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From the Editor: New Look
When I covered the 2007 Spiel game convention in October, I redesigned the front page so that the convention report appeared above the news headlines, making it the first thing that readers saw when visiting BGN.
Once Spiel shrank to a dot in the rearview mirror and I reverted BGN to its former look, I realized that I needed to overhaul the site design because it hid so much information. A new article or column appeared almost every day, but none of it was visible from the landing screen. Game previews, reviews, and Gone Cardboard updates showed up as a single line in a long list of links and were easily overlooked. News was also lost in a list of headlines.
While none of this obscurity might have mattered to hardcore gamers—longtime readers who knew to click down a couple of screens to see what’s new—the layout presented new and sporadic readers with an uninviting and ugly link pile. I’ve read enough website design books and studies to know that first-time visitors grant a website only a few seconds to make an impression before they click away to something else. Ideally this new design will let everyone more easily understand what Boardgame News is all about, what information the site features, and what’s new since a reader’s last visit.
If something isn’t working or you have suggestions, please leave a comment on this post or write to me directly. I’m still adjusting category descriptions and other details, but the bulk of the design work is (hopefully) finished.
Posted by W. Eric Martin on Dec 10, 2007 at 03:00 AM in Notes from the Editor / 960
Comments:
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"with an uninviting and ugly link pile.” Good description. I’m glad you took care of this. The front page looks a lot better. Posted by Kevin Wood on Dec 10, 2007 at 08:22 AM | #
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Yes, MUCH better. I primarily go through RSS, but occasionally I go hunting for something on the front page, and it was daunting for a while. :^) Posted by Nathan Morse on Dec 10, 2007 at 08:46 AM | #
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I love, love, LOVE the new look! This layout is a lot more attractive for such a “newsy” site! It’s the perfect marriage between newspaper and blog! Kudos! It’s a great improvement! Posted by Diane Close on Dec 10, 2007 at 10:56 AM | #
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Eric, would it be possible to include more entries in the comments section, or, at least, have a link to, say, the second group of the most recent comments? I like to read all of the comments and this list means I don’t have to pore through all the articles I’ve already read to do so. Sometimes if there’s a bunch of comments, though, there are more than 10 new ones and I can’t be sure if I’ve missed some. Not a big thing, but it would be nice if you could implement it at some point. Thanks, and good job with the new look. Posted by Larry Levy on Dec 10, 2007 at 12:52 PM | #
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The new layout looks great - at home, where I use Firefox. At work, where I use IE, it stinks because none of the column widths appear to set properly (with or without the favourites bar open). I know my browser has had issues with the site before (I used to have a full page of white space before the articles started) but this is worse - it’s almost impossible to read the left hand column, which is only 2-3 words wide. I really hope it’s just me, but if any other users out there run into this they’ll run screaming and won’t come back. Eric, if you can, maybe check the code to verify the dynamic column widths are correct? pk Posted by Patrick Korner on Dec 10, 2007 at 12:56 PM | #
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Update: It’s the favourites bar that kills it. The site must be optimized for 1024x768 but lack dynamic resizing when the viewable area is decreased? pk Posted by Patrick Korner on Dec 10, 2007 at 12:59 PM | #
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Larry, I’ll see if I can create a “comments” category that will aggregate them in a readable format. Patrick, can you send me a screenshot of the BGN look on your IE? The layout and tables look fine on IE on my Mac, so maybe it’s a PC interaction, which is going to be fun to try to fix since I don’t own a PC… And the site does resize itself to fit the browser window—or at least it does on Firefox, IE, Safari and Mozilla on a Mac. Again, I’m at a loss for PC experience, so I’ll have to visit the library and look at the site there. Eric Posted by W. Eric Martin on Dec 10, 2007 at 04:32 PM | #
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Funny that you moved the menu back to the left, while a while back, it was moved from there to the top. I think it’s better where it is now, but I think the links should be reworked to look more like links and less like white text on a blue background. Posted by Surya Van Lierde on Dec 11, 2007 at 10:22 AM | #
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Speaking of comments, is there any chance you could set up an RSS feed for comments? Posted by Doug Orleans on Dec 25, 2007 at 03:12 PM | #
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