EPTWe've had the 90s forum look for years now, embrace evoltion people! Like some old lady on batman once said: the essence of progress is change.
Anyway, as a graphic designer and oldschool TLer I approve.
Teamliquid Redesign - Page 5
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Xeofreestyler
Belgium6771 Posts
We've had the 90s forum look for years now, embrace evoltion people! Like some old lady on batman once said: the essence of progress is change. Anyway, as a graphic designer and oldschool TLer I approve. | ||
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Fuchsteufelswild
Australia2028 Posts
Otherwise *Preferred political parties get voted out*-> HURRAY! IT'S CHANGE! IT MUST BE GOOD! Nup. Just echoing many other posts. I wasn't so keen on the previous redesigns, more 'tablet-friendly" layouts tends to disgust me. Separate pages for tablets or go home. (I think some news site was implementing separate tablet pages, probably starting with t.[rest of site etc.]. | ||
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Jvattic
Germany24 Posts
On May 26 2015 21:28 Fuchsteufelswild wrote: more 'tablet-friendly" layouts tends to disgust me. You don't like easy to grasp, typographie heavy, responsive, space-using design then? Are you some sort of David Carson?Ouch. | ||
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Hryul
Austria2609 Posts
personal thoughts: - reducing information density on the "main frame" is good for newcomers/ppl who want to maybe read "more". - keeping the left/right sidebars is fine for people reg'd. the "active threads" on LL is not enough, esp. for the main page worst case yould be: US poitics/ GoT spoilers / sc2 QQ/ heroes/ yokoKane blog (#freeyokokane). furthermore: left sidebar shows ppl that there is more to TL than the news they came here for. - remove poll/featured video: both don't get updated often enough. we have more or less successful YT threads. - remove shop add/sponsored threads: meh. - I'm torn how exactly I want the "main frame" to be. I'd love more focus on the featured articles, so that there is a list of featured articles with the latest being "extra big" like at LL. on the other hand I like "community news" and featured pieces from the community. Maye you merge those two and put them them below the one lead story (whose frame then would be wider, but slimmer) to the right. so you'd have lead story/s with a wider but less thick pic, and below that running two columns: one with past lead storys and one with "stuff from community" only fear I have is that we have 4 columns then. that's a bit much. | ||
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fruity.
England1711 Posts
On May 26 2015 08:48 ZeroCartin wrote: ...and I'd really really like an upvote system as well. Oh benevolent overlords, if you decide that a redesign is ever needed, please do not add any sort of upvote / points system. Pretty please with sugar on top. In an upvote system, opinions expressed which the community may not agree with would be downvoted into oblivion. It's OK to express a view or opinion which may not be the norm (within guidelines etc etc) Hitting a button 'pffft, fuck that shit, next', Isn't (for me) What this site with it's vibrant forums are about. A points system would have people saying random shit trying to be edgy or funny just for the money. | ||
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deth
Australia1757 Posts
On May 26 2015 18:12 Liquid`Nazgul wrote: Hey deth can you expand on this comment? To me the design feels like it is addressing community interaction a ton by maintaining the forum topics on the left side. I don't really see what other community interaction you may be referring to. I'm no expert when it comes to UI and never claim to know anything about graphic design. It's then quite hard to clearly convey my thoughts on the matter so bear with me. I think I can best explain my thoughts by examining what we would lose with the proposed design. We lose the calendar, accessible event information, as well as concise and minimalistic information about streams and events. Top streamers benefit greatly from the design for self-evident reasons. We likely lose any semblance of easily accessible info on non-featured streams or other games (this is a subjective one, although I have thoroughly enjoyed my time watching niche streamers, and being one myself). We lose a lot of information (without scrolling) regarding the most recent articles and highlights, displaying only the top 6 instead of the current ~20. Tools like Liquipedia and TLPD are nowhere to be seen. I'd likely spend more time clicking through to a different section of the site to access it, losing efficiency in usage. The current design feels like a glorious mess, functions and doodads thrown together to let a community interact across a broad spectrum of topics, events and ideas. The proposed design looks prettier, but it's akin to a newspaper with a comment section tacked-on, rather than a community at the core. Fundamentally: Teamliquid is and has been, at its core, a forum with news and features built into it over time. The proposed design appears to be news and features, at its core, with comments and community features tacked on. Hence the comment about emphasis on content and not community being a step in the wrong direction. I'm not sure if I'm making any sense, but that's the best I can do. Might add more later if I collect my thoughts. | ||
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JieXian
Malaysia4677 Posts
On May 26 2015 18:48 disciple wrote: I've been reading reddit for quite some time now - without upvoting or commenting in any posts. Reddit is my news source for a lot of things and I don't care about participating in the community. And while on the subject of reddit the upvote system does present content in useful manner - even for outside users. With TL thats absolutely not the case - the left sidebar has no continuity and sometimes the thread titles lack in context (when was the OP made, how many comments it still has, what its relevancy now), in fact a lot of our general community discussion happens in mega threads. Do you think opening a thread with 200+ pages is any good for a new user? Reddit is great to keep up with stuff even if you are not a diehard reading every single OP, with TL thats just not the case and that has nothing to do with the community. Alright. I do not participate in reddit and I don't like their upvoting system too I admit (that's why I'm here on TL). My point was that reddit has comments in the face of everyone, it's centered around comments I daresay. And omments make the community. Before you click the video or the picture what you see are the comments. And this redesign is going the opposite direction but putting a gigantic picture for an article I actually like the left sidebar as it makes me click on stuff I wouldn't have otherwise. For example, clicking on a CS:GO thread because of an interesting title. If it were like a normal forum (phpbb) I'd never have ventured into many subforums. Maybe there's a way to improve this, like a slide-in sidebar or something but I'm not sure. I don't think opening a thread with 200+ pages is good either. I don't know what to propose. | ||
[Phantom]
Mexico2170 Posts
On May 26 2015 16:32 disciple wrote: Those are some interesting thoughts. I've been following a dozen of communities/news sites over the years. Not once I rushed straight to the message boards and forums to read and participate in community discussions. There's always a period of anxiety for new users when they are not active on the forums. The community aspect emerges naturally when users feel comfortable in the environment, but for that to happen you need some other incentive to visit the site on a daily basis. Now, if I'm a new guy visiting TL I would be like 'ok sure I get it, this is a community site, but give me a reason to come back every day and stay'. It's kinda like when you are 10 years old and your parents move to a new town and you have to go to a new school. You probably won't hurry up to introduce yourself and make friends - you will be scared at first. Communities become very intimate and personal over time - that's especially true for TL where ppl know each other for more than 5 years in some cases. The community matters for, well, the community. Don't get me wrong - TL should always be about that. But we also need to present more useful features for the neutral visitor, more substance so there are reasons to visit the sites daily. For all non SC sites people just visit us cause one of our great articles gets linked on reddit, but when they are done reading they just go back to reddit cause they belong there. You won't create a sense of belonging by forcing the community on people. We will need something different if we want our site to grow (or even stop shrinking), if we want to serve our own needs then yea I don't think a redesign is needed at all. I think you got it wrong. You see, the other sites, save for.liquiddota to an extent, compared to tl.net are failures in my opinion, and why is that? Well, there are a lot of factors, liquidlegends came late to the scene and that's certainly a major one, but o think another aspect is that they haven't managed to get a community of their own. Yes, fancy articles and guides will make people watch your site from.time to time, but that is not enough to make them stay. And most of people just come read and article and go back to reddit as you said, but wouldn't it be better to have them be active members of the community, so they would be watching adds daily instead of just when an article is released? That's why having the community at the front helps. Of course you can't force people to join it, and so you must make clear what the benefit of joining would be so they do so willingly. If you think about it, there are lots of reasons why the sc2 tl community is desirable and the others not that much. Pro gamers used to commentate here, some.still do, and that was a big plus being able to debate and talk to your favorite stars. Then there are the constant giveaways, the TLMC, the TSLs and the other tournaments. Furthermore, community news and articles are given more.or less the same importance here as those that were made by the staff. I'm writing on mobile so hopefully what I said makes sense. In short, having a desirable community is a big part of why TL is successful here. Of course there are a lot of other factors. Brand magnament has a lot to do with it too. Ask any person in league of legends what TL is and they will say a pro team, ask them about liquid legends and they will say its the web page of the pro team. Ask a sc2 fan about tl and they will tell you it.is a pro team AND a community site big differerence. I believe a redesing is not enough, but it wouldn't be a bad thing. | ||
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munch
Mute City2363 Posts
There's enough that's been said on the colour palette; for now though, I think it's far more important to get the layout right before we focus on the details. For me, the main problem with the redesign is that it's style over substance. The main page currently has far too much going on, and I agree that it needs simplifying for any redesign. However, I don't think removing the right sidebar is the correct thing to do by itself. For starters, the article layout in the proposed redesign highlights six articles, but less successfully than the current design IMO. The front page box is an elegant option, and allows several things to be spotlighted one by one, rather than drawing attention all over the page. What's more, the community news tab has been removed (though the forum tab is still available on the left sidebar). Personally, I think that this demands greater significance, as these are the news stories that essentially pair with the articles. I agree that there's an element of redundancy at the moment, but I feel you've removed the wrong option here. As with others, the live streams section is far too obtrusive as well, while the key options currently available in the top left (PMs / Subscriptions / FPL / liquibets) aren't currently there, though there's space for them in the top right. I appreciate that this particular point isn't your concern, but I would hate for TL to have facebook integration to be honest. My final thought is on the article presentation shown. Essentially, what I like at the moment is that the line between article and forum post is blurred; the only difference is the magic that the HTML and graphics gods can give us. I'm definitely against separating the two. After all, articles are essentially just threads for conversation based off some writing done by a forummer. | ||
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Death916
United States23 Posts
So annoying having to zoom perfectly to click certain things. | ||
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supereddie
Netherlands151 Posts
My primary use of TeamLiquid, or any other site for that matter, is with a keyboard + mouse. Having those large area's, big fontsize and other things really big is not very... user friendly. Way too much whitespace, needlessly large images, etc. A mouse is much more precise than a finger, so everying can be smaller. Plus, high-resolution & large monitors can contain much more information than a tiny tablet/mobile. Please try to design a different style for traditional users. | ||
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Paljas
Germany6926 Posts
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Randomaccount#77123
United States5003 Posts
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TelecoM
United States10675 Posts
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buhhy
United States1113 Posts
In short, why turn ourselves into another reddit when reddit is a cesspool? | ||
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G5
United States2906 Posts
Also, from someone who has used TL.net for 10+ years, please add the time zones somewhere. I can't tell you how many times the time zones on TL.net made it that much more simple to keep track of when I had a tournament. I'm also curious as to whether this is going to be a boxed or full-width layout? If it's boxed, you will have trouble with all the white unless the dead space background is going to be something to off-set it like an egg-shell (nothing bold or it'll distract from the actual content). If it's full-width, you'll be fine but may run into functionality issues. For example: If you have a full-width layout the forum won't look too great because the grid will be too large and dwarf the average post size. I'd start with exactly what you're doing, asking people their opinions. However, you need to be asking the right questions. Asking specific questions as to what layouts, functions, and features should be kept or changed is huge. I believe you all know the good ol' saying of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". This is very true and research is key for something like TL.net with such a strong following. There is so much traffic to TL.net I can guess the EV of the site and it's easily 6 figures. I wouldn't risk that without a lot of research. Example: When GosuGamers.net switched layouts, I stopped reading it because I disliked how everything flowed. Good luck with the project, if you need any advice or technical help, let me know. Thank you. | ||
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YourGoodFriend
United States2197 Posts
On May 26 2015 01:56 riotjune wrote: Can we finally get an option to set background to black with white text? It's easier on the eyes. Can't get the plugin to work anyway. Background of what? (a forum post, the main background, the sidebar), I can write a plugin for you to do it in about 5 minutes if I know what you want | ||
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Lonyo
United Kingdom3884 Posts
On May 26 2015 22:04 Hryul wrote: While I do think TL could use a redesign, I don't think the proposed is what you want. personal thoughts: - reducing information density on the "main frame" is good for newcomers/ppl who want to maybe read "more". - keeping the left/right sidebars is fine for people reg'd. the "active threads" on LL is not enough, esp. for the main page worst case yould be: US poitics/ GoT spoilers / sc2 QQ/ heroes/ yokoKane blog (#freeyokokane). furthermore: left sidebar shows ppl that there is more to TL than the news they came here for. - remove poll/featured video: both don't get updated often enough. we have more or less successful YT threads. - remove shop add/sponsored threads: meh. - I'm torn how exactly I want the "main frame" to be. I'd love more focus on the featured articles, so that there is a list of featured articles with the latest being "extra big" like at LL. on the other hand I like "community news" and featured pieces from the community. Maye you merge those two and put them them below the one lead story (whose frame then would be wider, but slimmer) to the right. so you'd have lead story/s with a wider but less thick pic, and below that running two columns: one with past lead storys and one with "stuff from community" only fear I have is that we have 4 columns then. that's a bit much. Sounds like you want the feature story/sub articles thing done a bit like Arstechnica and Anandtech have it, with a dedicated "most recent feature" and main story bit, and then other stories below (pipeline on Anandtech, Radar on Ars, Community News here). | ||
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TheBloodyDwarf
Finland7524 Posts
On May 26 2015 21:52 Jvattic wrote: You don't like easy to grasp, typographie heavy, responsive, space-using design then? Are you some sort of David Carson?Ouch. Good for tablets, horrible for pc. | ||
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darthfoley
United States8003 Posts
On May 26 2015 01:59 Faeny wrote: Anything that doesn't waste >50% of the screen space to the left and the right is an improvement for me. Dunno why liquid sites still so stubbornly stick to this shitty fixed layout. This! Too much white space | ||
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