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Time For Feedback On A New Phoronix Design

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  • #41
    Two columns nowadays is ugly - I don't pretend to be selfish but, I really prefer my mockup http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...n-for-the-site

    @

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    • #42
      As a long time reader, I'll be honest, both the current and the new design are functional, but far from winning a beauty contest

      Michael, have you considered using Bootstrap (http://getbootstrap.com)? It seems you enjoy working with minimal raw HTML layouts and know the basic ins and outs of CSS -- Bootstrap is perfect for that. Within the first hour you'll have included the Bootstrap js and css and gotten the basic styling for free and begin to see what the fuss is about. By the second hour you'll feel like the worlds best designer even though all you've done is leveraged the small yet amazing collection of styles and components. By hour four you'll be tweeting about how Phoronix has a responsive layout for desktop/mobile with practically no fuss. Answering why Bootstrap github repo has some ~64,000 stars and ~23,000 forks will be easy.
      Last edited by leif81; 09 February 2014, 08:21 PM.

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      • #43
        Updated screenshots @ http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTU5ODE
        Michael Larabel
        https://www.michaellarabel.com/

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        • #44
          Originally posted by Michael View Post
          I think that the suggestion of something like bootstrap is great.

          A major pain in the arse on mobile navigation is currently the advertisements within the body, with text wrapping around them.
          Disable that wrapping. put a centered advertisement. I explain you why: in android after a pinch to zoom , you can double tap on the text and it adapts it margins to the new zoomed area. With those floating ads, it doesn't happen.

          thanxs

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          • #45
            I'm kinda used to the green, so the only feedback I'll give you about color changes is: "meh, I'll get used to it." Others have already mentioned that the logo and the green are part of your "branding", and cautioned against changing it.

            Though of all the changes the front-page could use, just twiddling with a css wouldn't be my priority. It seems optimized for search engines, slapping as many links and keywords as possible in there. It has never been optimized for humans. And - though I'm not a SEO expert - I don't think many of these techniques work as well as you hope.

            So what'd help humans? Visual hints that help them figure out what they're interested in. Anything that breaks up the wall of text.

            For one, you're already tagging articles into categories. Give these categories a visual identification - a color or a small logo - so readers can quickly identify the interesting topics.

            Recent Discussions? Give us some context there. Group by forums, or prefix them with an acronym (i.e. [fglrx], [mesa] etc).

            I don't like that the grey line with time, category and comments is between headline and preview. Try putting it below the preview, so that a headline and its preview are visually closer together.

            The date separators ("Today", "8th Februay" etc) are pretty well hidden, too. A reader needs to quickly find the spot where he last left off, so I'd suggest making them more prominent. At least left-aligned, maybe full-width divs with a slight background color. Helps navigation and breaks up the wall.


            You could also consider making your own articles more priminent. Right now they're just a red headline (that's easy to mistake for a :visited style), and they're quickly scrolled down by the news snippets. The "Recent Phoronix Articles" is good for search engines, but not for humans, and way too far below to get any human attention, anyway.

            One idea would be a two-column layout, news snippets on one side, phoronix articles on the other. You could tweak the columns individually, for example giving articles larger preview texts or something. Of course that's a pretty radical change, and you may need to make room by removing other things.

            Or you could highlight your last three articles in content boxes above the news, e.g.
            Code:
            _____________  _____________  _____________
            | article 1 |  | article 2 |  | article 3 |
            |__preview__|  |__preview__|  |__preview__|
            
            Today:
            News-Item 1
            preview
            
            News-Item 2
            preview
            or.. well, you have your own brain to storm, just experiment a little
            Last edited by rohcQaH; 09 February 2014, 09:04 PM.

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            • #46
              I like alazar's mockup for its design principles and scathing critique of Phoronix article quality

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              • #47
                Originally posted by Michael View Post
                Much, much better. Good enough for me. Bootstrap etc. are nice, but that can wait for the 2015 refresh.

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                • #48
                  maybe I am blind it looks to me to be nearly the same except brighter (so worse) colors.

                  So bad idea keep the dar colors make it more dark colored if you want to cahnge something, at best make the background and the fonts black

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                  • #49
                    Originally posted by LLStarks View Post
                    I like alazar's mockup for its design principles and scathing critique of Phoronix article quality
                    That was never my intention! The language barrier played a dirty trick on me.

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                    • #50
                      Both Alazar's and the latest design from Michael seem good.

                      I would personally like a inverted theme for later-in-the-day reading. I ended up going with Crunchbang as my first linux OS for that very reason. But whatever it's going to be I'd want to know about the forum theme. Right now, as I'm typing, I see an entirely different theme. The transition was a little weird when I first came on here.

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