Charas-Project

Off-Topic => All of all! => Topic started by: Osmose on October 07, 2007, 12:35:38 PM

Title: Help me make a new Charas design
Post by: Osmose on October 07, 2007, 12:35:38 PM: I've been staring at Fireworks for about a day now trying to make up a nifty new design to test out on the new server for Charas and I'm still stumped.

Any of you kids want to take a stab at it?
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Post by: Ben on October 07, 2007, 01:52:20 PM: what do you mean 'design'?

ill help if i can
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Post by: Osmose on October 07, 2007, 02:24:36 PM: Just a design, like how it looks, layout, etc. A website design.

I mean a whole site design in general, not just "For the main page" or "For the forums". In theory the forums should look similar to the main website.

I'm hoping for something a little more than just replacing the blue box headers with a little gradient image, though. (So Lucas, a little more than that).

Like how GameFAQs has the same "style" in every area of it's site.
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Post by: Grandy on October 07, 2007, 03:06:31 PM: Masterpiece!
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Post by: Linkforce on October 07, 2007, 05:07:01 PM: Grandy has the best design IMO. xD
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Post by: Moosetroop11 on October 07, 2007, 05:11:59 PM: ...SS has been down for months! Is that an old screen or has White actually bothered fixing it???

Anyway, erm, designs. Well. Nothing orange, please. And nothing grey. But you were planning to have optional colours anyway, right?
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Post by: Ben on October 07, 2007, 05:16:35 PM: i will try my hand at a mspaint mockup, as my fireworks are on another computer
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Post by: Grandy on October 07, 2007, 05:16:54 PM: That's a recent screenshot, just the upper part of the forum.
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Post by: Dragoon de Sol on October 07, 2007, 05:29:57 PM: Teh 1337, Grandy! :jumpin:
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Post by: Ben on October 07, 2007, 06:38:38 PM: I made a quick unit

Its ghetto. I dont have my tablet or cool stuffs at my disposal right now.

I tired to use the same colours, byut throw in some white to make it less dark. And some Bigger buttons and a simblified navigation unit.

I could also do a mock up of how it would look in various pages like CR and stuff. it was just thrown together. It could be made with gradients and polished off to look sweet.

generally all of the navigation would be done through those big blobs of blue button up top. Table headers could have graphic Banners or buttons to keep with the whole theme.

again, it looks assy right now, but i just wanted to show an idea of what i saw in my brainz.
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Post by: Rowan on October 07, 2007, 10:05:34 PM: I could try devising one..
I haven't opened photoshop in awhile though so it could take awhile.
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Post by: lilsniffs3 on October 07, 2007, 10:39:13 PM: Not much but
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Post by: lilsniffs3 on October 07, 2007, 10:45:52 PM: And the change skin does:
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Post by: Osmose on October 07, 2007, 11:32:34 PM: Quote
Originally posted by gemini
I made a quick unit

Its ghetto. I dont have my tablet or cool stuffs at my disposal right now.

I tired to use the same colours, byut throw in some white to make it less dark. And some Bigger buttons and a simblified navigation unit.

I could also do a mock up of how it would look in various pages like CR and stuff. it was just thrown together. It could be made with gradients and polished off to look sweet.

generally all of the navigation would be done through those big blobs of blue button up top. Table headers could have graphic Banners or buttons to keep with the whole theme.

again, it looks assy right now, but i just wanted to show an idea of what i saw in my brainz.

I kind've like your approach of integrating the forums with the main site a bit more, but overall your design is more confusing than anything else.

The main idea behind web design is to make the most important information obvious and easily recognizable. The large amount of buttons on your design serves to confused rather than to direct. A good website points the user to where they want to go.

Take, for example, the new header on the new server. One of the biggest changes besides the new graphics themselves is that the generators are now a primary feature - we are a site based on the generators, they should be prominently displayed on at least the front page.

I like that people are putting forth ideas though, and I am finding some good ones in the ideas given so far. KEEP THEM COMING PLZ
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Post by: aboutasoandthis on October 07, 2007, 11:49:41 PM: I think that the overall design and color scheme should be the same, but that it should include more gradients, blurs, and metallic effects.

I really like the look of this site. I'm using it as a reference for my CMS. I might be able to make a site design tomorrow.
http://www.ff-xiii.net/index.php?page=article&article=172

To integrate the forums more, how about having two separate "Last Topics Posted" sections? One would be for games alone and have maybe 5. The other would be for everything else and have 10 as usual.
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Post by: Ben on October 07, 2007, 11:51:12 PM: i see your point.

Perhaps If I simplify things. In my mind it was much more basic...but as i tried to cram all the things on the main page in, it cluttered.

I just really liked the whole top navigation buttons being distinct. I may try again dude. thx for the input.
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Post by: Nightsrealm on October 08, 2007, 02:38:58 AM: Heres an example of how i think it should be.

Lots of shades xD
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Post by: WarxePB on October 08, 2007, 03:27:19 AM: I've just cobbled up some screens in Paint, so they don't look spectacular. But here's how I think C3 should look.

Portal:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v221/odinthegreat1/portal.png

The portal is directly linked to http://charas-project.net, so it's the first screen you see. Each button there leads you to a part of the site, and each section has a "Home" link that brings you back to this page. It's basically a quick navigation tool. The button order doesn't matter.

News and Updates:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v221/odinthegreat1/mainpage.png
Basically the Main Page now. From here, you can take a look at the newest content from each section of the site without having to go through each section.

Complete Resources:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v221/odinthegreat1/cr.png
The revamped CR. The toolbar in the middle has several options:
-View - Changes what or how you view the CR. Show Type changes the type of resource being displayed, List By includes several options to list the resources by (I'm thinking Alpha, Newest First, Oldest First, Highest-Ranked and Lowest-Ranked), and At a Time changes the number of resources being displayed.
To display the changes, the Go button has to be hit, allowing you to make multiple changes without having to reload every time.
-Search - Find specific resources. Name searches the resource's title, Member searches by username (instead of a drop-down list, the name is entered manually), Type searches certain categories, Keywords searches by keywords, and Ranking searches by ranking. Several options can be selected at once to narrow down the search, and again, the Go button executes it.
Submit is a separate page with a submission form similar to the one we have now. Report is similar, but instead of an upload field, you would have to put the link of the resource in.
The resources themselves are unaltered, but Keywords are added, and you can vote for resources if you're logged in. Pretty basic.

That's all the screens I have for now (more coming soon). Games would basically be a cross between N&U and the CR, and the Generators and Wiki would be unaltered. Forum would lead to the forum, which is whatever we decide to go with (PUB or PHPBB or whatever), and Your Profile would display uploaded resources, games, and wiki contributions, as well as your forum profile.
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Post by: Osmose on October 08, 2007, 03:38:55 AM: Warxe brings up another point: Alex has decreed and I intend to follow his decree that everything on the Charas website be custom made and made for free for the website, AKA We're sticking with the PUB.

The wiki does not qualify due to it being hosted by someone else. We just link to it because a bunch of people liked it (At one point at least).
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Post by: WarxePB on October 08, 2007, 04:35:15 AM: Regardless, Moose, what do you think of my layout so far? Does it seem feasible to do?
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Post by: Osmose on October 08, 2007, 01:56:20 PM: The whole portal idea doesn't really work. It adds another step in the process for no reason. Everything it's trying to do could be accomplished by a good navigation bar included in the site-wide header.

News and Updates, as you said, is no real change.

I kind've like how you laid out the CR (It's a lot more easy on the eyes in layout than what I lumped together for the revamp). I may take some ideas from that.
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Post by: Moosetroop11 on October 08, 2007, 03:50:30 PM: You could have a box showing the week's most poular CR resource. That'd be cool :p
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Post by: Moosetroop11 on October 08, 2007, 10:06:44 PM: I'm not a big fan of gradients, to be honest.

Especially if they're done like in Nightsrealm's example. No offense.
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Post by: Osmose on October 08, 2007, 10:18:32 PM: Gradients gradients gradients. They are not the magic cure-all to design.

"I positively see the trend on using vertical gradients to indicate that the page goes further down, and changes into a solid color" - First comment on this blog entry (http://fadtastic.net/2007/03/27/are-gradients-great-2/).

I like that idea a whole lot, but there's got to be more to web design than simply gradients.

One thing that I noticed is that Charas seems empty of content simply because it is all contained in the center. A lot of websites stretch to the width of the page even though they may still be optimized for an 800x600 display. Covering the edges makes it seem more filling, more visually pleasing.

Here's a question for all of you: How would you utilize the basis of stretching to fill the entire page? What kind of choices would you make given this limitation?
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Post by: Ben on October 09, 2007, 01:40:10 AM: uhhh.... various rpg related images.
duh.
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Post by: SaiKar on October 09, 2007, 05:09:28 AM: Don't bother trying to help Moose on graphic-related stuff. He'll tell you to change this and to change that and never be happy.

*terrible, terrible flashbacks to that battle character set...*
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Post by: Osmose on October 09, 2007, 12:55:13 PM: Wah wah, it was all 10 second edits that, though at the time I couldn't do, I cold now do easily. :P
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Post by: Shady Ultima on October 09, 2007, 03:48:53 PM: Quote
Originally posted by Moosetroop11
You could have a box showing the week's most poular CR resource. That'd be cool :p

Well, an interesting Idea I think would be a rating system.

When a resource gets uploaded, it can be rated 1 - 5. Then you can see the highest ranked CRs.

I like your idea MT, and I think there should be a most popular over all. One that shows the resources that are downloaded the most.

Also, there should be an option to only show 2k/3 or XP resources, for the people that don't have one or the other.
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Post by: Osmose on October 09, 2007, 04:09:49 PM: Quote
Originally posted by Shady Ultima
Quote
Originally posted by Moosetroop11
You could have a box showing the week's most poular CR resource. That'd be cool :p

Well, an interesting Idea I think would be a rating system.

When a resource gets uploaded, it can be rated 1 - 5. Then you can see the highest ranked CRs.

I like your idea MT, and I think there should be a most popular over all. One that shows the resources that are downloaded the most.

Also, there should be an option to only show 2k/3 or XP resources, for the people that don't have one or the other.[/B]

Every single one of those features is already implemented in the new CR except for viewing the most downloaded. People can vote for or against resources depending on whether they are good or not and resources can be sorted by how many votes they have. Normal resources and XP resources are also split into sections.

But that's shifting away from design and into functionality. I'm starting to get an idea of what I might design, more ideas are welcome.
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Post by: Osmose on October 14, 2007, 07:01:59 PM: Whee, a prototype! (http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/1904/sitedesign2anotherec1.png)

It's not as shiny as it possibly will be - the idea is more to get a type of layout down and make it amazing once the basics are set down. But as for the layout and concept, do you like it?
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Post by: Razor on October 14, 2007, 07:16:10 PM: Except for that god awful MISALIGNMENT at the bottom, it's looking pretty rad.
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Post by: Ben on October 14, 2007, 07:31:04 PM: i like it. When polished it will be shiny.

I think the most downloaded resource is a capital idea

im also sticking with my proposal of a periodic banner contest.
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Post by: GaryCXJk on October 15, 2007, 01:03:35 PM: It would be nice if you could integrate everything so that it looks like a menu system of an RPG.

Oh, and please, I'm sick and tired of this blue. Yes, I do realize blue is my favourite colour, but the blue just makes it look like the site is still the same. Another colour isn't really needed, but it makes it stand out of the light of Charas 2.0.
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Post by: Osmose on October 15, 2007, 05:59:28 PM: Most people wanted blue or at least an option to keep the blue, but the way I plan to refine the template system that I made should allow for different designs, different colors, etc etc.
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Post by: GaryCXJk on October 15, 2007, 07:00:09 PM: That would really be an improvement. Especially if the classic colour scheme would be implemented.

I kind of missed the Charas White.
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Post by: Razor on October 15, 2007, 09:45:20 PM: Oh God not the Charas white

It made Charas look so much like "my first websight"
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Post by: Moosetroop11 on October 15, 2007, 10:19:12 PM: There seems to be a lot of space in the right places, but also some space in the wrong places which makes it feel a little empty...

Overall I like it. But I believe I have improved upon the design somewhat.
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Post by: Prpl_Mage on October 16, 2007, 04:13:51 AM: I like that new design, might work out pretty well.
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Post by: ZeroKirbyX on October 16, 2007, 04:25:59 AM: I'll make one tomorrow.
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Post by: Razor on October 16, 2007, 05:33:05 AM: I liked the "Alex+electricity"
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Post by: Almeidaboo on October 16, 2007, 10:02:47 AM: Looks awesome Moose. Uhh...what about the the new banner?
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Post by: Osmose on October 16, 2007, 10:11:53 AM: Quote
Originally posted by Almeidaboo
Looks awesome Moose. Uhh...what about the the new banner?

Banners are for forums, one design at a time. :P