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Author Topic: New Site Design  (Read 28373 times)

George Barr

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New Site Design
« Reply #40 on: November 14, 2006, 11:23:29 pm »

Michael:

couple of observations - a left sided menu means that you always waste the left side of the screen. As this disappears when you scroll down - it serves no better purpose than the one at the top which at least didn't cut down the real estate.

Second, when I went to vidcasts the screen was blank. Figured out to scroll down and found the relevent text but looks like there's a minor bug here.

Just checked the stats on my website and 5% of the viewers are using screens of 800X600. I'm viewing on 1024X768 and everything fits just fine - using windows xp here at work with Firefox - though I'd prefer to not have the left menu space.

Bound to be some teething problems - well done for making the effort to move forward.

George
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Eric Anderson

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« Reply #41 on: November 15, 2006, 01:32:06 am »

One more comment for linux using both firefox and konqueror, I had to do a shift reload to get the site to work right.  I was getting just the new html and not the new css, so the left bar showed up above all the other text making the site look really weird.  You may want to add that to your list of hints, and it may be worth making a png screenshot of what it is supposed to look like linked so if people think something is weird they could check the "correct" interpretation.
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eoghanoneill

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« Reply #42 on: November 15, 2006, 03:31:29 am »

The site is much faster and even works well on my phone (Blackberry) which I often use to check the "Whats new" page.

The Itunes link for subscribing to the videopods does not work in Safari and only kind off with Mozilla on a PC (you have to hit the first link http://feeds.feedburner.com/luminous-landscape which takes you to a page where a second link http://feeds.feedburner.com/luminous-landscape?format=pcast works)

Thanks again for all the hard work that the Luminous Team is putting into the new site, I really value this site and the DVD's are just the best.

Eoghan
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andersonl

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« Reply #43 on: November 15, 2006, 07:42:58 am »

Michael - one thing would really help on the RSS feed - add a title to the what's new after the date as many RSS readers pick up a summary title in their table of contents.  For example, today's could be:

November 14, 12006 - New website design launched

Overall, it looks like a great improvement!

Lyle
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Ronny Nilsen

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« Reply #44 on: November 15, 2006, 07:49:33 am »

I really like the new design! Clean and easy to navigate, and the addition of RSS is very welcome.

Great work!  
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vgogolak

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« Reply #45 on: November 15, 2006, 08:16:19 am »

I liked the old one better.  

that green bar is distracting. Now your left eye has different EV value than right eye so it confuses brainon where to set the exposure.

Remember, wewant to see the content against the background and now we have two dramaticallydifferent backgrounds to deal with.

In the long run, I rthink people will find this gives them a headache.

And it is not like the navigation stays on the screen.

And the reason for fixing was??  

Victor
« Last Edit: November 15, 2006, 08:20:44 am by vgogolak »
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Nemo

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« Reply #46 on: November 15, 2006, 10:55:13 am »

I don't like lateral bars.

They uselessly eat too much space.

In the former layout you had text from the right to the left of the screen. Now you loss a 15% or 20% of space with an empty green bar.
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tgphoto

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« Reply #47 on: November 15, 2006, 11:33:49 am »

If the navigation followed the user as one scrolled down the page, would this be more useful?  I've seen this done before, but am not aware if it's a technique which all browsers support.

Example here (using a horizontal menu): DHTML Scrolling Menu
« Last Edit: November 15, 2006, 11:35:14 am by tgphoto »
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vgogolak

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« Reply #48 on: November 15, 2006, 11:44:45 am »

Quote
If the navigation followed the user as one scrolled down the page, would this be more useful?  I've seen this done before, but am not aware if it's a technique which all browsers support.

Example here (using a horizontal menu): DHTML Scrolling Menu
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=85426\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

The bigger issues are wasted real estate and the difficulty in focusing on the content

the green bar is really bad news. with or without the menu
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tgphoto

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« Reply #49 on: November 15, 2006, 12:12:27 pm »

Quote
The bigger issues are wasted real estate and the difficulty in focusing on the content

the green bar is really bad news. with or without the menu
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=85428\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


What would you suggest?  

The old horizontal jump menu system was functional, but at the cost of aesthetics.  

While a horizontal dropdown menu might be more aesthetically pleasing, as LL continues to grow, it could become a jumbled mess at the top, or in terms of shrinking to fit smaller screens, a real nightmare.  If it did work initially, wouldn't the focus then turn to the length of the article and excessive scrolling?

Then there's the camp who might suggest splitting articles into multiple pages to limit page length and vertical scrolling.  A quick glance at the Tutorials section alone suggests many billable hours of reformatting.  In the end, would this really be effective, or would visitors become disenchanted with having to navigate several pages?

It's a real tough call any way you look at it given the size and scope of Michael's site.  And in the end, I guess we need ot keep in mind just that--it's Michael's site, and he's free to do with it as he wishes.

I'm sure I won't agree with every design choice he makes during the revision, as I'm sure I won't be alone.  But I do think he's sincerely trying to bring LL up to date, with the rss and vodcast features.

To quote Jeff Schewe's often used response to criticisms of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom...

"It's a Beta, people!"
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jjj

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« Reply #50 on: November 15, 2006, 02:48:39 pm »

I find it surprising that a site dedicated to excellence in photographic imagery and capture can be so pig ugly. The old site was a bit clunky but this new version is even more unattractive. What an odd and uneven mix of colours LL contains. And 3 different layouts/styles to various sections.
It looks more 1998 rather than 1995. Which is progress of sorts.  
And having reverse text and a page design that expands to fit any monitor, no matter how wide is a good way to end up with  'A how not to do design' website. Lots of good stuff to read, yet appaling readability.

As I don't like people who criticise without offering solutions.
Limit max page width, reading overlong sentences is difficult and reverse text is rarely used and for good reason, as it is so hard on the eyes.  
On the subject of colour please find a selection of colours that work together. Now that you've implemented CSS, all you have to do is tweak the style sheet the whole site references and you're done.
« Last Edit: November 15, 2006, 02:50:29 pm by jjj »
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Quentin

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« Reply #51 on: November 15, 2006, 04:06:32 pm »

I don't like the new design, I'm sorry to say.  I don't see what the nav bar on the left really achieves, other than to clash with the main body and take up space.    It does not matter that much as the site retains its excellent content, its just packaged in an less than ideal design.


Quentin
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DarkPenguin

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« Reply #52 on: November 15, 2006, 04:11:19 pm »

I like it.
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David Mantripp

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« Reply #53 on: November 15, 2006, 05:54:38 pm »

Sorry, but I wouldn't trust anybody who chose this colour scheme to detect a magenta cast in a snowstorm....  

It certainly doesn't do the photos any favours.    

Still. It is still better than Digital Outback - that it so bad that it is almost impressive. This guy was clearly inspired by it, but despite a good effort he didn't quite get there.  And whilst I'm on the topic, Alain Briot's site.... this guy went to ART school ? Really ??? Clearly he didn't skip kitsch 101.

My suggestion would be to go back to basics. Black on white, simple navigation bar. The site navigation is not actually all that complex. And limit paragraph width to 30em, which works out at about 60 characters, which is pretty much a standard for legibility.
« Last Edit: November 15, 2006, 05:55:39 pm by drm »
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David Mantripp

JJP

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« Reply #54 on: November 16, 2006, 07:38:52 am »

Good Day Michael,
Regarding the new LL site layout:  IMO, you should enlarge the home page image and remove the video journal ad above it and instead place LUMINOUS LANDSCAPE above the image (in large geen letters).  Furthermore, there should be nothing below image except the usual image description.  
Everything on the left stays as is.
just a thought,
jj
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JJ

michael

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« Reply #55 on: November 16, 2006, 07:47:51 am »

Thanks everyone for your input. As someone noted, this is still a work in progress.

And, as the chiche goes – you can please some of the people some of the time... etc.

Michael
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dlashier

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« Reply #56 on: November 16, 2006, 01:58:04 pm »

I like it and think it's a good start. It's probably already in the plans, but I would suggest javascript submenu pullouts or expansions on the left nav bar to make drilling even easier.

- DL
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Fred Ragland

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« Reply #57 on: November 16, 2006, 03:36:35 pm »

Quote
I like it and think it's a good start.[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=85636\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Yes, its a good start.
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dittert

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« Reply #58 on: November 18, 2006, 12:44:27 pm »

The new site layout looks a lot better than the old layout. Thanks for keeping up the good work! I really enjoy reading your site a lot.

Here are a few thoughts without any particular order.

it is a mere coincidence that it displays in a browser at all (e.g. there is more than one html root element on the start page).

- the navigation leaves the screen when one scrolls down. There are ways to fix that (e.g. via CSS)

- viewing the home page photograph requires the back button to get back on the main page. I guess, a viewer rather expects a link to a gallery of past home page images.

- "What's new" is in a small column that makes it tall and wastes a lot of space (at least on Firefox)

- The welcome greeting is not on the main page if opened with 1280x1024. You have to scroll down to read it.

- Two screens down, I learn that the best way to utilize this site is the subject index. However, in the navigation at the right, there is no subject index listed. If it is that important, why is it missing from the navigation?

- the understanding series uses a table, recent articles are shown as lists. Especially the table is hard to read because of all those horizontal lines.

- e.g. on the video journal page: there are plenty of different styles used for text: regular, italics, bold, bold italics, bold italics with different color, bold with different color. The same applies to the main page. The section below recent highlights uses regular underlined and italics underlined to indicate links. Above, links are marked as italics underlined.

- there's no image of you on the contact page. Why not just reuse that of the workshop page?

But frankly, I'd be happier if you spent more time producing new episodes of the video journal than fixing those issues above  
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hbb

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« Reply #59 on: November 19, 2006, 10:31:13 am »

The new look works very well on my screen, but ...

... it is now very hard to print. I am on these users who print longer articles and read them in the train. With the old design, printing was easy. Now with the new design, the right part of the articles are cut off, I need to print the articles in landscape orientation.

Therefore, I have a suggestion:

Put the green navigation side to the right of the screen. Most people using the mouse with the right hand move the mouse automatically to the right, when they would like to put it out of the way. Additionally, it will solve the printing issue (on the print-out, the navigation bar does not really add something and may be cut off) and for those ones using smaller resolution screens.

Regards

Bernd
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