New Site Design - The Beginning!

[Zeydlitz]

Well, than suggested place is wery clever to be invinsible: it's bellow 1000 pixel of picture, so at normal monitor Donate button would be out of the screen (better look this picture with 100% scale), and users scroll down not so often (and usualy ignore right column with spam at this case). And integration of donations with server stat's is pretty naive -- users could pay to you for work, but not for being one of the many of crowd.

[rama]

We've discussed the donation button placement, and decided it's good there.
We *want* it to be seen, and yeah, the site stats show perfectly that keeping this up is not cheap.

[Xellon]

Sigh, I think I said this before, but Make the donate button bigger and animate it (like some pink fireworks in the back or something like air suggested xD).

Anyway, now for my opinion.

1. Boring..... but its basic, readable, easy to navigate and find what you need (note that text file is fine especially depending on the screen resolution. Mine is at 1280 x 1024 and I can see it just fine).

2. Capitalize (first letter, 2nd if title.. yea u know) games under the overview, go, login, public beta, top, everything on the nav bar at the top, and site status..... etc

3. Straighten out the pcsx2 title. No diagonals, something I learned at school in a graphic design class I took (not my major though so not sure y and I never asked).

4. Hope you plan on centering it overall in the browser. All that white I'm seeing on the right is bad composition.

DONT GET ME WRONG, I'm not being mean or trying to say anything bad about the design. I'm just giving my critique to help improve the look. I would suggest. But depending on the different themes...... well, we'll see.

[CKemu]

Well feedback just on this page has been "interesting", buggery knows what you'll make to the "Live Saqib Strip Show" and "PCSX2 SUPER KAWII HENTAI MANGA COMIC", but we shall see!

Okay to address some issues raised here:

Xellon: Boring!! GASP! But no it is meant to be fairly simple, cuts down server load and helps with navigation, points you touched on.

The captialization of first letters is indeed standard grammar, I decided not to for section titles and lead menu for stylistic reasons, it is slightly annoying me, so if it's commented on more (in a negative light), I'll probably swap it over.

The PCSX2 logo is needing work / overhaul, and is simply a place holder, however I did graphics (years ago) and diagonals where cool, and I see them in package / logo design all the time, how odd.

Yes its going to be browser centered and somewhat dynamic for people with lower resolutions.

Critique is appreciated Xelion, I never take it as being mean, I'm a photographer by trade, so critique is handy!

Others

I'll increase the Page navigation text size and add more spacing, ensuring easier navigation.

I've often joked with Bositman and others that "Grey" or "Black" are the only colours geeks like, because it's easier on their sunlight starved eyes! However I do indeed plan a "Dark" theme for the site, similiar colours to the 1.0 version of the site (if you remember that far back! - Crikey this is ol'skool).

As for the donation button, we have one now, so rightfully one should exist within the next design, yes the placing is vaguely strategic, this site is afterall visited by around 13,000 people every day! Screen size + browser navigation (and morons with a billion spam bars, yahoo search bars etc), will make it less visable as it will be pushed off the visable screen, however on some pages it's goiing to be more relevent as people will scroll.

All said, this makes it less of a "blemish" for those allergic to donations, but hey you don't HAVE to donate.

Other feedback was mildly nonsensical, text too narrow? The site is using a larger font, and is almost double the current sites width, are you sure you clicked on the bar to make it show "full size"?!

Text wall over, next post should be a picture of the contextual login box (eg; after you've logged in) and currently I'm working on a much more feature rich compat list.

For those curious about the media section, it will be broken into several catagories "screenshots", "videos", "design", design will basically contain some historical material, from scrapped site proposals, joke artwork made for the team (KOSMOS BSOD, Comic Strip), GUI concepts for when PCSX2 was going to be skinned (idea was scrapped back around 4 years ago!), logos, icons etc

Still under proposal for the "media" section is "wallpapers", something for PCSX2 fans to use on their desktops, its a "maybe" idea, and feedbacl on that idea will be appreciated!

[The Warrior]

I really like it.

[CKemu]

Quick post showing the contextual logged in box:

Avatar will link to your profile, colour swatches will set the theme, message icon will take you to your inbox and the log out text will obviously log you out.

News page number navigation has had a font size and icon size increase, to aid ease of navigation.

[CKemu]

One of the smaller new features to the compat list, moar filters and the ability to save your personal preferences with regards to filters! Given the space the key takes up, possibly going to have a minimise / maximise feature on that panel, as it's only a quick reference box.

[CKemu]

Prototype for the compatibility section.

New features include:

• Region Filters
  
• The abilty to save your personal filter preferences
  
• New filter to display ONLY games tested with the current release
  
• Direct link to patch file
  
• Tester and testers machine information
  
• Framerate data based on testers machine
  
• Notes and details relating to the game and specific fixes, errors, workarounds and issues
  
• Multiple Screenshots
  
• On page key
  

FEEDBACK WANTED - This is a key component to PCSX2.net and to the PCSX2 community as a whole, if you like it, hate it or want things different, now is the time to voice your opinion, because once this gets to coding stage, you're fresh out of luck, and I stop caring

[CKL]

I personally like the new design very much except for the text on the right hand side boxes. I think Having the first letter capital is better than all small letter. Are you intend to keep it that way? or is it because this is just a demo, so you put in some random text just to fill those boxes out? Also, are you going to use the same text colour for the boxes title such as those Final Fantasy X's? Using one text colour for the extire site seems to be quite dull, so a different colour for those titles may look better. By different, I don't mean using something like red or yellow, I mean something similar to grey yet different.

[Pillus]

Making new words like Playable etc, in first letter caps makes it look more pro (just dont write "PlAyAbLe" and im happy though

I like using the same text for each news topic though, i recon the topics will be a little longer so it wont be filled with ALOT of topics with the same color anyway.