Your Thoughts On Our New Site Layout

Well guys,
We've decided to scrap banners and give you more room for space and content. As you can see on our front page, we've rearranged everything, hopefully to provide you with a better learning experience.

What you do think of our new layout, and do you have any suggestions or improvements that we could work into it? Don't be shy... speak up! We want to make this site better for you.

Love the site w/ out the banners. Good choice. I think most who visit this site already know about most product offerings out there as it is, so the banners did nothing more than take up space w/ redundant info.

Anyway, a suggestion: The way you present how articles are rated could use improvement; it's hard to visually distinguish between the shades of red that indicate what an article's rating is, and hovering over the graphic to find out is a pain. Either make the colors more distinguishable, or simply print out what the current rating is (ie - "8 out of 10"). As it is now, the way you present the rating graphic merely takes up space IMHO. Food for thought.

I like the color scheme, but most of all, I like the socket6 "Developer News" section.

i don't really think that theres that much of a difference, but in general it's an improvement.

as for the flipped corner thing, it's a nice idea and seems to be high quality work, it would grow old really fast haden't it been for it remebering what position the user left it in. you should however pair it up with browser detection, it really sucks in opera (see attached image)

btw. any chance of you releasing the source for it?

:water

& here's how it looks in opera when it's closed

I really like the EditWorksPro ad you have in the corner, it has a good concept , however I would find it annoying if it opened in front of me every visit .

The new layout makes it easier to see the latest updates etc... Overall good job, keep it going guys!

hmm, the add should only open in IE? weird?? ill look into that, i think i might write an aritcle on how to make flash ads, sorry for the problems in other browsers

This wont happen, once it shows once, it sets a cookie and minimises for the rest of your visit

just remebered where the opera problem is coming from

under the network tab in preferences opera is default set to identify itself as msie5 so your site pushes the flip corner thingy, if opera is set to identify as opera everything works fine.

:water

Great job. Very clean, very functional and still looks good. It carries your visual style and branding but presents the content in a more open area. Seems much less croweded.

One thing still bugs me about the front page that bugged me before, and until now I couldn't put my finger on it. Now I think I know what it is. The author pics don't have any color. Maybe keep the photo B&W, but make the background the DA orange that you use, or maybe the lighter blue. Give those a dash of color to really draw peoples eye to the articles.

I don't much care for the poll though. That's just me, I don't care much about polls in general and think the space could be used for something more imporant.


While I'm blabbering, I like the S6 headlines on the front, but don't like them competeting with your top article. I think I'd like them just after the articles before the subscribe button.

Which just leaves the forum box, which I'd like to see have alternating table colors on each line making that section stand out. Since some of the titles are short it seems like the space to the right of them is wasted - hey, maybe that's where the news should be. Make that section half forums and half headlines?

I really like the new look! I'm just throwing out ideas. Feel free to ignore me

I'm with Crowe on the Socket6 news headlines. I really like having them on the devArticles homepage, but they seem kind of obtrusive being with the first article. Other than that, it all looks really good. I want to add that I really like the color layout of the entire site. It is unique and very sharp.

hey,

I dont want to be a wet fish, but I think I preferred the last layout.... the thing I loved most about the site, was as soon as I opened the page, I could see the last few posts on the forum... now I have to scroll to the bottom of the screen....

maybe I'm just layzee...

Guys,
Thank you VERY much for your positive feedback and suggestions. I've just compiled a list and me and the team are going to run through them in a couple of hours. Here's a couple of things that WILL be implemented within 24-48 hours:

- Our own full-text site search, scrapping our current atomz.com search account

- News moved next to forum posts

- *Maybe* move the poll and put forum posts in its place...

I'm really glad that everyone liked the flash ad for EditWorks -- we're trying to set high standards across all of our sites, and in the next couple of weeks we will be rolling out even more unique ideas across the network, so stay tuned

P.S. We really do appreciate your feedback!

Full text search has now been implemented. You should be able to find out 200+ articles alot easier now

How about a pulldown menu for the search engine so you can search in a specific category like PHP or ASP?

woo hoo! I love it! Much better guys!

Really an improvment! More nice to the eye. A calmer and more estetic concept. Keep up the good work,guys! You are really doing a great job, and I hope it pays off. It must be a lot of hours for you.

This is the best dev place on the entire net, if you want my opinion.

aaah I can become lazy once again.... you've moved the forum posts to the top of the page... me riky very much! (any one know which simpsons episode that's from...??!! ehhe!)