LAYOUT SUGGESTION BOX

*This topic is in regards to the LAYOUT, not the THEME.*

I personally feel that this most recent "hb" skin has a pretty easy-to-understand flow to the layout. But then again, I've been here forever, and don't really use a lot of the features like Unread Posts.

I think that's the problem with any of us designing this thing: we've seen it too much and don't know what YOU guys really need.

If you have any concrete suggestions, please post them here.

Please DO NOT say "This layout sucks. Change it." without a suggestion!

Consider:

- What sucks?

- Why does it suck?

- How does it suck?

- What would make it less sucky?

- Any examples of something similar on another site, that sucks less?

- Do you have any mockup ideas that will lessen the suckitude?


We appreciate your constructive criticism. It's your forum, too.

I do feel that the PM/User Panel should be a bit more visible. I've often overlooked new PMs. Perhaps just a slightly larger font, and/or some icons, would be a huge help.

Some of the forum features are difficult to discern. A new member would likely have no idea what the "modding", "*chan", etc. links would be referring to ... And, usually, if a person does not know what a small feature is, they will not click on it to find out.

In that case, it would be helpful to have some kind of alt tag or tooltip to pop up somewhere on rollover, giving a description, such as the tooltips that you see above the message box in the Post Reply page.

(so, for instance, when you roll over "pastebin", a small blurb of text would appear beneath it, saying "Use the pastebin to store portions of text on our server, that you/others can download, link to, and use whenever".)

Lastly, though it's rather difficult when considering this particular skin, it would probably be really helpful to incorporate nice-looking [themed] icons onto various links.

So "Home" would have a tiny little house next to it. "Donate" would have a little "$" sign. On the index, "Feedback" would have a little talk-bubble. "Pixel Art" would be shown as a few little squares (pixels).

People associate pictures with ideas more easily than text. It may make things a little easier to navigate?

I already sent it to Brewmeister but perhaps I can repeat it? I'm not sure if this belongs to the lay-out or to the pages but what I really ehm...damn..I can't find it in a translator xD
It is not that I want it but it is something I think it is needed if I said it correct before I using the wrong language again xD
It is hard to find subjects because the index page is not easy to read. (I mean that as my opinion but I wasn't sure how to say it otherwise.)
A lot of text, I hope I'm much clearer now.

P.S.
For the people from that topic: no arguments needed anymore, I already talked with Brew and explained my problem with my broken English language. If something isn't clear just say it. Translators aren't also the best thing to use actually.. xD
(S)excuses people. I will try what I can the next time to explain better. xD

EXTREME NITPICKING FOLLOWS:





The organization for the various utilities is a bit messy. For instance, is there a fundamental difference between the links in the gray bar and the links directly below the username? It seems as if pages were haphazardly thrown at one or the other.

Why should "filehost" and "Resources" be so far away from each other? Moreover, are they different enough that they need to be separate pages? I understand the "downloads" links is for game engine downloads, but I don't think anyone would figure that out by looking at it; I don't think it gets much use because of this.

Several of the top links are broken or outdated:

• The wiki fails at its primary purpose: to be informative to new members. (for instance, look at the page for hbgames.org, yo?) Until it gets a lot more activity, we might want to take it off the top bar; I worry that it might actually turn off new people to the site rather than inform them.
  
• The forum FAQ seems a bit inflammatory. :x It would be okay behavior for the forum and all, but when you consider the audience that would actually be reading that stuff, it seems like it should be a bit more formal or at least more friendly.
  
• The information on the Donate page is a bit outdated.
  
• *chan is dead, but the link's still there.
  
• There's a duplicate link for irc in the blue bar.
  
• All of the items in utilities are already linked to in the blue or gray bar.

The "My Posts" link only shows a list of the last topics you posted in; there should be a direct link to your post (or better yet, just a list of your posts, like you can view from the profile of other members). If you wanted to find your posts through that list you might have to hunt through pretty long topics (e.g. PWOYM).

done.