The old interface was butt-ugly ...interface fixed, hehe.

[God-Of-Zilla]

I am sorry but I had to give a crit to this new interface that ca is having.
I used to surf around this place a lot way back but since the change I am actually avoiding surfing this forum.
This is a crit that I am giving u guys that made the ca interface, if you wanna ban me because of that, sure, but something needs to be said.

I know u gave some thought to make the forum not busy but it feels like the opposite, I feel the title bar is way to busy and I actually gave a tip on how u could change that way back but nothing was changed with it.
There are way to many sections in the forum, should be easy to compress those a bit.
The only awesome thing in the forum is the icons, but hmm, should a forum be like 1000 cool icons and with a butt-ugly interface instead?

Anyway I am one voice out of thousands so feel free to ignore me but I think there are more people thinking like me but don't have the courage to say something.
ok I hope there won't be any flaming, I rather want a discussion.

thank you
have a nice day
Matthew

[Signature]

Actually the admins are not done restructuring and optimizing the board.
I made some suggestions too, but all the admins are busy people.
And the last time your crits sounded less harsh btw.

There is less room for improvement if you don't want to step on a lot of people's toes.

You probably just take it personally that the color of the menu bar hasn't been changed yet!?

Well if you'd actually give CA a chance you'd find out what forums are interesting for you very fast.
You don't have to be able to keep track of all of them like at Sijun.

If you have some more suggestions (specific ones) ... there is a sticky thread by Fipse.
But things don't change fast here.

[strych9ine]

There are things that I like about the design and things that are working against it in my opinion. The design is graphic intensive makes it look incredibly cool when fully loaded, but unfortuantely that is a moot point because the page never loads for me. The ca.org homepage takes ages to load and I have a cable connection. I don't ever visit that page anymore... who wants to wait minutes for a page to load propoerly?

I do like the color scheme and serif font choices personally, but the background on the forum pages sin't tiled at all and abruptly stops at higher resolutions. Throws me off every time I visit.

All in all I wish the site could be more usable. It's just too much of a hassle to fully explore unfortunately.

[MrFrost]

it should really only take a few minutes, when the images on the main page have been updated, but for me (and im on DSL) i never have to wait long. I personally like the new look, but welcome any changes as well.

[Pontemonti]

This is a crit that I am giving u guys that made the ca interface, if you wanna ban me because of that, sure, but something needs to be said.

No one is going to ban you because of that At least I'm not going to

There are lots of things that can be improved here...both on the main page (mostly stuff people won't really notice, like optimizing code and adding more and better admin functions) and on the forums (I believe most parts can be improved in one way or another...(background) images, fonts, colors, structure...you name it). It's not that I don't know there's stuff to do or don't feel like doing it, I just don't have the time (and I probably won't have until next summer )
And I believe that's where the bottleneck is - we're all too busy. Plus, we don't have any meetings where we decide on what needs to be done and by whom.

The ca.org homepage takes ages to load and I have a cable connection. I don't ever visit that page anymore... who wants to wait minutes for a page to load propoerly?

Have you visited the homepage in the last week or so? I feel there's been a big improvement in speed since we first launched it. The load time is now fully acceptable to me (but can still be improved, of course...it can always be better).

[Red_Rook]

i like the new design, there are some minor things but i can easily ignore them. And the front page is fully loaded in less then 3 seconds for me, i find that perfectly acceptable.

[Pontemonti]

i like the new design, there are some minor things but i can easily ignore them. And the front page is fully loaded in less then 3 seconds for me, i find that perfectly acceptable.

I would guess that this is (mainly?) because you have everything (css files and images...) cached already, so the browser doesn't need to download everything from the server again.

[jetpack42]

Maybe webpages are better on Tatooine?

[AnarchyAo2]

You're Banned!!!!!

[Alex K.]

You know, I'd hate to admit it, but I also started visiting CA much less often because of the new forum layout/colors .

[steve kim]

yea there really is something about the existing colors that just doesn't quite jive. don't get me wrong, i love earth tones... but as it is the forum feels somehow.. moldy... er... hard to explain...

i know all the admins are super busy but it's been a long time since the forum's new colors have been up and the issues like the funky bg image still haven't been addressed. really, it's only a day's work at most...

course, since we're all here for the art and discussion i guess it's not that important. (but then again in terms of professionalism... arrrrrrrr)

cheers,
steve

p.s. i'm a fan of the muddy green color in the bottom portion of the bg image. that color for the main boxes woud looks so nice~~ hehehe

[DragonGX]

My only problem is that on anything running a higher resolution, the background image just stops... Doesn't look good at all. If they could make it seamless and tile it, it would look better..

[Aerythes]

Since we're on the topic of the look of the site, there're some spelling errors on the front page. The Best of Conceptart section has "imaginitive" instead of "imaginative". In Coro's interview, there's "tradiational" instead of "traditional". Small stuffs, I know, but they do reduce the feel of professionalism somewhat.

There're also many double posts in the front page "Best of Conceptart.org" image gallery.

[Erik]

Funny.

I did not see many of the names of the critical posters in this list volunteer to do any of the work on the new site.

Mathew, please if you have a nicer idea for the layout post your interface design and we can look at it. Just whining is not very useful.

Sorry if i come off grumpy but many people put in a lot of their spare time to get it up there and since its a community if you want something to change do something about it and get active.

E.

[God-Of-Zilla]

Erik, Thing is that I have already offered to help out with the layout and I have also posted some pictures with changes, they were obviously ignored eventhough it seems Jason liked the idea with the title-bar that I made.

What I feel is that if you assign to a job like this u better put in some time to it and try to make it look really good and, also, listen to critique and everybodies tips and help on how to improve things.
If all the mod's are busy then they should pass the mic to someone else so that things can be changed faster.

If I would compare the forum layout to a character study or any painting I would say that this forum has some serious anatomy problems.

It seems some guys are getting angry above here and maybe thinks that I am some kind of smart-ass or something but why shouldn't we be able to give critique to a forum design? I mean we give critique everyday to eachother in here with eachothers painting and drawings. Should be the same with the interface of the forum.

Probably this thread will go down as all threads do and with no changes to the interface. So then u ask, why do you post a thread like this?
-"Well I wanted a change before I stop visiting this forum.

ok ok I will post some pics with changes in here later this evening
thanks for listening
feel free to call me names and beat me up after this text here.

have a nice day
Matthew

[God-Of-Zilla]

ok here's a similar picture but a new one I just made that I showed Jason and some guys earlier in some thread.
Fixed the most critical things, the title bar that is making un-balance to the forum interface as it is now, also, taking away those dark dots in the background picture which I feel disturbs a bit.

I will post one more later to see where more changes can be made.



later

[Erik]

Ok nice comeback.

Yes, you can crit of course!, but in a way it is annoying since this is a volunteer-based service and it is faster to offer to do it and keep asking the right people than it is to start threads like this that give the wrong expression. So thats why people react like that. They went out of their way to make it all work for you and crits are mostly time consuming in that matter -- they will create more work ;-)

well, in the end it is Jason e.a. that decide so if they dont respond they are too busy or simple don;t agree.

So, tell Pontemonti you want to make the change and it will all be settled. Just posting the pic wont change it, just go on and do the whole shebang!

Anyway, good that you think about these things

Cheers
Erik

[Jason Manley]

i like both designs...but i prefer the one above which has the suggested changes. if anyone has time to help do the fixes then please contact pontemonti via pm. hope thats ok ponte.

this place wouldnt run without ponte...or erik for that matter...both these guys have been behind the new site since day one. However, it is everyone else who contributes and makes things even better than they are now whom we are just as thankful for.


j

[frosty]

/UNCH PUNCH! Beats up on Matthew, just joking here m8.

Actually I got an email from the admin section a while back and said concept.org has grown and please come and visit and I been here since, lurk mostly, but I really like it here, I think I am overwhelmed at times cos so many members post and so much is going all the time.

[God-Of-Zilla]

thank you for your answers there guys.

ok I will contact Pontemonti and offer my help, I am from Sweden too.

I made one more, I feel it would be good if the top navigation bar stood out a bit more. I guess though I overdid these title bars in this one but some kind of light in them would be nice and wouldn't take up that much mem either, since, a small gradiation can be used as a tile.



have a nice day
Matthew

[Pontemonti]

Well, I guess I can spare an hour or two every now and then to fix a few things
But...to make my job easier, and to "allow" me to do more things, I would prefer to know "exactly" what to do. An image like the one Matthew posted is good, if it contains a few ugly arrows and texts (with html color info) pointing to the areas that should be changed will help tremendously.

The forum background image is still a problem (even with Matthew's fix)...I don't know if anyone can fix it. We will either have to create something which tiles in perfectly with it - and that will be very hard, if not impossible, to attain (if we don't want the tiling background image to be very big... ). If anyone can come up with a good solution, that would be awesome. I guess a good background color could work...at least it would for me

Another thing I personally would like to see are new icons/buttons (new thread, edit, quote, etc...and forum/thread icons...) that can replace these black/white ones, which are a bit too pixelated for my taste (although they are a lot better than the default vbulletin ones).

[God-Of-Zilla]

I have sent u a pm Pontemonti, maybe I can help u out with buttons and with changing the background.
just let me know if u want my help.

Matthew

[Jason Manley]

thank you!!

[Nero's Master]

...Another thing I personally would like to see are new icons/buttons (new thread, edit, quote, etc...and forum/thread icons...) that can replace these black/white ones, which are a bit too pixelated for my taste (although they are a lot better than the default vbulletin ones).

Hey, liking the ideas you guys are throwing around. Want to kinda help if I can. I love this place and don't want to see it suffer because people don't like the design or anything. I would like to say that I loved the old look of the forums (before it crashed or whatever happened), you know, the old green-gray one. Anyways, this newer version is much easier to navigate, me thinks. My thought anyways.

I threw this together in photoshop really fast. Not spectacular, but is this kinda what you had in mind when you were refering to the button crisi?



I used Impact, just 'cause I'm partial to sans-serif myself, but anything'll do. I don't know html or anything, but if I can design the buttons or something for you, I would be more than willing

[Jason Manley]

i would love to see examples of what finished buttons could look like....

yeah that text is clear and not pixelated....i dont have a preference on the fonts as long as all the fonts on the site go together.


thanks much

j

[Pontemonti]

I don't know html or anything, but if I can design the buttons or something for you, I would be more than willing

You're more than welcome to give it a shot Matthew will probably also try. If/when you have a few examples to show, please post a new thread here in the lounge. Then we can keep the button discussion in there, and hopefully make more people notice it (and help out - by either telling us which button they like the most, or make their own contribution)

[Nero's Master]

Sounds good. I'll get on that later today.

[God-Of-Zilla]

yes I am also throwing around some ideas with buttons but buttons are really hard to do I believe.
btw what font is used now in the forum?

Nero's Master, I really like your idea, yea u can start the thread and I will post some of my ideas in there later.

Also, I have some ideas for the top title-bar, still think it would be good to separate it from the other title-bars.

keep it up guys
Matthew

[BlueMech]

I love the new layout. It's calm and nuetral. The only thing that bothers me is the psuedo-sarcastic text on the photography forum. I think it's funny, but it seems...ugh whats that word?!?!!? ...ugh

[God-Of-Zilla]

Nero's Master, I will start the thread cause I have some time now and after I have to run and draw some so I couldn't post later.

look for the button thread and post the stuff in there.