May i suggest less clutter on the site?! [modified]
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May i suggest less clutter on the site?! I find the site Extremely usefull. But the UI is completely out of standard to any forum i've ever seen. It's extremely hard to navigate. And there are no STABLE ads. Sometimes they are UP... then on the left... then at the end of an article. And colors change everywhere without any reason (not that i can see). There is apparent hierarchy for font sizes. There is this thing in the upper left corner asking me to subscribe... i've done so but it keeps changing and asking again and again... i keep looking at it every time i look at the menu. And there is this menu near the top... the green one... it seems quite similar to the one on the left, orange one... but they have some common items and then they go astray. And that tiny ad in the bottom left, I've never clicked it... it says bullfrogpower... BUT the other font is TOO SMALL. I can't read what it says. I've counted about 18!!! different colors that get USED... no counting the ads... some for text, some for visited links... I understand all the ads generate revenue to keep the site up and running. Is there any way i can change a theme or something or even pay to get rid of the ads? NOTE: I am not a Dev. I'm actually an Architect trying to learn some C#.
modified on Saturday, November 14, 2009 12:14 PM
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May i suggest less clutter on the site?! I find the site Extremely usefull. But the UI is completely out of standard to any forum i've ever seen. It's extremely hard to navigate. And there are no STABLE ads. Sometimes they are UP... then on the left... then at the end of an article. And colors change everywhere without any reason (not that i can see). There is apparent hierarchy for font sizes. There is this thing in the upper left corner asking me to subscribe... i've done so but it keeps changing and asking again and again... i keep looking at it every time i look at the menu. And there is this menu near the top... the green one... it seems quite similar to the one on the left, orange one... but they have some common items and then they go astray. And that tiny ad in the bottom left, I've never clicked it... it says bullfrogpower... BUT the other font is TOO SMALL. I can't read what it says. I've counted about 18!!! different colors that get USED... no counting the ads... some for text, some for visited links... I understand all the ads generate revenue to keep the site up and running. Is there any way i can change a theme or something or even pay to get rid of the ads? NOTE: I am not a Dev. I'm actually an Architect trying to learn some C#.
modified on Saturday, November 14, 2009 12:14 PM
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May i suggest less clutter on the site?! I find the site Extremely usefull. But the UI is completely out of standard to any forum i've ever seen. It's extremely hard to navigate. And there are no STABLE ads. Sometimes they are UP... then on the left... then at the end of an article. And colors change everywhere without any reason (not that i can see). There is apparent hierarchy for font sizes. There is this thing in the upper left corner asking me to subscribe... i've done so but it keeps changing and asking again and again... i keep looking at it every time i look at the menu. And there is this menu near the top... the green one... it seems quite similar to the one on the left, orange one... but they have some common items and then they go astray. And that tiny ad in the bottom left, I've never clicked it... it says bullfrogpower... BUT the other font is TOO SMALL. I can't read what it says. I've counted about 18!!! different colors that get USED... no counting the ads... some for text, some for visited links... I understand all the ads generate revenue to keep the site up and running. Is there any way i can change a theme or something or even pay to get rid of the ads? NOTE: I am not a Dev. I'm actually an Architect trying to learn some C#.
modified on Saturday, November 14, 2009 12:14 PM
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May i suggest less clutter on the site?! I find the site Extremely usefull. But the UI is completely out of standard to any forum i've ever seen. It's extremely hard to navigate. And there are no STABLE ads. Sometimes they are UP... then on the left... then at the end of an article. And colors change everywhere without any reason (not that i can see). There is apparent hierarchy for font sizes. There is this thing in the upper left corner asking me to subscribe... i've done so but it keeps changing and asking again and again... i keep looking at it every time i look at the menu. And there is this menu near the top... the green one... it seems quite similar to the one on the left, orange one... but they have some common items and then they go astray. And that tiny ad in the bottom left, I've never clicked it... it says bullfrogpower... BUT the other font is TOO SMALL. I can't read what it says. I've counted about 18!!! different colors that get USED... no counting the ads... some for text, some for visited links... I understand all the ads generate revenue to keep the site up and running. Is there any way i can change a theme or something or even pay to get rid of the ads? NOTE: I am not a Dev. I'm actually an Architect trying to learn some C#.
modified on Saturday, November 14, 2009 12:14 PM
I'm no designer, but I certainly don't find the site hard to look at. In fact, I like many of the decisions they've made to make navigating messages easier. For example, they make high voted messages red and low voted messages grey. And you get to control how high or low of a vote puts a message into its respective category. Does it add more visual clutter? Sure, but then it also helps you to focus on the posts that others have found valuable and ignore the ones that others have found worthless. If they had chosen different colors (rather than red and gray), that might make it look more unified, but then could also confuse users. For example, if they used orange for high voted messages, people might think those were header messages of some sort, as the menus on this site use orange. Anyway, I think the target audience of this website is mostly programmers, and programmers I think can appreciate a functional design, such as the one CodeProject presents. That being said, it does an impressive job of enforcing style across the site. Articles, for example, all use the same CSS, so most every article looks the same. This consistency makes navigating articles much easier for those of us who look through a great deal of articles.
basilmir wrote:
There is this thing in the upper left corner asking me to subscribe
Wouldn't be a bad idea to get rid of that for members who are already subscribed... could even be seen as a reward for subscribing.
basilmir wrote:
it seems quite similar to the one on the left
Not sure why they did this... maybe they will tell you. Maybe they just want to highlight different things in different areas to help users discover things more easily. The left menu might be targeted toward less savvy users who are not familiar with or interested in navigating popup menus. Or it may be an alternative in case a mobile phone user doesn't have the ability to open menus. Or maybe they wanted a giant orange stripe on the left site to lead to greater recognizability among readers, and they figured they might as well put something in that unused space. Or maybe they log clicks to either the left menu or top menu and are doing statistics to see which menu users prefer. Although, to be honest, I don't see a whole lot of overlap between the left and top menu.
basilmir wrote:
Is there any way i can change a theme or something or even pay to
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Thank you for your reply. I do hope someone takes what i said seriously. There are people who make their living doing interaction design. Indeed all the information stored here is golden, too bad sometimes you have to look at it through dirty glasses.
Who are you talking to? You replied to yourself.
Visual Studio is an excellent GUIIDE.
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Who are you talking to? You replied to yourself.
Visual Studio is an excellent GUIIDE.
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I'm no designer, but I certainly don't find the site hard to look at. In fact, I like many of the decisions they've made to make navigating messages easier. For example, they make high voted messages red and low voted messages grey. And you get to control how high or low of a vote puts a message into its respective category. Does it add more visual clutter? Sure, but then it also helps you to focus on the posts that others have found valuable and ignore the ones that others have found worthless. If they had chosen different colors (rather than red and gray), that might make it look more unified, but then could also confuse users. For example, if they used orange for high voted messages, people might think those were header messages of some sort, as the menus on this site use orange. Anyway, I think the target audience of this website is mostly programmers, and programmers I think can appreciate a functional design, such as the one CodeProject presents. That being said, it does an impressive job of enforcing style across the site. Articles, for example, all use the same CSS, so most every article looks the same. This consistency makes navigating articles much easier for those of us who look through a great deal of articles.
basilmir wrote:
There is this thing in the upper left corner asking me to subscribe
Wouldn't be a bad idea to get rid of that for members who are already subscribed... could even be seen as a reward for subscribing.
basilmir wrote:
it seems quite similar to the one on the left
Not sure why they did this... maybe they will tell you. Maybe they just want to highlight different things in different areas to help users discover things more easily. The left menu might be targeted toward less savvy users who are not familiar with or interested in navigating popup menus. Or it may be an alternative in case a mobile phone user doesn't have the ability to open menus. Or maybe they wanted a giant orange stripe on the left site to lead to greater recognizability among readers, and they figured they might as well put something in that unused space. Or maybe they log clicks to either the left menu or top menu and are doing statistics to see which menu users prefer. Although, to be honest, I don't see a whole lot of overlap between the left and top menu.
basilmir wrote:
Is there any way i can change a theme or something or even pay to
Thank you for sharing your opinion. I'm ALL IN when it comes to functional design. I wouldn't change a thing on the site... structurally; just change some of the font sizes and color. I have to say i designed very few pc interfaces to date. But i've done tens of projects requiring you to nagivate through somekind of space. And there is a certain component of interface desgin that exists only in the visitors head, and it can only be designed outside visual studio. This kind of website is similat to navigating a tree of information. It's not that hard to have this map into the visitors heads before they start, through visual cues or the use of similar design patterns in the hierarchy of objects on the site. The sum of visual elements and their properties(that are visual) should be used to do this.
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Clicked in the wrong place... i find this kind of threaded view "confusing"... i'm used to phpBB's threaded view.
basilmir wrote:
i find this kind of threaded view "confusing"... i'm used to phpBB's threaded view.
But someone who's used to the CP view may find the php one confusing! I suspect that most of us who use this site are quite happy with the way it is laid out, including colours and fonts. Any changes would just serve to confuse us and would not necessarily be seen as an improvement. I guess the only way to find out for sure is to ask Chris to run a survey to get people's opinions.
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May i suggest less clutter on the site?! I find the site Extremely usefull. But the UI is completely out of standard to any forum i've ever seen. It's extremely hard to navigate. And there are no STABLE ads. Sometimes they are UP... then on the left... then at the end of an article. And colors change everywhere without any reason (not that i can see). There is apparent hierarchy for font sizes. There is this thing in the upper left corner asking me to subscribe... i've done so but it keeps changing and asking again and again... i keep looking at it every time i look at the menu. And there is this menu near the top... the green one... it seems quite similar to the one on the left, orange one... but they have some common items and then they go astray. And that tiny ad in the bottom left, I've never clicked it... it says bullfrogpower... BUT the other font is TOO SMALL. I can't read what it says. I've counted about 18!!! different colors that get USED... no counting the ads... some for text, some for visited links... I understand all the ads generate revenue to keep the site up and running. Is there any way i can change a theme or something or even pay to get rid of the ads? NOTE: I am not a Dev. I'm actually an Architect trying to learn some C#.
modified on Saturday, November 14, 2009 12:14 PM
Thanks for the feedback. Threaded vs flat is a matter of taste. We prefer threaded, but there is no 'correct' choice in this. I'm not sure what you mean by stable ads. If you mean on different pages the ads are shown in different places, then yes, because our pages are laid out differently depending on the nature of the page. Some sites have every page look absolutely identical but we have chosen not to do this. All articles are the same, all catalog items are the same, and all job postings are the same template, but they each have their own look and feel in order to make it clear that when you're viewing a job your not viewing a catalog item or an article. We don't offer a paid subsscription to remove ads, nor do we provide themeing.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
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Thank you for sharing your opinion. I'm ALL IN when it comes to functional design. I wouldn't change a thing on the site... structurally; just change some of the font sizes and color. I have to say i designed very few pc interfaces to date. But i've done tens of projects requiring you to nagivate through somekind of space. And there is a certain component of interface desgin that exists only in the visitors head, and it can only be designed outside visual studio. This kind of website is similat to navigating a tree of information. It's not that hard to have this map into the visitors heads before they start, through visual cues or the use of similar design patterns in the hierarchy of objects on the site. The sum of visual elements and their properties(that are visual) should be used to do this.
basilmir wrote:
But i've done tens of projects requiring you to nagivate through somekind of space.
Out of idle curiosity, are we talking about school projects or ones that happened in the real world?
Jon
Rob Graham wrote:
100% subsidies are very popular among the 50% of the population that pays no income tax...
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basilmir wrote:
But i've done tens of projects requiring you to nagivate through somekind of space.
Out of idle curiosity, are we talking about school projects or ones that happened in the real world?
Jon
Rob Graham wrote:
100% subsidies are very popular among the 50% of the population that pays no income tax...
:) Last time i checked it all happened in the real world. As for the age "issue", i guess i passed that point when you stop counting... I wanted to make some suggestions and substantiate them with some actual know how, you know... in the "real" world, as in NOT "virtual" reality. :)
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Thanks for the feedback. Threaded vs flat is a matter of taste. We prefer threaded, but there is no 'correct' choice in this. I'm not sure what you mean by stable ads. If you mean on different pages the ads are shown in different places, then yes, because our pages are laid out differently depending on the nature of the page. Some sites have every page look absolutely identical but we have chosen not to do this. All articles are the same, all catalog items are the same, and all job postings are the same template, but they each have their own look and feel in order to make it clear that when you're viewing a job your not viewing a catalog item or an article. We don't offer a paid subsscription to remove ads, nor do we provide themeing.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
Chris, to help you understand what the OP is saying, I'll paraphrase:
- discard the articles
- scrap the Lounge and the Soapbox
- combine all the forums into one
- lose the ads (oh, wait - you won't have to lose the ads, because the advertisers will be MIA when they see what you've done to the site)
HTH! :)
Best wishes, Hans
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Chris, to help you understand what the OP is saying, I'll paraphrase:
- discard the articles
- scrap the Lounge and the Soapbox
- combine all the forums into one
- lose the ads (oh, wait - you won't have to lose the ads, because the advertisers will be MIA when they see what you've done to the site)
HTH! :)
Best wishes, Hans
Should I put this on the TODO?
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
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Should I put this on the TODO?
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP