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Hi All,
I’ve just installed the first phase of the new look for Restrained Elegance. I’ve revamped the front pages, the preview tour and the members’ home page. What do you think? Do you like it?
Assuming all goes well I will carry on with the facelift and change the rest of the members’ area pages as soon as I can.
I have changed the underlying way the site is laid out so it should be a lot easier to make changes in the future- if there are specific or general things which you hate about the new layout or which are broken, please let me know and I will fix them if I can.I’m also planning to add better indexing facilities but the new indexes aren’t done yet so bear with me while I get going on phase two.
Cheers, Hywel.
My thought on the layout updates is that the navigation controls are shrinking and fading into the background. This is not a good thing. Clarity and ease-of-use really needs to be given a higher priority. Like the top priority.
In particular: The links to the various parts of the site in the box at the top of the entrance and members pages need to be bigger & bolder. They also need to be better separated. E.g. at the top of the members page it’s not clear if
Latest
Updates
Forumare two links or three.
Or you could go for a vertical list of links, instead of a horizontal box. Yes, doing it that way is old and boring. But it’s old and boring because it gets used so much, and it gets used so much because it works.
Hi,
Are you seeing
Latest
Updates
Forumlike that? Or
Latest Updates
Forumlike that?
I am seeing the latter on the browser combinations I have, which I thought was fairly clear but if you are seeing the top version I can see that would be unclear. It may depend on things like browser text size setting- I’ve tried to be a good boy and play by the rules of CSS to allow people’s preferences for that sort of thing to over-ride my design, but the corollary is that people may be seeing something quite different from what I do. I can force some more tight constraints on some sizes eg for navbars whilst allowing text size preferences to come through for the body text, I think… may try that next.
I can certainly look at making the navigation bar text bolder but I didn’t want the navbar to compete too much with the actual page content- after all most of the navigation is done on the pages (going from index into galleries etc.)
Out of interest, what browser are you using? Internet Explorer 6 seems to display it the same in all text sizes for me whereas Firefox changes text size and starts to screw up the layout above a certain text size.
Thanks for the feedback- anyone else got any thoughts?
Cheers, Hywel.
Edited By Hywel on 1142260115
Arg, even weirder. Sometimes Firefox messes up the layout of the nav bar box at the top. It forces the last element down a row.
If you hit refresh it displays it correctly. ARGH!!:splat :splat :splat :splat :splat :splat :splat :splat :splat :splat :splat
No idea what to do about that. First time I’ve seen IE stick closer to the standard than Firefox. Wonder if there is a more recent version of Firefox that doesn’t have the bug…
Hywel.
I’m seeing the first version (3 lines)
My browser is Mozilla
Taking another look…
Changing my minimum font size makes the links display properly, but IMO the default font size you have for those links is too dang small (“flyspeck”)
One thing that might help is to cut down the number of words: “Updates” instead of “Latest Updates”, “Models” instead of “Model Index” etc.
Right. It is definitely a case of Mozilla not actually being standards-compliant for once then. I specified the font size in absolute units so it shouldn’t resize it- it is doing so to be helpful and ends up breaking the layout.
The problem here is one of usability for people with not-quite 20:20 eyesight and decent screen resolution vs. screen area taken over for people with low-res screens. On 800×600 pixels that navbar is HUGE, takes up a lot of screen real estate. I picked a sorta small but clear text size on my screen at the usual resolutions of 800×600, 1024×768 and 1280×1024.
I’ll have to have another think about how to do it. I can certainly put the links in bold and reduce the character count.
Hmmm. Serves me right for trying to be clever, maybe I should just admit defeat and use graphics like everyone else… at least that way the browser can’t change everything 🙁 🙁 🙁Hywel.
Hi all.
All looks pretty sexy in Netscape 7.2.
I started to agree with Lurker regarding the controls at the top not being prominent enough but I’ve changed my mind as I type. This isn’t “teletubbies go internet”, the subtlety of the controls adds a certain amount of class.. at least in my humble opinion.
It’s no all :nana though, the content on the left half of the screen looks great and the model shot on the right is always a good thing but whats bugging me a bit is the 60mm or so gap between the two (19″ monitor). It’s a bit of a wierd composition having this dead space in the centre of the screen, for what its worth I’d like to see this gap halved by increasing the size of the content on the left. Hope you don’t think I’m being too critical, apart from the gap it looks great to me. “Special Features” looks interesting, is that for RE Nights etc? or do you have something else up your sleeve..
Changing the subject slightly, Mondays set with Kate is a stunner, please tell me you shot video as well…
Cheers
M
Hi,
Sorry, absolutely can’t do anything about the spacing of the composition. It is a compromise between showing something that looks good at different resolutions, and there’s simply no way around it that I am aware of 🙁 🙁 🙁
Most sites go for the “skinny strip of content in the middle of the page, with a boring background”. I decided to be racy and different with the content at the left and the pic at the right. I have to make sure the content isn’t too wide for people at 800×600 pixels, which is why it is only 740 pixels wide (needs space for scroll bars, etc on an 800×600 screen). It looks reasonable if a little squashed at 1024×768 and looks good is a little too spaced out at 1280×1024. If you’re running at 1600×1200 it probably looks utterly lost but there’s only so much one can do with such widely varying systems being used. The only alternative is a much plainer design which would allow fluid widths to these page elements- but that’s more or less what we had before and that was criticised by several reviewers for looking dated and amateur. Bit of a no-win situation.
Didn’t shoot any video with Kate I’m afraid, that was her first bondage shoot and she wanted to stick to stills. I am hopeful that she will be happy to for the next shoot- Jasmine was hoping to work with her so we’ll see what we can do.
Cheers, Hywel.
To illustrate the dilemma, I did some quick screen shots of various settings to show how the site looks. (I resized each one to 640 pixels wide so everyone should be able to see the screengrabs in this post).
How I see the site members’ page- 1280 x 1024 using Internet Explorer. A bit windy down the right hand side, but more or less acceptable. Navigation is a bit small.
The largest single group of people are probably seeing the site like this- 1024 x 768 using Internet Explorer. Just missing the bottom of Jasmine’s toes (damn!) but at least you see that when scrolling dowen. Navigation is basically OK. Composition just a teeny bit squashed I guess.
People with older systems probably see the site like this- 800×600 pixels in IE. No sign of Jasmine (you can just see the chain peeking out from a gap in the layout which I haven’t quite sussed out how to fix yet) but at least you can see the navigation and the top part of the updates without it being too painful and without having to scroll horizontally. I usually find scrolling vertically is OK but scrolling horizontally as well is unacceptable.
How the site looks at 1280 x 1024 with Firefox at normal text size- same as IE, really.
Uh-oh. Bump up the font size in Firefox. The content fonts scale up, which is what you want so you can read the text more easily. But… contrary to what the CSS specification says should happen for text specified in absolute height, it scales up the navbar too. This was three font sizes up I think, and the navbar is looking well confused.
Arg! Go up five font sizes and everything is overlapping. BAD Firefox! Naughty Firefox!!!
In contrast, Internet Explorer at “largest” text size displays the content in larger font, as it should, but keeps the navbar text at the size it is supposed to be. For once, IE obeys the rules more closely than Firefox.
It is quite difficult to design web-pages when the same page can display in such radically different ways with different screen settings- and all of this was on ONE PC, let alone what happens when people are using browser versions that are five years old… I haven’t managed to try it on Safari yet either so no idea how most Mac members see it!
Cheers, Hywel.
Hi Hywel
I’ve got a solution to the gap in the middle of my screen, if I print out a few images of the models then I can just tape one in the gap as necessary! heheh
Seriously though, It’s obviously a good thing you take such care in what you do, you said before its a labour of love and I’m sure that comes through but in terms of the html/graphics layout etc, its a bit like asking my opinion of soft furnishings. I don’t really have one. I’d quite like such an opinion, it’s just not really happening though. I’d be willing to bet that I can allign myself with 99.9% of the silent majority of members in saying that we log onto this site for the remarkable content, anyone who criticises the layout is simply missing the damn point and should be ignored..
I knew I was skating on the thinnest of ice in my previous post when I queried the compositional eye of an experienced photographer, there was always going to be a good reason. I’m not a big fan of the space in the middle of my screen but seriously, it makes very little difference to me, I’d ftp in if necessary, I’m sure with the exception of the odd muppet most members feel the same right? (somebody back me up here..). Now mess with the content and you’d have a mutiny on yer hands :laugh:
Don’t work too hard.
M
P.S. .. any good with soft furnishings??
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