Unofficial QL website redesign

[Argument]

Молодец, земляк. Я тоже раньше подрабатывал веб-дизайном, но до тебя мне как до луны пешком. Талант.

[pikaluva13]

Would it be possible to get the .psd or something? I kind of want to mess around with the colors to see what could work better (In my opinion) on Windows

[namad]

Would it be possible to get the .psd or something? I kind of want to mess around with the colors to see what could work better (In my opinion) on Windows

Sure, here is the link - https://www.dropbox.com/s/jieanvj32c...l_redesign.psd
This is working draft, it's not very well organized, but you shouldn't have any problems with editing.

[pikaluva13]

http://puu.sh/1r7is

Couple of slight tweaks:
-I put in a (basic) drop shadow under the matches to make the page seem less "flat" (The grey noise didn't quite make sense after rethinking about it)
-Tweaked the red/yellow/green to more "common" colors (The yellow didn't really seem to work well with the grey for me no matter what I tried) Ignore that the yellow screwed with the text -- I just used the paint bucket because I'm lazy and I'm only offering suggestions :P
-The "SEAMS AND BOLTS" is a different font because I didn't have Aero :P

Things I noticed:
-There's no "purchase here" section anywhere
-Your version tends to match better with the forum, which is good in my opinion as it keeps a sort of familiarity.
-There's no "Alt Server Browser" version in any of the pictures yet

*However*, I personally don't dislike the current layout. I'd be fine with this becoming an unofficial userscript-type thing, but unfortunately I don't know any sort of coding other than basic HTML (and BBCode, but that doesn't count)

I tend to prefer darker colored skins/themes though.

[namad]

I put in a (basic) drop shadow under the matches to make the page seem less "flat" (The grey noise didn't quite make sense after rethinking about it)

Doesn't work to me. This shadows doesn't match the style (there are no elements that use the same approach, elements with shadows use smooth ones) and brings some inconsistency to the whole look and feel.

Tweaked the red/yellow/green to more "common" colors (The yellow didn't really seem to work well with the grey for me no matter what I tried) Ignore that the yellow screwed with the text -- I just used the paint bucket because I'm lazy and I'm only offering suggestions :P

Sorry, but your color selection doesn't work also The colors are too brights, that doesn't match the entire color schema. And yellow is a disaster

In other words, to create a good design you can't just randomly apply styles and colors. Everything should be balanced.

[pikaluva13]

Doesn't work to me. This shadows doesn't match the style (there are no elements that use the same approach, elements with shadows use smooth ones) and brings some inconsistency to the whole look and feel.


Sorry, but your color selection doesn't work also The colors are too brights, that doesn't match the entire color schema. And yellow is a disaster

In other words, to create a good design you can't just randomly apply styles and colors. Everything should be balanced.

Yeah, the drop shadow was just a quick addition (literally about a minute). I mean, your colors work decently with the Mac buttons in the top left, but on Windows (where those aren't there) it just looks completely off in color. However, I *did* say the yellow looked bad regardless of what I tried :P (I pretty much stopped caring after the 5th attempt of finding a yellow)

Your green just doesn't look..."green" to me. It's more of a puke green kind of color, and doesn't really say "Hey, this is a friendly area where the people you're playing with are skillmatched"...it's more of "Ew, this server is skillmatched, but you're not going to like it". The red just doesn't look red to me either and I don't really see it working with anything other than the Mac button.

Again, I was more of offering more extreme color suggestions. They just don't look very good to me in Windows where the window buttons aren't just colors. (Actually, my red suggestion kind of looks more orange-red than red to me... :P)

Something about everything just appearing to "float" there kind of bugs me. I don't really know how to explain it. The drop shadow was just kind of an attempt at "fixing" that for myself.

I did understand that my colors didn't really work with anything. The green was more of an attempt at the brightskin kind of green and the red was an attempt of a "Quake" red

[kristus]

pik: You seem to think that this has something to do with the OS or computer with what colors work. But it's entirely up to what monitor you are using. Or are you talking about it not matching the surrounding UI? In which case it's not possible to make any general statements since there are lots of ways to customize that into looking very different from computer to computer.

Namad: Personally. I look at this redesign and I sere a bit of a better layout. But not really doing much other than changing the look really. I would prefer you being a bit more daring and add features that makes sense for QL. Like a proper chat function with channels and I noticed that you didn't move the chat box up over the banner making it still be in the lower section of the screen. Which is rather inconvenient for using it.

Embed a proper listing for a ladder system like QLR. Add another list for seeing players online that you've not friended (probably could be a part of a proper chat system with pickup chat channels and so on). Making the UI more community friendly. Letting you find games with people who don't want to sit in an empty server.

There's a lot of things you can do. While this design mostly look like a new coat of paint.

[pikaluva13]

pik: You seem to think that this has something to do with the OS or computer with what colors work. But it's entirely up to what monitor you are using. Or are you talking about it not matching the surrounding UI? In which case it's not possible to make any general statements since there are lots of ways to customize that into looking very different from computer to computer.

I was referring to these. (Those being on Macs). However, the majority of the userbase is presumably on Windows (which doesn't have them -- Window has these. The red, yellow, and green in the server browser appear to be using similar colors to the Mac buttons.

[namad]

I don't really know how to explain it.

Don't get me wrong, I was straight enough and give my honest feedback I understand that there are some aspects that doesn't work for you, but it's fine, all ppl are different.

[namad]

Namad: Personally. I look at this redesign and I sere a bit of a better layout. But not really doing much other than changing the look really. I would prefer you being a bit more daring and add features that makes sense for QL.

This is true, what I really did is create new "skin" and refined some existing functionality, without bringing any innovations. As a player, I'm happy with the current set of features, I didn't analyze to much what else should be added in order to give further enhancements the the entire product. I understand that these feature could bring more value to QL, but I doesn't have enough motivation to go so far. You and some other guys have great ideas, I will try to consider them if I decide to dig deeper

Peace