Usability and Design advice

[Sirotnikov]

I never said "usable equals plain text". Your criticisms would most succinctly be posted in plain text as not everyone has the plugins necessary or patience necessary to read 30+ slides for a couple simple points.

What plugins are necessary? Adobe Flash?

I don't need all posters who open this thread to read it. Infact, at first I meant to simply mail it to one of the owners\staff, but I decided to post it so it could be a reference for discussion by those who do care.

I am counting on the fact that the people who run this site, will see it because:
1) feedback is important for them.
2) feedback that is well demonstrated is more useful to them.
3) i put effort into it, instead of just jotting down a few dislikes in the congratulations thread, and going on about my bussines.

I still think that the fact that it's a concentrated list, that is well demonstrated by screenshots, get the points accross better, and makes it easier to use for the site designers.

When I worked on web applications with our web design team they would always prefer slides with screen captures and examples, over a text list.

If people don't know what you mean by "too many colours" without a picture of many colours, they deserve to be shot.

You're right, but the fact that there are too many colors is contestable and I wanted to demonstrate my point - why there are too many colors and where they are located.

Also, I commented earlier in text about the weird padding of the text reply area, to which Gramphos replied "You may use the down arow in the upper right corner of the box" to make it longer, which was really not what I meant.

The fault was of course my poor wording, which is why I decided that screenshots would function be better to demonstrate what I mean.

Frankly your presentation was overdone and condescending. Certainly wasn't functionally usable, it was remarkably inefficient and restricted your audience by using some stupid online presentation site.

As I said, I really didn't like to use the embed plugin, but there was no other tool to post the powerpoint here.

I still stand by my choice to make it a presentation since I think the screenshots are important when you are referencing specific areas' design. That's how I worked with both web developers and a UI company.

Dividing the color issue accross 8 slides was annoying to me too, but when I put it in one slide, it was incomprehencable in the plugin.

As I said, It isn't immediately obvious to anyone why I think there are too many colors, and where they are located, which is why I wanted to get my view across well. They can still disagree but at least they've seen my argument.


I really didn't mean it to be condescending, though I realize how it can be seen overdone.

I really put the time to go over the entire site and mark areas that I thought could use improvement as a service, not as an attempt to insult or put anyone down.

I certainly think my post is worth more than "how can I make it go back the way it was" posts.

[TCO]

I want Siro in charge of graphical design. Asher may be his compliant code monkey as needed.

[Sirotnikov]

Very nice presentation Siro

Have to agree with most of what you've said.

finally

If I don't get reserve duty, I promise to suggest my help to Dan and Locutus.

[TCO]

Siro: Love your presentation. Very "Tufte-like":

https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint

https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q...?msg_id=0001yB - 168k -

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Upon further review, it appears your code tags mangle code.

[Gramphos]

I never said "usable equals plain text". Your criticisms would most succinctly be posted in plain text as not everyone has the plugins necessary or patience necessary to read 30+ slides for a couple simple points.

If people don't know what you mean by "too many colours" without a picture of many colours, they deserve to be shot.

Frankly your presentation was overdone and condescending. Certainly wasn't functionally usable, it was remarkably inefficient and restricted your audience by using some stupid online presentation site.

This can't be right... I'm actually agreeing with Asher completely.

[Asher]

nice try, but wrong

usable does not equal plain text. on the contrary, the best way to present criticism of design is graphical form using screenshots.

I never said "usable equals plain text". Your criticisms would most succinctly be posted in plain text as not everyone has the plugins necessary or patience necessary to read 30+ slides for a couple simple points.

If people don't know what you mean by "too many colours" without a picture of many colours, they deserve to be shot.

Frankly your presentation was overdone and condescending. Certainly wasn't functionally usable, it was remarkably inefficient and restricted your audience by using some stupid online presentation site.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

I think it's too low in the page to be useful
i rarely see anything below the quick reply window

I wouldn't go as far as not useful, but I thought moving it up to right below the reply box would be nice too.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Koya, how do you implement that, so we can get it to look like that too?

Use the FireFox plugins linked in that message.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Very nice presentation Siro

Have to agree with most of what you've said.

[Sirotnikov]

I think it's too low in the page to be useful
i rarely see anything below the quick reply window

[Ben Kenobi]

Koya, how do you implement that, so we can get it to look like that too?

[ZEE]

The forum jump thing was in the last version, and I use it often.

agreed.

Siro, you think people want to scroll back up to the top of the page to visit different forums after every thread they read? God that would suck.

[OzzyKP]

do we really need the poll there?
and the "forum jump" at the really really bottom?

The forum jump thing was in the last version, and I use it often.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

I guess I'll copy/paste the post I did in OT since I know some of the admins don't read that...

------

A couple of things that I did to avoid working that made it a bit better for me...ymmv. It's still bad, but less bad this way.

Stylish rules:

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);

@-moz-document domain("apolyton.net") {
.thead, .navbar-row td.vbmenu_control, .navbar-row td, td.footer-row td, td.tfoot{
  background: #551100 !important;
}
.postdata{
  background: transparent !important;
  border: 0px !important;
  margin: 0px !important;
  padding: 0px !important;
}

td.alt2 .smallfont div{
  display: none !important;
}

td.alt2 .smallfont .postdata{
  display: block !important;
}

td.alt2 .smallfont{
  color: #808080 !important;
  font-size: 9px !important;
}

td.alt2 .usertitle{
  color: #000000 !important;
  font-size: 11px !important;
}

table.maintable{
  width: 95% !important;
  border-left: 2px solid #866 !important;
  border-right: 2px solid #866 !important;
  background-color: white !important;
}

.bbcode-rounded-quote{
  width: 90% !important;
  margin-left: auto !important;
  margin-right: auto !important;
}
.row-new div{
  background-color: #ffffe5 !important;
  padding: 1px;
}

body{
  background: #ccc url('') !important;
}

}

Greasemonkey script:

// ==UserScript==
// @name           Apolyton Fix
// @namespace      http://apolyton.net/forums/
// @include        http://apolyton.net/forums/*
// ==/UserScript==

function fixUserInfo(){
	var cells = document.getElementsByClassName('alt2');
	for(var i=0; i 0){
			if(children[4]) {
				children[4].parentNode.removeChild(children[4]);
				if(userTitle[0]) {
					userTitle[0].innerHTML += '' + children[3].innerHTML.substring(9);
					children[3].parentNode.removeChild(children[3]);
				}
			} else {
				children[3].parentNode.removeChild(children[3]);
			}
			children[1].parentNode.removeChild(children[1]);
			children[0].parentNode.removeChild(children[0]);
		};
	};
};

window.addEventListener('load', fixUserInfo, false);

Images to block, since I can't replace them with anything:

http://static.apolyton.net/vb3/images/acs2/misc/nav_right.gif

http://static.apolyton.net/vb3/images/acs2/misc/nav_left.gif

http://static.apolyton.net/forums/images/civgroups/* (optional)

http://static.apolyton.net/vb3/images/ca_evo2green/buttons/reply.gif

-----

That was all starting from the restricted template.

Again, up to you whether you use it or even think it's better...just my two cents.