Beta interface...

[Chern Ann]

We've been busy in the background putting together a new(ish) interface to roll out, coinciding with CoolMiniOrNot's 10 year birthday in August.

It's now progressed to the point where I can show you what it looks like and get feedback. It's not meant for day to day use yet, since parts of it are not ready, but feel free to kick the tires and leave your comments here. The aesthetics and colors may change from current dark background to something a little more neutral as well.

Now, the rationale behind the change is that:

1. Monitors have become cheap and ginormous in recent years, even on laptops, 1600x1200+ is the norm
2. Photos are getting much larger

So I decided to break the fixed width of the site, so that at whatever width you open coolminiornot at, the image will expand to fit the page. This results in much better use of the real estate on the page.

Also changed is the way lists are shown, rather than a table with boring info, everything is listed in thumbnails so you get a lot more information on a page rather than having to scroll through tons of stuff.

The url is http://beta.coolminiornot.com.

Things that are not done yet, My Pictures section and some of the old user sections. So go kick it around and let me know what you think!

edit: search is broken right now.

 

[kathrynloch]

Personally, what I see with a quick run-through is wonderful! I really like your optimal width option. Because of that the site feels really comfortable since it's conforming to whatever screen I'm using. Sometimes, when I hit the home page, I get a cluttered overburden sense. But this is really nice! I really like the thumbnails and I liked the ones of the contest at the top - very handy.

While it's still early, keep going this direction and it will be a home run.

 

[TomasP]

Hi, I like it. The liquid layout would seem to be appropriate in this context and I'm looking forward to seeing the colour change.

Initially just one point that's a bit odd - with the grid gallery view if an item has a long title it pushes the image up to accomodate the added text.

 

[armornv]

I like it as well. The home page feels more...orderly? Maybe cleaner is the right word. I could stand to have the text (especially on the left side) one or two pts. larger. At 1920 x 1200 it gets a little small and tough to read without putting my face against my monitor. I also agree with TomasP that it feels/looks a little odd with the image being pushed up to fit the text underneath, though I don't know if that could even be fixed without jacking up something else. Overall, two thumbs up!
And a question, are there changes planned for the furums? I hope not, I like them just as they are!

 

[Chern Ann]

The forums have already been changed quite a while back to a liquid width, and the black text on white and size are optimized for readability. We'll increase the font size one point on the beta site and see whether that's enough, or whether two points would be better.

 

[RuneBrush]

Looks good on my eeepc (1024 x 600)

pete

 

[alextheartist]

Looks good, i'm not sure I like not seeing people's avatars in the gallery section, make it trickier to easily recognise certain painters,

 

[freakinacage]

agreed, it looks lovely but needs those avatars

 

[Sukigod]

You asked...

Looking good Chern!

The liquid layout option is a very welcome change, I wondered how long that was going to take.

A few small issues I have with the front page is there's no single point of focus upon hitting the main landing page - no order of importance. The Announcement column is the same width as the Slider section to the right of it. Nothing calls to me as a "Look at me first!" way so my eye ends up having to search for something important enough to stop on first - a bit confusing.

In the last iteration, as well as this one, I've always felt the CMoN logo always got lost on the homepage, especially after the logo changed. There's the huge gap (smaller on some screens) that's just filled with an expanse of grey that feels "empty". I've tried in my mind to visualize a solution for this but have come up blank. I see that this particular design for the header bar works well for the interior pages but it seems to fall flat on the homepage.

Switching the 1st and second columns of content might help in giving the page some kind of anchoring element. The first thing your eye hits on the left seems to be a wall of text, followed by some centered pics. Having the slider as the far left anchor would give you a more solid grounding and starting point every time you come to the page. Most image intense sites tend to show an image to the left as an anchor element, then that image leads the eye to the textual content in the center of the page. I know this has been this way for ever

Maybe this will make better sense...

The first image attached is with the columns switched and long view of the page - it looks more balanced. The second attached pic is what I see (on 1600x900 laptop) above the fold. Still much more balanced with the dominant slider image becoming the anchor for the page. I know sometimes the consent for the announcement column is an image but the slider is always an image, this way the balance is always kept.

View attachment 6870
View attachment 6871

Interior Pages:

I agree on the avatars, they're always an easy identifier for me as well. EDIT: I see they're listed in the left column now under the "Last Voted". Maybe these two "widgets?" should be switched - artist info then Last Voted.

Not sure if I'm crazy about the voting bar being down below again, I got kinda spoiled having on the left - maybe just lazy, I don't know. I've always been partial to the blank space around the image being dark too as I think it showcases the models better. Color and contrast usually look better on black backgrounds.


More positives! I do like the autoscaling of the image, it seems to do this pretty seamlessly and without artifacting (well done on the algorithm, whoever wrote it) but it would be nice to let the viewer know somehow that there is a larger image available, similar to the magnifying glass/zoom in use know. Not sure if it's in the pipeline and just not there yet or intentionally left out.



I'm glad to see many of the changes you've put in here and look forward to seeing how this all looks/works when it's all said and done. Thanks for all the hard work you folks do in the background, I know it's not simple/easy work. It's much appreciated and glad you asked out opinions!

Happy Anniversary CMoN!

 

[MightyChad]

I think one of the wasted spaces, right now, is the area for comments. They seemed to be spaced out in such a way that there are very few on the page. It seems like with the space it would be better to see more comments, and less space between them. But that may have something to do with the scaling.

I appreciate all the hard work you folks put into the entire CMoN site. Thanks.

 

[BarstoolProphet]

My personal vote would be 2 points on the forums.
All other comments I might have have been made, already.
Though... with the blank space by the CMON logo... maybe have a banner contest to make something wider and fill that up?
Smeg knows there are enough good artists around here to make it a good one, with open voting and all that...

 

[CrookedEye]

I like it but would agree that the main page lost some focus. Also, I kind of like the individual gallery pages having a black background over the grey on the Beta site. It just seems to give more drama that way.

looking good though otherwise. I tried in on a single monitor and a dual setup stretched across and saw no issues.

Zach
www.crookedeye.net

 

[black dagger]

hi chern
looking good so far from what ive seen. i like the look of the site much better. i agree also that the avatars need to be bigger. my only question is when we upload a image will the maximum file size still be 1mb? (or 10000kb or whatever it is i cant remember of the top of my head) this has always been a issue for me as i cant figure out how to get good quality pics without going over the limit.
thanks for your hard work much appriciated.