Discussions

Demozoo - Design/Look & Feel improvement thread

langhuxley - 13:31 24 September 2016 #

Since last Wednesday, you may have visited Demozoo and felt like something was …off. Rest assured, that wasn’t you -it was me. Sorry about that :) There’s a lot of structural shovelling going on right now, so chances are you noticed that fonts have subtly changed here and there. Also, there’s a distinct lack of drop shadows on the page layout.

The short of it: Work is underway to improve the look and feel of Demozoo!
The main objective is to clean up the layout and page structure so Demozoo works better and looks more beautiful on different devices.

We’ll be approaching this overhaul with incremental improvements -in practice this means that bits and parts of the site will update over time ...a section here, the overall look of a form there, etc.
The downside is that sometimes a part of the site will look goofy and weird for a while until we caught up with all bits used on a page.
The upside is that the process is on-going -you do not have to wait an inscrutable period for a total redesign that turns out terrible.

We have some priorities set for now -especially smaller screens are a concern we’d like to address because that’s never been a strong point of Demozoo until now. With the #2 and #4 platforms for visitors being Android and iOS, that’s the opposite of great.

This thread could be considered a “fix me beautiful” for the design and layout of Demozoo. If you have questions, comments or suggestions for what part of the site we ought to take a good hard look at ASAP, fire away! :)

dipswitch - 16:33 24 September 2016 #

forum font is a bit too small...

langhuxley - 01:04 25 September 2016 #

Hum. The font size hasn't changed at all -especially wrt the rest of the site. Are you by any chance using Demozoo on a somewhat recent Mac or iOS/Android device? Give me more information so I can actually do something about it :)

menace - 09:55 25 September 2016 #

I believe the issue is that the previous font was somewhat fatter, so now more text fits on a line, giving the impression that the font is smaller. I actually had a browser open with a demozoo page, and I took the opportunity to take a screenshot before and after;

[old font](https://www.dropbox.com/s/uuz2h528cec84ga/demozoo_old_font_cutout.png?dl=0) vs [new font](https://www.dropbox.com/s/93hdnujxthctnsx/demozoo_new_font_cutout.png?dl=0)

menace - 09:56 25 September 2016 #

Err, crap, why can't I ever remember that the FORUM part does not support Markdown. Gah. But I'm sure you can parse the mess above to give a meaningful result anyway.

langhuxley - 11:45 25 September 2016 #

Markdown would be a lovely feature request by the way.

And yes, that's precisely what's happening -letters are sightly more condensed across the board, lines fit a little more (maybe even too) snugly.

dipswitch - 19:11 25 September 2016 #

nope, i'm using demozoo on firefox with win7. but, nevermind, just a bit of zoom did the trick (even though i'm sure the font has changed somehow) =)

ltk_tscc - 19:55 25 September 2016 #

Well I like the font... but +1 or +2 point won't hurt.

exocet - 10:47 26 September 2016 #

I agree the font is a bit small for us old farts :)

CONS - 19:45 27 September 2016 #

What? What are you writing about? Do I need new glasses... again?

langhuxley - 00:07 11 November 2016 #

From the desk of "things people actually can see":

By grace of https://github.com/demozoo/demozoo/issues/260 , the search results of demozoo look more legible even if they spoil a few things happening below board. Should you use the search bar without using suggestions (just hit enter after the query), the results should be readable now.

ltk_tscc - 12:17 12 November 2016 #

Much better :)

What about some sorting or filters: Groups, Sceners, Parties, Prods... now it's a wild mess when you have 100 results.

Saga_Musix - 13:36 12 November 2016 #

"Improved search" is a separate ticket. :)

ltk_tscc - 19:51 12 November 2016 #

Improved search does include improved results yet?

mikro - 02:09 26 November 2016 #

A random idea -- maybe it would be useful to have a field "after <date>" and "before <date>" in your database so the sorting would at least somehow work for productions without known release date.

langhuxley - 11:23 28 November 2016 #

Yet another update from the desk of "stuff people can see": Listings for production (on overview, group-, scener and party pages) have been retooled and made more consistent. We've also decided to crop thumbnail images to a square preview and show a production type icon for the ones that lack a pretty picture. It's a lot less cluttered.

People that were (understandably so) griping about font sizes: we're testing a larger, more legible font size. Expect more on that soon.

ltk_tscc - 18:55 28 November 2016 #

Having the release dates that far-off seems pretty strange to me.

menace - 07:39 11 December 2016 #

We pushed an adjustment to font sizes last night, so would be interesting to hear back whether CONS still needs his glasses for this website? :)

Tom - 23:26 6 February 2017 #

Since pouet is not working lately, let's give this forum a chance ;)
Let's see if BBcode works [url="javascript:alert('hi')"]test[/url].

As for the improvements topic (super obvious stuff, probably other people asked already):
No post editing preview?
How about ability to edit/remove posts shortly after posting them?

Tom - 23:30 6 February 2017 #

Also.. I see now "No BBCode please".

How to paste animated gifs though? :(

menace - 03:32 7 February 2017 #

Tom: Thanks for lending us a visit :) There is no way to edit or preview posts currently, that is correct. If you feel that is something we need, then feel free to post an issue on our GitHub.

And, as for the lack of animated gifs, I see that as a plus rather than a minus ;)

No HTML or BBCode please. URLs will be link-ified