Site: RHDN 3.0 Site Refresh Launched!

[yoyotheyoshi]

Lol Joseph we were mere seconds apart! Great minds and all that.

[filler]

1. The main page looks pretty cluttered now. I'd drop one of the columns in favour of centering the main column and sidebar.

I don't get this. If there is extra screen real estate thanks to widescreen monitors and high screen resolution why not use it? Do you really want the main text to span most of the screen? It's proven that it's harder to read long lines of text than shorter ones anyway.

How about just making your browser window smaller?

Lol, so, I just found out how to get it. I, too, was missing the left column, so I tried zooming out just one tick on the front page, guess what, left column. Definitely something that needs a fix!

Seems like putting the theme picker in the top navigation somewhere as well would solve this.

[Lunaria]

I don't get this. If there is extra screen real estate thanks to widescreen monitors and high screen resolution why not use it? Do you really want the main text to span most of the screen? It's proven that it's harder to read long lines of text than shorter ones anyway.

Because it's a bunch of extra clutter that is completely irrelevant to what you're doing. Keep in mind that this mess shows up on every, single, page.

How about just making your browser window smaller?

If anything this just further highlights the problems, as it starts eating up space from the given page you're actually interested in being on.



Honestly I was kind of excited when I saw the update, but if anything I feel the website is worse than before. A showcase of recently added content seems pointless, since we have regular news posts to that. But I can't help but agree what having some extra visibility to old content on the site is great. But the amount of space allocated to that should be a reasonable amount, and preferably restricted to the front page. If I'm a search page or an article chances are I already know or have an idea of what I'm looking for, no need to barf out unrelated content at me that eats up screen space (and page load time/bandwidth, what with the extra images).

[Digitsie]

Gah, that solved that problem - at '100 percent' browser on my normal 1366x786 (which is btw, the highest resolution on this laptop), the left column showing the theme was flatout missing.  Had to change it to 80 percent (zoom out) in the browser to see the left column to find the theme picker.

That answers that.

I mean, -why- would I need to go to zoom -out- to see the whole thing when I'm already at the highest screen resolution?!

Thanks to those who pointed out the zooming out solution to finding the theme!

[filler]

Because it's a bunch of extra clutter that is completely irrelevant to what you're doing. Keep in mind that this mess shows up on every, single, page.
If anything this just further highlights the problems, as it starts eating up space from the given page you're actually interested in being on.

Honestly I was kind of excited when I saw the update, but if anything I feel the website is worse than before. A showcase of recently added content seems pointless, since we have regular news posts to that. But I can't help but agree what having some extra visibility to old content on the site is great. But the amount of space allocated to that should be a reasonable amount, and preferably restricted to the front page. If I'm a search page or an article chances are I already know or have an idea of what I'm looking for, no need to barf out unrelated content at me that eats up screen space (and page load time/bandwidth, what with the extra images).

Well, I suppose that's why there are still 6 other themes you can choose from.

[Chronosplit]

Hey cool, now I have the whole site in a theme.  Before I could only get the forums in a theme.

Newest homebrew gets lost in that though, I'll probably go back for the main page if I can. 

[nesrocks]

Yeah the other themes have good colors on the main site but then it loses the design. I'll keep the default for now, maybe use stylish.

[JP32]

Well at least theres option for the old theme for forums. EDIT: apparently Im blind, theres option to change main page back to the old theme .

Well its not bad actually, but I like the old color scheme over the new blue+white one.

One thing I'd like to address though are the "it's hurting my eyes" comments. Guys, setup your monitors correctly! Even Perfect white is as easy on the eyes as any other color if your monitor is calibrated properly. Most monitors are setup too bright out of the box because they want to grab your attention on a crowded store shelf with 20 other monitors. But that's not an apropiate setting for daily home use!

I have IPS screen thats properly calibrated, white isn't problem, but rather its too white. The background area should be in different color, or make the boxes(whatever you call it) be darker or different color.

[SunGodPortal]

I (and I think a couple people before me) figured it out.  The updated site, on the default theme, requires users to have a display with greater than 1366 px (which is my laptop's maximum display width) to see the left sidebar.  Alternately, zooming out to 90% in Google Chrome seemed to do it, for me.  Changing the theme from RNDH Boss to RNDH Pro changed the site back to what it was before, but for those who are curious, yes, the Metroid theme is still there and fully-compatible with the new HTML5/CSS3 backend!  At least, as far as I can tell.

So... yeah!  The new theme is not exactly ideal and I would have gotten used to it, but I'm infinitely happy that I don't even have to!  Yay!

Edit: Changing the site theme also changes the forum theme, just like always. (You can still set the forum theme independently of the site theme, though.)

Hmm. I was thinking that's what my laptop was set up for (1366x?). That's what I was using last night. Right now I'm using an aging desktop that's using some sort of TV/DVD player combo as a monitor so maybe that's why it sucks.

One thing I'd like to address though are the "it's hurting my eyes" comments. Guys, setup your monitors correctly! Even Perfect white is as easy on the eyes as any other color if your monitor is calibrated properly. Most monitors are setup too bright out of the box because they want to grab your attention on a crowded store shelf with 20 other monitors. But that's not an apropiate setting for daily home use!

Everyone's eyes are different and for me a lighter screen would be more of a strain because I've got old, scratched up glasses. "Get new ones". Can't get new ones 'til I'm able to work again and I won't be looking for a job 'til I get my meds lined out.

[nesrocks]

How can you guys do hack work with anything smaller than full hd? As you can see I need more pixels.

[SunGodPortal]

How can you guys do hack work with anything smaller than full hd? As you can see I need more pixels.

Well, all of my comps are old and dying so I'm looking at getting a new rig before then end of the year. In the meantime I'll just work on music.

[Mugi]

How can you guys do hack work with anything smaller than full hd? As you can see I need more pixels.

[snip]

i was wondering the same. Personally, im running 3x 1920x1080 and im constantly out of space for everything i do x.x

[13375K37CH3R]

At first, I liked the "freshness" of the redesign and the ability to see lots of news very easily. But apparently lots of people are complaining about both the brightness of the default theme and the clutter on the main page. I have a few suggestions to remedy this:

- Revert to the blues of the older theme. This doesn't necessarily have to include a change to the layout, but I and others are used to the different shades of blue, it was a good look. Alternatively, a "dark theme" like Jazz or Scoundrel would be cool. My only problem with those two themes, however, is that some elements like font stylings, small caps and the title logo look a bit too formal and "business-y". Jazz is better for its fonts and styles, but I'd still prefer the old logo. It's not too bad, though, so I can get used to Jazz for now.
- As for the layout, I have three recommendations. First, instead of having so many sidebars on the right, consider condensing them into one. You could have a tiered, collapsible display with buttons for "Newest Hacks", "Newest Translations", etc. and when one clicks on those buttons, that view is opened and all others are closed. That would seriously cut down on clutter AND negative space below.
- Second, with the new layout having so much room to scroll down, people might complain about having to scroll all the way back up to the top just to use the normal features of the site, like Submissions. My solution to this would be to have the top bar, which has links to all of those features, a floating top bar, so it stays visible even after scrolling. This would be a great addition to streamline the UX.
- Third, if anyone doesn't like the layout, make it customizable. Give users the freedom to move things around on the main page as they see fit. I wouldn't recommend doing this for EVERY page, of course, just the main one, but that alone would give users a highly elevated sense of choice.

[Sara-chan]

Ick, really missing the Emumetal theme and none of the others hit the sweet spot for me. It's all too bright or too moody.

[ObiKKa]

Go to Profile -> Account Settings, then hover over the "Modify Profile" button to reach the Look and Layout section; you can change the forum theme there.

Personally I'm going to stick with the old standard theme - this new one is a little too spread out for my liking.

Because it's a bunch of extra clutter that is completely irrelevant to what you're doing. Keep in mind that this mess shows up on every, single, page.
If anything this just further highlights the problems, as it starts eating up space from the given page you're actually interested in being on.

Honestly I was kind of excited when I saw the update, but if anything I feel the website is worse than before. A showcase of recently added content seems pointless, since we have regular news posts to that. But I can't help but agree what having some extra visibility to old content on the site is great. But the amount of space allocated to that should be a reasonable amount, and preferably restricted to the front page. If I'm a search page or an article chances are I already know or have an idea of what I'm looking for, no need to barf out unrelated content at me that eats up screen space (and page load time/bandwidth, what with the extra images).

I looked numerous times last night and just looked today. I couldn't find anything to change the theme for the main site.

Same here. I like the new layout of the main site and forum but when I select the Metroid theme the forum has the old layout and the main site is unchanged. The new layout with the Metroid theme colors would be cool enough for me.

I'm using Firefox and Windows 7 and the main page does not have the menu on the left side.

EDIT: I even cleared my browser history and reloaded the page but it still did not appear.
I (and I think a couple people before me) figured it out.  The updated site, on the default theme, requires users to have a display with greater than 1366 px (which is my laptop's maximum display width) to see the left sidebar.  Alternately, zooming out to 90% in Google Chrome seemed to do it, for me.  Changing the theme from RNDH Boss to RNDH Pro changed the site back to what it was before, but for those who are curious, yes, the Metroid theme is still there and fully-compatible with the new HTML5/CSS3 backend!  At least, as far as I can tell.

So... yeah!  The new theme is not exactly ideal and I would have gotten used to it, but I'm infinitely happy that I don't even have to!  Yay!

Edit: Changing the site theme also changes the forum theme, just like always. (You can still set the forum theme independently of the site theme, though.)

Oh, thanks. Thankfully, there are actually two ways to edit the themes both on the homepage and all related page types plus the drop-down menu over the modify profile button in the forum for the whole forum and your profile. Hmm.

I kinda liked the new design at first, including the extra updates and screenshots on the right panes. But... I do not like the too light blue background in all text boxes behind the news posts and ALL patch/hack pages. It's just too bright for my eyes, not enough contrast there. Also to make matters worse the outer white background around the inner frames/boxes just further exacerbates the problem. Also the lack of contrast in the rows with lines in the credit lists everywhere makes it that much harder to follow who did what on their works.
So yeah, I completely went back to the old RHDN Pro theme for the general website and the same one in my forum, although i may change the latter if I don't mind it or there are some improvements to be made.

After reading some of the new ideas for this site, yeah, I would like for the ability to search for/catch a ready username to be much easier when editing the credits in a file page.

[magictrufflez]

The overall color scheme is still too bright for my taste, but thank you to whomever rearranged the front page to be more user-friendly (ala the original)!

[SmashManiac]

Everything looked good until I opened the forums in Chrome:

[slidelljohn]

And if you're on a cell phone... Why do you want to browse hacks on the cell phone? Do you have roms and a patcher on mobile?

Well because of my current situation over the past 4 years all I have is my cell phone to get online. And no, I don't. Hopefully soon when I buy my house I'll get my desktop back online. So right now all I have is my cell phone and it would be nice to be able to access the desktop version from my phone till I get my desktop back online. Most other websites have the option to choose the desktop version from your phone but I can't seem to be able to access the desktop version of the new site from my phone. Is the new site set up to use the desktop version from a cell phone?

[Alcahest]

Two nitpicks:

1. The main page looks pretty cluttered now. I'd drop one of the columns in favour of centering the main column and sidebar.

QFT.

[xnamkcor]

I mean, -why- would I need to go to zoom -out- to see the whole thing when I'm already at the highest screen resolution?!

Because the width of your highest screen resolution is the same as a popular resolution from back when CRTs were in the majority and it was 2004?
No it wasn't. I mixed up axis. But still, 1280 wide?

i was wondering the same. Personally, im running 3x 1920x1080 and im constantly out of space for everything i do x.x

At least you use your screen real estate for something useful(and actually have screens).

https://i.imgur.com/YofMsAJ.png

https://i.imgur.com/czNX3Rs.png

https://i.imgur.com/5rrz6gE.jpg

PS: If the forum automatically turns these into inline images I'll tyr to edit it as fast as I can.