like mad for months on the new site because there are some really cool features coming for users. That's something I really hope people know about... As Seraph0x designs this, his biggest concern is the people who use it. "What will the community think?" "How will people feel?"

There are some empty spaces now because he didn't put space-holders to clutter the code. Once the bugs are worked out of the features, the design will be tightened.

Alison

Have to say I don't get familiar with the new look too.
I do see the intention behind it and indeed it might have advantages. Nevertheless I'd suggest to enlarge the box for the random topic so there is more space for the text and thumbnails.

Also it might be an idea to place the box for the newest forum posts directly underneath the random topic and use the whole width of the page for it. At least on my screen (1280X800) most of the page is empty while I have to scroll the boxes on the left.
For new visitors to get a good overview on the first look, I guess it might be better to have as much of the boxes as possible on one page.

The box for the links I'd kill completely, unless you have a deal with those sites Better put those links into a subpage accessable through the navigationbar, like the webteases, forum and so on.

Arianna