Re: New Proposed Xconq Web Site Online

[Eric W. Brown <eric@saugus.net>]

> Done. Do you think the search box looks okay or should it go elsewhere?

I don't personally have any solid ideas about where the search box 
should logically go.  I guess it makes some sort of sense that the 
documentation, forums, bug reports, old articles section, and searching 
should all be somewhat near each other as they are somewhat related 
(assuming the search facility covers all of those other things).  The 
download section should be very prominent, perhaps in the upper right 
corner.  Some of the links in the modules section are a little 
non-intuitive (for starters, when I see "Modules" WRT Xconq I'm 
expecting game modules).  How does the Search option there differ from 
the search box on the front?  How does the stories archive differ from 
the old articles section on the front?  Why is the games library under 
documentation and not modules?  Why does the Home link appear when 
you're already home?

Are there any usability or UI gurus who read this list?  It's not my 
primary field so take my comments on it with a grain of salt...

> [snip] - I'm as multi-cultural as the next guy, but I'm afraid the
> Espertinos are out of luck :)

Pity; in some seriousness the more I look into it the more it does seem 
that there is some sort of an overlap between people interested in 
strategy games and people interested in international communications 
via neutral languages.  It certainly seems possible to do, too; the 
PHP-Nuke site at http://www.uk-2003.net/ is one example that does it 
(pulled up quickly courtesy of Google).  I'm sure that for this 
particular site many of the languages that are already supported will 
have smaller audiences.

> This may be because you are seeing the story's header. Does clicking 
> the
> "Read More" link help? Also noted is Eli's input about the Xconq logo.

I didn't really mean the length of the stories themselves, just how the 
portions that were displayed on the front page appeared.

> Assuming that it's not the logo size (and it probably is as Eli
> suggested) then this should be fixed (some tweaking may be required).

Is it possible to preserve the larger logo and still make it work?  
Perhaps a layout like:

+-------------+              +--+----------+
|             |              |  |          |
+--+-------+--+      or      +--+-------+--+
|  |       |  |              |  |       |  |
|  |       |  |              |  |       |  |
+--+-------+--+              +--+-------+--+

would work.  Please excuse my cheesy ASCII art (hopefully it'll hit the 
mailing list intact).

> Absolutely. It's really easy to do. The Xconq site currently does. 
> Point
> ...
> are Xconq related RSS feeds, by all means, do tell!

Excellent!  AFAIK, this will be the first.

> You could have written and said, "Coop, that is the ugliest color 
> scheme
> I have ever seen," and I would have about squealed that you gave such
> honest feedback and changed them immediately.

While I certainly won't say that, I might argue toward using fewer 
colors (perhaps just one) for the sidebar boxes' borders.  Either that 
or color them based upon some logical scheme (perhaps with the download 
and/or documentation boxes more obvious than the others).  This is 
really another area where a UI expert's opinions would be good.

> You can try this at home! Simply send a "one liner" that says, "Coop,
> that is the ugliest color scheme I have ever seen" and see what 
> happens!

There's unfortunately been a lot of competition for the ugliest color 
scheme I've ever seen...  I'll spare you the stories, though.

> Thanks!

You're welcome.  Thanks for your work on the site.