Official New Design Thread

I love that design it looks great. I vote that Bit-tech should change to that.

 

That's pretty nice, although I can't see bit-tech changing to that considering all the work they put into the current site.

 

Nice work there - the buttons look nice.

However, maybe this is me being grumpy, but I think that while the buttons that you've included are nice, they look out of place and draw more attention to them than the content underneath it.

 

Those button DO look nice, however the reason we went for the current "boxy" buttons is because they are pure HTML / CSS, meaning they are as fast as possible. IMO there's nothing worse than a site which you have to watch assemble itself every time you load it.

 

Yes they are nice, but the remainder of the site is 2d, so they look out of place.

 

I have another small suggestion:

Those icons beside each thread wich shows if there is any new posts or if you have posted could be better. I'm thinking about the icon wich shows that there is a thread that you have posted in AND that there is new posts in. That little arrowthingy doesn't show wery well. (barely at all). That arrow should be on top of the bit-tech logo... not under it.

(man, i suck at explaining things. )

 

The icons are being worked on, as has been mentioned a few times already in the thread. We're going to have to wait and see what is pulled out of the hat on this one.

 

Hell, im on 2mb and i STILL have to watch the site assemble itself from a full cache flush reload, so i know what you mean

However, ignoring the gradient - the corners + stroke on the edges are what makes it work; it the gradient that makes it too 'strong'. I actually posted this in the 'waking up to a new world' discussion thread, with a bit more explanation (ie, i dont like the gradient, its too powerful etc etc)
My opinion is that its less distracting than the buttons that are there currently though - believe me, i dont go redesigning sites for the fun of it, the buttons are all i honestly notice when I come here; even a colour change would be nice, its just too 'strong'.

The differences i made -

Aligned the buttons with the article pad in
Changed the turquoise colour
Changed the shape of the buttons slightly
Most importantly, DESATURATED the buttons significantly
re-aligned the top logo
Put white behind the buttons and offset them from the page slightly.

The buttons shouldnt be any more than 3-5k each - anyone on a semi-decent net connection wont really notice any speed problems. As long as the buttons cache, and the rollovers for the buttons are set to load on page load, they'd only load once anyway.

I love the idea of what you've done (it works really well in practice) but just a few little colour/alignment/aethestic changes would make the world of difference; as I said, i was just hoping for a very slight redesign, and im definitely not wanting you to take my design and just use it as it is.

Food for thought, im not trying to jam a kebab down your throats

 

Like the new forums, didn't at first but I got used to it, so congrats to the hard work involved in changing in, however I got one suggestion - Get rid of the google ad, tbh I think only tatty websites should have the google ads, they look outdated and don't really go with the modern style of these forums, or the site as a whole actually.

 

just from looking a a page or two i agree with these people

well just to sum up what i think...

ok the forums look good if you change the blue to something or grey/creamy kinda colour's... also the blue square buttons and quote stuff looks stupid... the add's bit looks bad but i don't mind have the add's across the top and everything else looks good... *minus a few small changes...


*sorry if it seems harsh*

 

ad some grey to all the colors.

 

I think the general consensus is you shouldn't fix it if it's not broken . . .

 

Personally - I think the new layout is horrible. Everything is cluttered and just downright unattractive. But - that's been said before. This, I think, is new. There seems to be some bugs in the layout: https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/mnoone/www/random/NewBTLayoutSucks.jpg

 

I think the point of the redesign was that it was about to break. The bit-tech staff probably didn't just redesign for the hell of it, there must have been good reasons for them spending hours coding a new site.

 

Well, I think this thread has served its purpose.

For those still 'naysaying' this far down the thread I suggest you read the majority of our previous responses, the thread I posted about our recent changes and Wil's column about why they were done. We HAVE responded to all these issues already.

There may be a few more cosmetic tweaks to come over the following weeks (Including forum icons), however we're happy now that we've accomdated most of the major issues and that we're hearing nothing new which hasn't been addressed.

Thanks for the feedback!