Official New Design Thread

Hehe - I know y'all are just presenting alternate opinions, but please give us SOME credit for having thought about important stuff like resolutions.

For example, I conducted a survey recently: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=81700

I'll stop short of linking you to the trend lines, but trust me: 1024 has been steadily declining over the past 12 months just as 1280 has risen and now overtaken it (so far in May)

YES, some people work in windowed mode, even though our quick survey reveals 1280 maximised is the number one by some margin. Heck - even 1600 maximised is popular! Anyone unlucky enough to be running 1024 should have the sense to do so maximised - bit-tech won't be the only "unreadible" site on the site at 1024-windowed.

At the end of the day, we needed to cater towards the majority of our readership, while keeping an eye on the trends for higher and higher resolutions. A good case in point: my recently replaced laptop = 800x600. New laptop = 1600x1200

 

Mmmm, yes, The_Pope, that might be true, but being the much visited site Bit-Tech is, 1% of the visitors is an enormous amount, and thus an enormous amount of people to show banners to, which obviously leads to more money to improve Bit-Tech. So wouldn't it be worth it going that extra fivehundred miles ( ), dealing with all the troubles you claim to have, to keep Bit-Tech alive?

 

I could do without the ads on the side but other than that, I think it's a nice change. The top ads don't really bother me, it's just the side ads that suck.

Also the pages have a horizontal scrollbar if you're running 8x6 = bad.

 

I just found out the quick link stuff on the top of the page isn't drop down anymore. When you click the links, a box appears lower on the page, near the bottom of your screen. Personally I prefer the drop down menu's, since the hovering boxes sometimes appear just below the bottom of my screen. (I work at 1152x864)

 

How would that affect our ability to run? How do you mean 'stay alive'?

It would be understandable if we were completely alienating 25% of our readership as opposed to 'inconveniencing' 1% who would potentially experience these problems on most other sites they visit anyway.

Plus the site would have to be drastically recoded to support 640x/Mobile devices and even, then in order to get the correct return off that 1%, ad placement would potentially still take up the majority of their screen. The cons far outweigh the pros for both parties.

 

Regarding the others that say this page is impossible with a pocketpc, I just tried to visit the main page using my pocket pc and holy ****, it is way worse than the old homepage. I have never a page that gets so entirely screwed up on my pocketpc.

You may consider a alternate CSS for handheld devices and computers with really small monitors

 

Whoever was let loose on the design needs to be fired, it's beyond words of how crap it is! The ad's ain't a problem. FireFox is your friend with it's built in AdBlock.

Change it back, do a poll, that should let you know how many people hate it.

 

Whoops. Here's a couple of facts you can read whilst you're logged in as guest:

1. I designed it with Chris Newman, we both have many years of design experience under our belts.

2. I don't get fired.

3. I asked people to be helpful and constructive, yours is not an attitude I want on the forums.

 

Learn to give constructive criticism or your account won't last much longer.

Edit: looks like I was beaten to it, bye.

 

I swear you people must think we're dumb or something, as if we haven't learnt a single thing in our 5 years of existence Of course we know it doesn't work on hand-helds which is why mobile.bit-tech.net is in the pipeline!

 

Well after looking at the site for a couple of days i achorly really like the design of the main site, and like the forum skins (dark one. just don't like the bar on the right). Well on the colours side of things i have grown to like almost all of the pages i don't like the green in Columns and not to shore on the red in gaming.

To me the forum seems a little strange in the fact that it spans from one edge to the other i personally think that it would be better to have a thin strip down each side of the background colour (#384C54). I think this could make seem less cluttered, as having all content right to the edge and making me feel as if i consatly need to scroll (can see this could be a problem with the width but think it could help).
like this:

edit:: damit half to make a thumbnail now.

Ben

 

Okay, I've been using the design for a few days now to let it 'wear in' and tbh it's not bad. The dividing up of the content has been a godsend and makes Bit much easier to digest. My only comments are these:

- The ad bar (on the right) often obscures forum posts and pictures which is very bad
- The vertical forum post style just isn't that good, it seems to all gell together a bit much. With the left bar that we had in the previous design it was easier to scan a thread for posts by certain people now it all flows together (much like this sentence)
- The coloured content section buttons are poor...very poor. The rest of the site looks really professional but the buttons with the simple mouseover suck, sorry guys but you should take a look at it as it lets down the overall image of the site.
- The Bit-tech brand doesn't stand out, the single bar at the top of the page just doesn''t jump out at me and the occasional bit-logo scattered about isn't going to make up for this. As you've got rid of the distinctive colour scheme in exchange for something a little more 'mainstream' you really need a more prominent logo to boost your image (brand image is everything these days )

Hope those are useful, all are intended constructively and should in no way diminish the awesome effort put into the redesign

 

Ctrl+f5 We reversed that change a few days ago

I've explained this so many times already, but i appreciate the length of this thread. We used the style of buttons for a few sensible reasons:
1) they are entirely CSS, so consume less of both yours and our bandwidth. They are not heavy JS powered rollover images or anything like that!
2) Replacing them with stylish image buttons wouldnt be inkeeping with the rest of the (very) 2d website. There are absolutely no curves (with exception to the logo perhaps), so anything else would be, well, 'wtf' inducing.

 

LOL, so your saying you've designed a site with out any style

Seriously though, what were you thinking , nmooo the old one was gewd

 

having played about with webdeveloper extension thing making the text in the buttons stay white when you mouseover looks better (to me anyway) its less of a jarring change and much more subtle rollover effect, i think it looks nicer like that
only bad thing is the columns button, the white text doesnt show up so well with the brighter green background, still better tho ¬_¬

 

Hmmm, interesting.

I definitely see your point, Pope, but the problem I have is that there's no reason why one can't have a page fluid enough to handle most websites well. I'm glad to know this was chosen with reader-polls a bit, but it doesn't help the fact that it could just have been prevented from being a problem.

I'd still be interested in a "would you read us on a handheld?" poll. I think tech-savvy has gone 2 ways: those who are business with a tech background and have a lot of the business toys (laptop, pda, etc), and those who are power users (

 

If thats what happens when you voice your opinion here i think i should leave now .

Death

 

Death, I find that response very disappointing especially from such longstanding member. You should know of your experience here we don't ban without thought and we certainly ban FAR less frequently than other forums do for much less.

If it warrants explaining, he was already on his last warning anyway but more specifically I don't put all this work into bit-tech to be bellowed at by someone who pays neither me nor the rest of the team absolutely NO respect whatsoever. Would YOU let yourself be spoken to like that and do nothing about it, would YOU want someone with that attitude continuing to contribute to your forum? I don't think anyone would, if he's like that with the admins then I dread to think how he may treat some of our members.

 

Sry mate just seemed like the criticism couldn't be taken . Fair 'nuff if he was on his last warning (Also i am a bit drunk and pissed off, ex's know how to push buttons ). No offence ment, y'all know i love this place .

Death