Hey all,

The new design has a lot of thumbnails on the main page, and yes it has a lot of ‘white’ plainness. I personally like moving more towards plain, but if it turns out that it needs some more visual scaffolding so be it, we'll impliment something like that… however, the thumbnails were actually the driving force for this. There is no plan to re-impliment text in place of thumbnails.
All of our monitoring dictates that few readers actually visit the main page, and of those that do, few care of anything other than the image that is shown. So while the text lists SEEM to be important to some, in reality they go unused and ignored. The thumbnails are a way to encourage people to look into other comics… hopefully by artwork enticing them… a text link doesn't grab attention so much.

Unfortunately there are still plenty of design tweaks to be done that will continue ongoing. Whether the sidebar will remain from page to page remains to be seen.

The biggest difficulty in taking anybodys criticism right now is it's very polarized, and I end up hearing the same people cheering for the old design that rued it when it was first implimented. Unfortunately that makes it really hard to take seriously.

I do appreciate Nick and Co. who present simple bulletpoint lists of things they like, dislike, and would like to see changed.

However, bear in mind that the new design is the direction we're heading, even if it's not ultimately the end result. We need to feature the thumbnails, not the titles of comics.

Hang in there for now, and try to keep your posts succinct and helpful as possible, because it becomes very hard to keep up, respond, and even impliment anything if it becomes a giant nest of ranting.

The ad placement vs. the profile stuff I dont' think is horrible, but I agree that it's not IDEAL. Ideally the only thing that would show up is profile and never any ads. Right now we're trying to figure out the best way to present ads in a way that can co-exist with other content.

Forums aesthetics are on my agenda to correct.

I need to keep this thread helpful for now, so i'll be pruning out any extensive ranting and lack of helpful feedback.

A plain site for a webcomics community seems like it doesn't go together with we. Also, how will this affect comic pages?

Brock
I am not one of those that's in crazy-hate over the new design, but the thing that REALLY BURNS ME UP is the loss of some of the essential functionality of the site.

Specifically, the chore that it now is to access my favorites is just not something I'm excited about. The accessiblity and ease of function of the favorites list was my number one favorite thing about DD…and it's been ruined.

Shift that puppy up the page, don't make me click on it to drop it down and give me back my same-screen editing function. Please. I'm begging you. I can't imagine visiting the site on a regular basis the way it is now.

And…put me down as another person upset that the top comics are no longer divided into two. As a person who is FAR more interested in strips on the web, mainly seeing full pages in the top ten is discouraging and not very useful.

And where's the news? That should be on the front page, no question about it. Now, it might as well not be there.

Basically, accessibility has been lost.

I know the site designers are gonna get a world of crap thrown at them this week for this, but overall I think the site is headed in the right direction. The ability to see a list of all past featured comics is great. So is the idea of multiple, editable lists on the front page. The popout comic descriptions are also quite nice.

But there are some bugs. There are some real issues here. Some of the essential charm and functionality of DD has been taken away. I hope it can be restored.

Noted. Try filtering you TOP 10 list to view the strips…

TheMidge28
not trying to be a pompous arse, but did you guys run any usabilty test with a sample group before going forward with this?

The admins here got to use it… We pointed out all the same issues and suggestions already :)

The site is probably very slow because it's currently being worked on.

As for the sqishy forums, I agree… One of the things that happened in the design stage was that the sidebar disappeared so the forums too up the entire space. -you HAD to go to the front page for PQs or faves, you had no choice.
That was annoying at first but I quickly got used to it and learned to love it!
It was like the old days when the front page was the main hub of the site again. :)

Hmm….
I'd have to say it looks more like a picture gallery now. Still, i understand that graphics attract more than text.

And although i realize no thought is put into this, but the site now looks really odd with the adblock on. HUGE white empty areas. (Although the user box ends up on top that way, so thats good.)

I don't care what else you do just please please before anything else move those side-ads down.

I'd like to see instead of a white background, a dynamic background, similar to what you have here:



In the background.

Volte6

Brock
I am not one of those that's in crazy-hate over the new design, but the thing that REALLY BURNS ME UP is the loss of some of the essential functionality of the site.

Specifically, the chore that it now is to access my favorites is just not something I'm excited about. The accessiblity and ease of function of the favorites list was my number one favorite thing about DD…and it's been ruined.

Shift that puppy up the page, don't make me click on it to drop it down and give me back my same-screen editing function. Please. I'm begging you. I can't imagine visiting the site on a regular basis the way it is now.

And…put me down as another person upset that the top comics are no longer divided into two. As a person who is FAR more interested in strips on the web, mainly seeing full pages in the top ten is discouraging and not very useful.

And where's the news? That should be on the front page, no question about it. Now, it might as well not be there.

Basically, accessibility has been lost.

I know the site designers are gonna get a world of crap thrown at them this week for this, but overall I think the site is headed in the right direction. The ability to see a list of all past featured comics is great. So is the idea of multiple, editable lists on the front page. The popout comic descriptions are also quite nice.

But there are some bugs. There are some real issues here. Some of the essential charm and functionality of DD has been taken away. I hope it can be restored.

Noted. Try filtering you TOP 10 list to view the strips…

Will do, but I hate to have to choose. While I prefer strips, I don't want to freeze out pages completely.

Thanks for responding in any case. I think once you guys work out some of the kinks, we'll all fall in love all over again.

Ugh… Seeing everything in action. No. It just is NOT user friendly. It takes so much extra effort to do everything! Have to wait for the image-laden pages to load. Can't just read about the features. Nope. Have to hold the pointer over the thumbnail to see that. (And have to let my eyes pick a thumbnail from the wall o' thumbnails, which don't let any comics stand out… Titles were WAY better.) Can't see front page news. I have to search for it and jump through the hoops of multiple steps to see it. (That sort of ruins the point of having news, imo…) To get to my favorites or my controls, I have to scroll down past two big animated ads to my panel (at the bottom of the page?!) and then click a tab to open the thing and THEN click on the link I want. It used to be one step. :-/ I used to have easy access to everything, but now it's all a chore.

Also, the tabs I click don't stay open when I change pages… I don't like that at all. If I could open up my favorites list and leave it open and not condensed, that would be great.

Summary:

~Fewer steps to do what I need please.
~Just making it so we can keep our control panel thing open (favorites list, our comics list, etc.) would really help.
~More balanced image/text ratio on front page would look better. (Maybe titles with thumbnails appearing on the mouse over instead of vice versa?)
~News on the front page or quicker access to it, so it stands out.
~I like the lineup of feature thumbnails. I think it would look better and load faster (and bring them more attention) if they were they only thumbnails to load on the page immediately.

~Less important thing: Color scheme and tiny text. I'm squinting here. :-/



Anyway, I think it's headed in a good direction. Thanks for giving us a chance to look at it and help with trouble-shooting.

CORY
I'd like to see instead of a white background, a dynamic background, similar to what you have here:



In the background.

Agreed, that would actually be pretty cool.

Upon seeing the new layout, I was very very very glad I have my own webspace somewhere else.
I think you should at least have kept the general look of the old layout(the story/strip rows, along with the old favorites/ my comic bar.
Really, I lived with the last major site update(December 06) but that was just an add to graphical quality, and moving favorites bar to the other side, and some sweet new features, but this is just ugly and sad.
Maybe you should have a change layout button, and set this as one of the options, but the old one as the default? that shouldn't be that hard to do, in fact, I'd call it easy =/

Oh also the actual parts that have color don't have any contrast and that's just annoying.

Light blue links on dark blue background. How fun.

So are we not supposed to be able to access our preferences or something? Also, the top bar doesn't render properly in opera at ALL. There's about a 7 pixel gap and the text doesn't line up. How many moderators are actually on this site? You didn't exactly get a large testing sample, especially considering the reactions.

Yes yes yes the account thing got moved up thank you.

Look, I don't want to offend anyone but this is a mess.

It's like the DD equivalent of Windows Vista!

Please bring back the old design…

@Volte6 :

My key takeaways for the new layout are this:

1) I like the icons on the main page, but they get a little confusing to look at. I think putting some verticle lines to visually separate the three sets of verticle columns would be helpful.

2) When filtering on the main page, you can only save your selection. There's no option to just close the box that pops up.

3) It's difficult to figure out how to access my comic information, stats and updating. Because the “My Comics” section off to the right side no longer has the quick links on there, which were very convenient and helpful. Now you have to click onto “My Account” and then click on the comic icon in order to access any information about it, or to update pages. I woudl recommend putting the quick links back into the “My Comics” section, at least for stats and page updates.

4) It would be nice if the news noticed were somehow more visible on the main site, like the announcements that a comic has reached 25, 50, 100, etc pages. I notice a boost in hits whenever my comic reaches a milestone, and it's nice to know that people can see that information on the main page. While it's not necessary to put all of that info on the main page, it would be nice to have a “News Updated on this date” post of some kind, so people know when to look at the news section.

5) Maybe put some borders around items, so they don't appear to be floating around on the screen. (Example: Going into the “Browse Comics” section makes it look like the comic icons are just floating on the screen. At least putting a border around the comic icon section would help this, I think.

6) I would still like to see the trophies get fixed. I have 2 comics in the top 1,000 and 1 of them is consistently in the top 500. It would be nice to receive some recognition for that achievement.

Down at the bottom with that page navigation, the clickable links and the normal text have no difference until highlighted.

I voiced some initial reactios to the front page, but then I started to use it a little more and I'd like to point out some things I like:

The fact that we get to decide what content pops up on the front page is awesome. Finally I can pretend that sprite comics and stick-man comics no longer exist.

I just noticed that my profile stuff moved to the top. Good move!

I like the additional information we now have in the “my favorites” area. Especially how it tells us when a comic last updated.

Main dislikes:
-Sideways scrollbar!

-Extra white room on left in forums.

-How wide the sidebar is.

-MyFavorites comes collapsed!*


*I come to DD to read comics, and if it is collapsed I could miss a random update while browsing.

I don't understand everyone's big deal with the collapsing favorites, I think it's better. :/

Now THAT'S service.

Huzzah! The Account info and Favorites went back up to the top! Kudos to whomever for getting that one done pronto.

Work in progress, people. Work in progress.



Now if we can just get the Favorites to display by default instead of having the click the arrow…

Hawk
I voiced some initial reactios to the front page, but then I started to use it a little more and I'd like to point out some things I like:

The fact that we get to decide what content pops up on the front page is awesome. Finally I can pretend that sprite comics and stick-man comics no longer exist.

I just noticed that my profile stuff moved to the top. Good move!

I like the additional information we now have in the “my favorites” area. Especially how it tells us when a comic last updated.

You have some good points there, but here's the thing… You see those nasty huge non-comic related ads off to the right? Those are bringing in lots of money for Drunk Duck. Though having lots of money for the website to keep it going is good, at the same time it makes everything that much worse. When I see big fat ads sitting under my interface-thingamabobber, it makes me wanna throw up all over some poor small child till their FACE melts into a pile of nasty melty goodness.

This change was made to make some more money, and that doesn't say “Welcome to Drunk Duck” like it use to. It says “Welcome to a nice big Corporate dog raping you!”

Text is to small, ads are to many and to big, and all of this is just so, so hurtful to my eyes.

So I think the main thing people are clamoring for here is:

-Borders, or another way of separating out the clusters of information
- A less plain background; something unique looking, or at least not plain white.

I wonder, would it be possible to allow people to choose DD-New or DD-Classic in the same way we could choose between the horror, manga etc. versions of the site?

Nice ReDesign. Looks good.
MyComics and MyComicsNews is not loading but I figure that's just bugs in the rollout.

Please everyone try and calm down a little bit. Volte's still working on it.

The front page IS quite usable, you'll find that eventually. The lack of news isn't good and we've gone to Volte with various solutions to and and he's said he'll work on it.

Just hang in there, be patient, suggest changes but try not to get too steamed up about what you HATE because you won't be listed to as readily as calmer voices.

I don't really like the new layout…
:\
My screen is too small to fit everything in, and too much pictures are kind of an eyesore, especially for the slower-loading computers…
The white is kind of blinding and makes it look somewhat unfinished.
If you do keep this layout, you wanna consider choosing the other as optional ^^?

Edit: Also, the forums look kind of bad D:
Edit part 2: scratch that, really bad ><

This guy was videotaped while trying to use the new DD site layout…



I know it's an old one, but it's still good and I thought it would help break the tension in this thread with a little exaggerated levity.

I've found darker backgrounds and lighter tables on those darker background have a sleek look to it when it comes to web design. Simple would be great for DD, but with so many things Drunk Duck has, it's impossible to keep it simple. Screw the simple idea and go with user-friendly. I don't care if it's ugly as long as it's usable.

Also, stick at least a #333333 background in there. That'd really make my eyes stop hurting.

Well, if simplicity is what they are going for, then removing the black banner up top and removing the ads and the account info to the side while centering the forum in the middle would be pretty stellar.

The problem with the site right now is that all the colors clash horribly. There's black at the top, blue plus gray to the left, and tan yellow with whatever bright color the ad has. It just doesn't look good on a really bright screen.