August 03, 2004 | View Comments (31) | Category: 9rules
Summary: FG critique.
Today I offer up an open critique to the new Forever Geek and Thursday comes the writeup explaining some of my design choices. So have at it. If you have any questions post them and I will answer them on Thursday as well. As usual, the site looks better in Firefox than IE right now, but I have been away too long so I need to take baby steps ;-).
Trackback URL: http://9rules.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/286
I agree with Hayo - the white outlines stand out too much. Perhaps a light gray would be better? The rest has a very nice look and feel to it.
geeky (http://www.simplygeeky.com)
Hayo: Good questions and I already intended to justify the darkness and change of look and theme from the rest of the 9rules sites.
I found without the white outline everything blended in too well together where it became to hard to tell when on section ended and the other began. Maybe a lighter gray would have worked better, but I enjoyed working with the contrast of black and white.
Scrivs (http://businesslogs.com)
Quite a change--not sure whether I like it yet or not, seems excessively "griddy," but I've been guilty of that myself. Definitely much different from your other sites. One nit: the drop-down menus are 1px too wide (at least in Firefox 0.9.2/Win), hopefully a quick CSS tweak will fix that.
P.S. Justin certainly seems to be living up to the title you gave him :-D
P.P.S. I keep getting this error on your comment preview page:
MT::App::Comments=HASH(0x810ac58) Use of uninitialized value in sprintf at lib/MT/Template/Context.pm line 1187.
David (http://wadny.com/)
So, how are you going to handle the logo treatment and its consistency across the network?
Are you going to create a reversed out version that appears only on FG, or use the logo as it appears on this page with the header on FG changed to white (that could be overpowering to your current FG design) or just keep the new logo as you currently have it on FG?
Mark (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
It took me about 5 or 6 visits to the new Forever Geek design to figure out that there was a Visit Site link that took me to the full article on another website.
On the site there are so many other black boxes, with white borders, and white text links in them, that none of them stand out.
I really only realized that there was a Visit Site link once I viewed the RSS feed of the site using Feed Demon, from there I saw the link, and only after seeing it there did I then go look for it on the actual Forever Geek site.
It easily gets lost, and not only that, it's not entirely clear if it belongs with the headline below it, or the article above it, since it more closely matches in contrast to the headline below it.
I would ask are each of these 4 items of equal importance?
* Visit Site
* Scrivs
* TrackBacks
* Email Entry
Since content is what the web is all about, and the Visit Site link is the meat of the content, I would like to see it have much greater importance in the design.
This is all meant to be constructive criticism =)
Jason Grunstra (http://www.sixside.com/)
Jason, great question and to be honest I don't even click on the link so I kind of forgot about it. What I will do is probably change the header to go to the linked item or change the background color of the "visit site" button.
Mark, better explanation will be provided Thursday and thanks for the welcome. I figured you of all people would miss me the most ;-P
Scrivs (http://businesslogs.com)
Quite a departure from your usual style. That said, I like it! The drop-downs are sophisticated, and you don't need to use them to navigate the site. I noticed that you've linked to the other 9rules sites at the top, separate from the main navigation. This is good. You might try putting a little 9rules logo up there, too, like maybe to the left of the 9rules navigation.
There's a tiny glitch in the header (Safari) where the diagonal lines of the header image don't match up with the diagonal lines of the background. A similar glitch happens on the bottom of the sidebar.
The sidebar is well-organized and easy to use, I think. I don't know about giving the FG Search Plugin an alternate background, though, as it sort of confuses the top.
Last thing... I noticed you don't have the FG logo up there... Are you going to put it back up?
Overall, it's a nice design that's very different from what we've seen in the past.
Chris Vincent (http://dris.dyndns.org:8080/)
This is pretty different from the other 9rules sites... but it seems like Forever Geek had a different, darker design before (or maybe I'm making things up). In any case, it's cool to see you stretching from what you're (apparently) comfortable with.
I've got to agree about the white lines and text on the black background... it's so high contrast that it looks important, but there's so much of it that there is no focus.
Another thing I noticed is that the article titles don't stand out compared to the articles... when I look at it I notice the article, then the links on the right, and then I eventually find the article title.
Having more whitespace might help. And, maybe using more dark grey.
Anyway, if I didn't make it clear, I really like that you're trying something new, and moving in to territory that a lot of web designers seem to avoid (black backgrounds). I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes.
Daniel Parks
The caps make it look geeky but I don't like the logo. Needs your other one I think.
I like the white on red of the headings. Looks almost like those plastic whatchacallem labels.
The "visit site, scrivs, comments, email entry" row looks like it is part of the following heading. I could get used to it but think it would be better as black on white so it links with the article. Probably needs space between it and the following heading, too.
I also think the search, plugin, categories and monthly headings are one too many grey backgrounds.
Also, the dropdowns don't work in Opera. Overall, I think I like it.
Peter (http://www.01010.org/)
Where are these dropdowns? Are they the links at the top of the page?
If that's the case , they don't work in IE either.
Mark (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
And they never will work in IE till they update their CSS engine. The beauty of the nav though is that the Dropdowns are not needed.
The dropdowns work for me in Opera.
Scrivs (http://businesslogs.com)
Dropdowns will now work well with IE, with a little javascript. This article is for horizontal ones but it's the same principle for vertical ones.
I am using Opera 7.23 so it's probably me.
Peter (http://www.01010.org/)
seems very "grid-dy" to me, which is somewhat distracting to look at, especially where you have the "visit site-autho -comments-email entry", then the title of the next article, and then the dateline. The summetry of that whole chunk of information is distracting.
Jeremy Flint (http://www.jeremyflint.com)
Hmmm...They don't work in Opera 7.11 either.
I can see there is an attempt, because the white line under the logo turns black when I rollover the logo graphic, and then turns back to white when I roll out of the area.
Also in Opera, whenever I click on any of the links on the right, there is a left-right shift of the entire interface when going from one page to another.
Mark (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
Not being a protanope myself (I know when my meat is rare) I can only guess how the red and gray would appear to sufferers of that particular form of colour blindness; the 'on' states may not appear on, and some of the text ("FG Search Plugin for Firefox") might not stand out (but should still be readable). Red and gray is not a very "accessible" color scheme, in particular where those colors are the only indicators of a function. (But being all css its easy to change!)
sean
Peter, the dropdowns don't work with Javscript because they need to be within an "id" instead of a "class" as I have them. I couldn't find a native function for Javascript that calls parts of the DOM within a class that is the issue.
Scrivs (http://businesslogs.com)
You can simulate how your site looks to people with deuteranope, protanope, and tritanope color deficits with VisCheck.
It's probably not 100% an accurate representation, but it gives you an idea of how it might look.
Also, here's a handy comparison chart in hex values.
Matthew Oliphant (http://businesslogs.com)
I'm with the others... the white outlines give it the looks, but its too prominent.
The 'visit site/posted by/comments/email entry' bar is also too prominent (IMO), you could try giving em a smaller font size, they're not really that important from the main post - probably the 'visit site' should be included in the main glut of text rather in this bar.
Also I'm using FF 0.9.2 and IE6, looking at your screenshot, the same bar of links supposedly(?) has some <br> whitespace from the next entry. In the two browsers that i'm using, it's right on top of the red subject bar of the next entry, it's confusing.
Anyway... the redesign is cool, it's a big difference from your 'other design-themed' sites.
Kevin Navia (http://www.pixelpush.org)
Not having seen the previous versions (at least not remembering them..) - this sure was something different. Nice job!
Jan Tore Ynnesdal (http://blog.ynnesdal.no/)
Yes, I see what you mean Scrivs. When you have two or three navigation bars it is a rather inelegant solution to change from class to ID and have to use two or three sets of css and javascript. But the Son of Suckerfish Dropdowns method only uses a few bytes so is it worth waiting for someone to find a solution that works with classes or for IE to be brought up to date?
Peter (http://www.01010.org/)
Fisrt impressions were "what a refreshing change to the same old white, light grey, subtle sites". Nice one mate, I love it because it breaks away from the mold. We need to be a little more bold with our designs some times and you've pulled this one off well.
Paul Nattress
Those white outlines make it way to busy and guide the eye everywhere but where the content is.
And I'm really burnt out on the whole diagonal stripes thing, as it is used a lot these days.
Sykil
There are way too many uppercase words for my taste. It kind of hurts my eyes and makes me not want to actually read what they say. I think I prefer your more airy style.
Jennifer Grucza (http://jennifergrucza.com)
It is no doubt a nice design. A high level of creativity and uniquness was displayed here. However I do have a few small issues with it.
First off I love the colors initially, but I think they would soon begin to put some stress on my eyes.
The other is the sidebar. It's almost as big as the main content section, that is somewhat troubling.
Ryan (http://www.worldoneweb.com)
I agree it looks a bit too crowded (maybe increase the padding on the links?)
The colors have too much contrast, at least for me. And that's coming from someone who has his monitor contrast setting lower than most people. (well, most people I know, that is) You really should make the whites into light grays.
I don't mind the small content area, because the entries are usually fairly small.
And I hate to say this, but your site doesn't validate. (easy to fix. for the title attribute of the entry links, add strip_tags(), for the JS error, add (beginning and end), and for the 9rules id error, well, that's a bit obvious)
Tom
I do think it is one of those designs that for some will take some getting used to while others will gravitate immediately. Tomorrow, better explanations of my design choices and what my thoughts were behind everything will follow.
Thanks for the excellent feedback provided so far.
Scrivs (http://businesslogs.com)
Hmm, while it looks ok after 30 seconds my eyes started to water. I liked the white design much more, easy to read.
The Wolf (http://www.pixelcarnage.com)
Well, black is good .... but this white outlines ... umm, not soothing, you know. And these uppercases doesn't do either! But, it's great site when it comes to using css!
keep up the good work!
Raqueeb Hassan (http://man-machine.blogspot.com)
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#1
The white outlines are a bit to prominent for my taste, but that probably just takes some getting used to. It has a really 'geeky' feel to it, whatever that means..
oh yeah, what with the dark background? why did you choose that; it really contrasts with v2, the vault, the roe..
Hayo (http://www.hayobethlehem.nl/)