New TLS Front Page

[Flintlock]

Light sites are definitely the way forward. Something for the future, though - one step at a time

 

[Lex]

Really though? There's something quite unique about the TLS style and colour, I love the banner. I get that the darkness can be off-putting but since every site is light these days it kind of feels like to stay original maybe we should also stay dark and keep the current theme.

Not to mention, it fits in really well with FF7. The darkness of the design doesn't bother me at all. It's one of the things that attracted me to it in the first place.

 

[AvecAloes]

^agreed. One day a while ago, I somehow changed the format of how my browser viewed the site. Went into simple mode or something. But everything was bright and I hated it.

 

[Cthulhu]

There's a dropdown at the bottom of the page that allows you to change the style. Go on. Touch it.

 

[Kain Strife]

Nice Filters. I like Blue. lol.

 

[Cthulhu]

Right, fucked around with the menu a bit for colors and style, looks alright to me. I need two things:

* Feedback on the drop shadow - good, bad, color, blur, size, position, etc.
* The name of the font to use in the headers,

 

[Fangu]

I think Flint intended the top menu "top level" links (Content, About etc) to be images. They would have to be anyway, that font you see here is not a standard.

 

[Cthulhu]

I heard / read in the IRC that it was Trajan Pro, so in theory, with browsers that support custom fonts, and as long as the font is freely usable, we could keep it as it is.

Ideally, the less images, the better .

 

[Shademp]

* Feedback on the drop shadow - good, bad, color, blur, size, position, etc.

The glowing dropdown menus look neat.

At present when a menu option is highlighted, it looks like

Spoiler: this

but I think I'd prefer it to look like

Spoiler: this

. Notice how the blue/turqoise no longer reaches the "dotted border".

 

[Cthulhu]

Ah right. I think I can fixxed that.

 

[Flintlock]

The font is indeed Trajan Pro, but I don't think it's freely available. I know that text is preferable to images, but sometimes a compromise is required.

I'm not a fan of the blur around the drop-down menus, myself. Part of the problem is at the corners - it's essentially a round blur for a rectangle. But the colour is a bigger issue, I think. Drop shadows should look like shadows, i.e. dark, in my opinion.

Other small feedback:

I think the font colour of Content, About, Community and Highlight when they are moused over should stand out more from the turquoise.

The actual menu boxes (VII Compendium, Fan Works, Non-VII Translations etc) seem to change size when they are moused over. The rest of the content on the page also moves down a fractional amount. I'm sure neither of those are the intended behaviour.

The menu colour looks good as it is. I had used a green colour in my draft but I think I actually prefer the dark grey. I also think it looks fine without the materia orbs, which should probably only be used in the content itself, for lists of links or things which are happening right now.

And some general, non-designy questions:

Do we want the "about" menu to be second from the left? I think it would be better last.

Are we going to have anything else besides "News & Updates" in the Highlight menu?

 

[Shademp]

Could somebody rewrite "Non-FFVII Translations" to "Book Translations"?

Do we want the "about" menu to be second from the left? I think it would be better last.

I think I'm indifferent to whether we keep it on the second from the left or move it last. I feel it works either way.

Are we going to have anything else besides "News & Updates" in the Highlight menu?

My idea was always to have a list with the following items under Highlights :
- Timeline of the Compilation
- Guide to FFVII Canon
- End of the LTD
- History of Deepground Revealed
- The Unused Text Series
- Case of Tifa Audiobook
- ACC Commentary

See also Highlights page made by Prince Lex

I suppose if we decide to include News & Updates in the dropdown menu it will have to be included in the Highlights page too.

To remind anyone who might have forgotten, but we decided to have all the categories in the dropdown menus clickable (even the four big headers Content, About etc) and give them their own pages because this was the easiest solution to make the site easily viewable on cell phones.

 

[Fangu]

But the colour is a bigger issue, I think. Drop shadows should look like shadows, i.e. dark, in my opinion.

But the effect you see there is as if someone is holding a light behind an object - like an eclipse. I think it's sorta neat.

But I'm down for anything.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I follow this thread because I admire what you guys are doing, but most of the time the posts are like a foreign language to me.

FWIW, the underlining on the Highlights page looks a bit heavy to me. I love the turquoise.

 

[Lex]

Those are the preset colour of links though, and can't be changed. Well, they can, but that would involve changing the site standard colour of links which is a bad idea.

However, links are turquoise on the new site so they'll look far different there . Also links are automatically underlined on this site version.

EDIT: That's a lie, I don't know why I said that *is tired*

It'll look different when it's made visible in the new site design is what I mean lol. In the current (old) site design, they're forced into that colour.

 

[Cthulhu]

Yeah, drop shadows are a bit like marquees; should be used in moderation, . That's why I'd really like for us to have someone with a designer's eye take a critical look at it and fix things up.

As for the menu itself, I guess we can do images instead of text. I can be anal about it, but I guess in the end it won't make too much of a difference as long as they're labeled correctly. Besides, we can have a doormat at the bottom of the page (like a sitemap) with valid links, for proper search engine indexing and whatnot. Custom font support for browsers is iffy at best, last time I checked.

Also, Lex is wrong, you can change the appearance of any link anywhere, .

 

[Shademp]

The preview site seems to have reset to basic/zero. =/

 

[Lex]

Also, Lex is wrong, you can change the appearance of any link anywhere, .

Forgot, I was replying to this when the site went down. Yeah you can change size and font while writing an article/page or whatever, but you can't specify colour.

What I meant before is that it'll look different on the new site, because the links are a different colour. If it then looks bad/unusual, I'll definitely change it .

 

[Fangu]

The preview site seems to have reset to basic/zero. =/

It's probably just a redirection thing.

Yop fix?

 

[Cthulhu]

Yeah yeah . Fixxing. fhtagn is pointing to the current site. I'll replace the regular index file on fhtagn too so it should be back to normal again. Overzealous fixxing of DNS this afternoon, I was excited,

 

[Cthulhu]

I did stuff: http://fhtagn.thelifestream.net/

I'll need the images as indicated in the other thread to do go with the rest of the stuff. We'll also need to start thinking about:

* What to chuck in the menus (how navigation should work)
* What to put in the footer or 'doormat' - although Flint's design is nice and clean, no tl;dr clutter of links down there. We could keep it as a backup plan too, if the menus themselves will link to the right pages.
* Fill the article highlights
* Figure out relative dates for forum poasts
* Materia indicators for lists
* RSS button / link
* Maybe something cutesy with the search

I've chucked the stuff onto my github: https://github.com/fwielstra/TLS-2012. For backup purposes and version control. Note to self: don't upload files with passwords, .

 

[Pixel]

I like the simplicity of that. It could do with some little bits of the lifestreamy colours here and there to make the design pop. Like the little bits of gradiant at the ends of the title bars like in the mockup that was posted awhile ago

Also I was thinking. We could have a blog view option like kotaku does

 

[Cthulhu]

That would be possible (an alternative 'main page' view thing), yes; where can I find that option? Or is that the sidebar with a list of recent articles?

edit: nvm, found it

 

[Cthulhu]

hrmyes. I'm definitely going to need someone with image skillz to get me the navigation images, regular and highlighted versions. Ideally, they're all contained in a single sprite image file.

 

[Flintlock]

Here are a few bits and pieces to keep you busy. I'll do the navigation images later. Although, the more I think about it, the more I think pure text might be the way forward after all. I'm just mindful of futureproofing it; text would be much easier to edit.