The future of Codewalrus

u/alexgt January 01, 2016, 05:55:00 AM

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on December 31, 2015, 10:14:42 PM
Depends. Some people just wants to make it look like somebody else wrote the content for the person. In some cases I guess it can help, though, such as news articles, so that it doesn't sound like self-promotion when a program is released or biased.

Quote from: Juju on December 31, 2015, 11:34:48 PM
News articles are often written in the 3rd person because they're often written on behalf of the entire staff and/or the site itself.

I was joking but put in context Yvette really sounds like a crazy cat lady

u/Dream of Omnimaga January 12, 2016, 05:09:40 AM

I think that eventually, flat designs will be phased out, though, just like clothing fashions and fads. Back in the 90's, we had plain text with color, followed by flat designs, then by 2004 or so fancy, CPU-intensive designs arrived and evolved in complexity as computers became stronger. Starcraft II website is an example, but it used to be even more complex and around that time, it was common for game-oriented forums to have such designs (even Omnimaga had one). Even today, I feel that a flat design with white background just doesn't fit at all for a Starcraft or Final Fantasy website when viewed in PC mode. I also don't like the trend of trying to make websites look as boring as possible, but of course there is a fine line between not being boring and rendering a website unusable on anything that doesn't run Crysis maxed out.

Flat designs, but more modern to take advantage of new CSS capabilities, arrived after phones did, because phones couldn't handle complex-looking websites and those websites were hard to browse on mobile. But when phones will match 2015 high end gaming machines, I bet we will see a comeback of those 2005-10 fancy websites, but with larger text.

One thing that I'm glad that didn't stick around for a while are horizontal-scrolling websites. Myspace tried that and I hated those.

Last Edit: January 12, 2016, 05:13:02 AM by DJ Omnimaga

u/Dream of Omnimaga March 29, 2016, 03:28:09 PM

So I was wondering: Should the Latest Active topics link on desktop view be made visible in mobile view somewhere? While our menus are easier to click since the last changes, I still find it annoying to have to try to open the right menu item then click the Latest active topics option there, and I'm sure I am not alone. I know we have another link to that page under WalrusIRC on the board index, but it's not always convenient.

Also do you think it should instead be a direct navigation link like what Omnimaga had back then? That was very handy and in our case it would be even more handy since the menu is floating. I know it would clutter the menu bar a bit, but it's not like our menu bar is big anyway, and the Moderate stuff could easily be moved to the Admin tab anyway (for staff). Right now I often noticed that I find myself clicking the back button twice then scrolling down to access latest posts rather than doing a few trial and error clicks through the navbar. The option would still remain under the Forum dropdown as a duplicate.

I also think it should be renamed to New Posts.

What do you think?

u/aetios March 29, 2016, 03:48:40 PM

Gets my vote.

u/Dudeman313 March 29, 2016, 08:37:08 PM

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on March 29, 2016, 03:28:09 PM
So I was wondering: Should the Latest Active topics link on desktop view be made visible in mobile view somewhere? While our menus are easier to click since the last changes, I still find it annoying to have to try to open the right menu item then click the Latest active topics option there, and I'm sure I am not alone. I know we have another link to that page under WalrusIRC on the board index, but it's not always convenient.

Also do you think it should instead be a direct navigation link like what Omnimaga had back then? That was very handy and in our case it would be even more handy since the menu is floating. I know it would clutter the menu bar a bit, but it's not like our menu bar is big anyway, and the Moderate stuff could easily be moved to the Admin tab anyway (for staff). Right now I often noticed that I find myself clicking the back button twice then scrolling down to access latest posts rather than doing a few trial and error clicks through the navbar. The option would still remain under the Forum dropdown as a duplicate.

I also think it should be renamed to New Posts.

What do you think?

Sounds good, but that bar looks kind of crowded to me. $:-\$
The colours make it also look old school.

u/Dream of Omnimaga March 29, 2016, 08:43:05 PM

Well, I wouldn't make the bar exactly like in the screenshot above. This was just to show what I mean by having New Posts as main link. The link would be placed between IRC and Downloads, most likely.

And yeah, back in 2005-10, the site design fad was to give gaming-oriented sites as much character as possible and use special effects such as having a static star background behind div tags that contains asteroids, to give it the feel that you're in space or stuff like that. But then mobile devices got popular and people started liking simple designs again. I feel that default themes and overly simple designs are boring, though.

u/Dudeman313 March 29, 2016, 08:45:14 PM

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on March 29, 2016, 08:43:05 PM
Well, I wouldn't make the bar exactly like in the screenshot above. This was just to show what I mean by having New Posts as main link. The link would be placed between IRC and Downloads, most likely.

And yeah, back in 2005-10, the site design fad was to give gaming-oriented sites as much character as possible and use special effects such as having a static star background behind div tags that contains asteroids, to give it the feel that you're in space or stuff like that. But then mobile devices got popular and people started liking simple designs again. I feel that default themes and overly simple designs are boring, though.

Yeah, something in-between is best. Like CodeWalrus's current theme. It's not so much on the simple side.
It has bright colours.

u/Dream of Omnimaga March 29, 2016, 08:47:49 PM

I don't think they're really bright, but yeah I tried to make the theme simple while still not looking too boring. It's hard with a forum, though. At least SMF 2.1 is responsive by default.

u/Unicorn March 30, 2016, 05:23:27 AM

Could we maybe add a recent posts button to the bottom of the page in the same style that the Reply button is?

u/Dream of Omnimaga March 30, 2016, 05:33:46 AM

That would be misleading to have it mixed up with reply-related buttons or moderator actions. It would need to be elsewhere around there. There is the Short URL box and View topic attachment links where we could put it? or perhaps inside the gray bar where it says Jump to: [forum name] Go

Thanks for the idea, by the way. I didn't think about adding one there. It would definitively be nice.

Also, I can't stress this enough and various people mentioned it in the past few years: What keeps most project alives are replies, feedback and criticism, not to mention many authors are scared of double-posting when they have an update. I know that sometimes you don't have anything to add other than "Nice work, keep up the good work", but a lot of people gets motivated from those. In February, a lot of people participated to project topics, but this month and some other months I often found myself replying alone or having to double-post in my own topics. You don't need to own the platform the project is for in order to comment: That's what screenshots, videos and animated GIFs are for.

Last Edit: March 30, 2016, 05:38:31 AM by DJ Omnimaga

u/Caleb Hansberry March 31, 2016, 08:00:44 AM

Yup, keep up the good work DJ!

u/Dudeman313 March 31, 2016, 09:35:43 PM

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on March 30, 2016, 05:33:46 AM
That would be misleading to have it mixed up with reply-related buttons or moderator actions. It would need to be elsewhere around there. There is the Short URL box and View topic attachment links where we could put it? or perhaps inside the gray bar where it says Jump to: [forum name] Go

Thanks for the idea, by the way. I didn't think about adding one there. It would definitively be nice.

Also, I can't stress this enough and various people mentioned it in the past few years: What keeps most project alives are replies, feedback and criticism, not to mention many authors are scared of double-posting when they have an update. I know that sometimes you don't have anything to add other than "Nice work, keep up the good work", but a lot of people gets motivated from those. In February, a lot of people participated to project topics, but this month and some other months I often found myself replying alone or having to double-post in my own topics. You don't need to own the platform the project is for in order to comment: That's what screenshots, videos and animated GIFs are for.

True. I tend to go back to my threads and have to double post because the topic dies at some point.
But there's plenty of people to motivate others here, I just think sometimes people don't know what to say, but also don't want to make a really short post.

u/Unicorn April 01, 2016, 06:30:20 AM

DJ: maybe center it under or above the Quick Reply box?

u/Dream of Omnimaga April 05, 2016, 04:31:37 AM

Yeah I will probably put it in that gray bar. It would make sense next to the drop down. Basically the goal is to be able to reach the recent posts page in a single click from anywhere without always having to move your fingers or mouse pointer up

Quote from: Dudeman313 on March 31, 2016, 09:35:43 PM
But there's plenty of people to motivate others here, I just think sometimes people don't know what to say, but also don't want to make a really short post.

Yeah true, but what I noticed is that most of the time it's just the two of us during quieter periods of time. When it's busier there are others who do it, though. @alexgt used to do it a lot until he disappeared and @aeTIos does it when he is around but his activity is sometimes sporadic.

Last Edit: April 05, 2016, 04:33:16 AM by DJ Omnimaga