SEEKING MEMBER INPUT: ATS.5/3 - give your feedback -- UPDATES May 28, 2013

I live under the "Recent Posts" tab. Hopefully that wont change much. I like it better than the Trending Pages.

Originally posted by SkepticOverlord
If you liked the prototype home page, you're probably going to love this:
ATS.5/3 Recent Posts

Much more simple, four tabs, no pagination.

What? No pagination? Scroll to the bottom to see why.

That is a nice feature that I like, too. I have used an applet for FF to achieve this in the past. But, as we all know, those FF applets carry a price in processing.

Already? We haven't had this lay out for all that long.

But then again, I find myself naturally resistant to change when it comes to ATS... Though when the change does come, I always find myself glad about the change in the end.....

But this....I don't know.. This sample picture you show us... It looks way to plain and boring compared to what we have now...

Okay....So, I guess I find myself in the same old spot...Resistant to the change....


Just please don't change the recent post page too much... To borrow from a posts above me, It's where I live....

So for what this post may be worth

reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan


Love it!

I have a 22-inch monitor and I love that it fills more than half my screen space now. I don't like that the different forums aren't different colors like they are now; for me that makes it a lot easier to sort them out. But the much greater page with makes me say go for it.

Originally posted by SkepticOverlord
So here we are again, just about 3 years since we began our last redesign, and it's time to push the mothership into this decade with a completely new "front end" that's compatible with modern browsers, and much more efficient.

I'm beginning a massive overhaul of ATS so that we end up with what's commonly known as a "Responsive Web Application" -- or -- a website that works normally on your desktop/laptop, yet gracefully scales down to run like a app on your smart phone and tablet.


Here's a look at a functioning preliminary design concept...
www.abovetopsecret.com...


Many structural ideas are borrowed from our existing site home, but the colors are a bit less dark, the content can be wider, and the overall User Experience is much more clean and obvious.


This version has not been reliably tested on all browsers yet. But you should see something close to this image (which is scaled 50%)



Since this is a significant redesign effort, I'm checking in on our members to get your feedback as I begin work on the rest of the pages.




Thoughts?

Go totally clean - white with black text, single column with the colorful icons you already have for identification of thread category for items in the feed. Good for phone too. Float persistent ads at top that follow scroll. Command/nav bar like you have at the bottom already. Gold.

I have a suggestion...I'm still a newbie and so I'm not familiar with older threads or how old they are and sometimes when I'm using the search feature or even in "Recent Posts", I'll click on something that I think is actually recent news (only because the latest post was maybe 5 mins ago) only to find out the thread was started in 2007. Then I'm a little disappointed. Is there any way to not only tell how long ago the latest post on a thread is but also tell the date the thread was started?

Since I am new I could be overlooking this feature already, if so please tell me how to tell how old a thread is before opening it.

As for the new design, I think it looks great. But I do agree with others who have mentioned the font color (light yellow) maybe needing something brighter to contrast better against the gray.

reply to post by tom.farnhill


Yes! Thank you! I have wondered myself if there was a way to do this.

reply to post by SkepticOverlord


Absolutely LOVE!

Originally posted by tom.farnhill
reply to post by SkepticOverlord

 

it would be nice to be able to see all the replies to ones comments on a post without having to scan the entire list
can we please have an extra click on that would show this on the ribbon

Maybe SO could incorporate the new Helium software to spin our post replies to us.....

I just read that, it sounds dumb even to me. But it would be neat....

Des

Hey Skeptic Overlord,

I like the design, but it seems very wide. I realize the full width page presentation seems to make it very very wide.

But another thing I was looking at is there seems to be less info as on the "recent" posts page, seems a bit too scattered and not "chunk-it-up" feeling...There's no general "F" pattern a reader would follow as in online journalism when "scanning." I like the title header and description list on the "recent posts" but the old version does seem a bit "linear," and line by line.

I noticed it is HTML5 which should offer more easily done templates and css coding to improve the design.

Perhaps it needs a third complimentary color to go with it. Seems very plain, maybe a combination of modules with a list module and summary module for "recent posts?" What could spice up the "Recent Posts" section is to have a mini-video preview of the vids contained w/ tag on the "recent posts," or some other graphics which would highlight the contents of the thread and lure readers to it?

Just throwing my .02 cents in there...

Trek

reply to post by SkepticOverlord


To be honest I'm not a fan - I think it looks too "simple" - I prefer the banner tabs at the top.

I think the redesign looks cheap - I hope you don't take this the wrong way!

reply to post by SkepticOverlord


Hi,
at first I wasn't digging that new layout which kinda resembled the new Windows, ya know what I'm sayan?
But it does make sense, and it grew on me. The colours have been 'hued down' a bit which is an improvement on readability... doesn't look like I'm playing cars on a kiddies play-mat anymore
the front page as it is now is EPIC and awesome, the kiffness is radical.
Please, please don't fiddle with it too much (unless it is for more epic, awesome, kif, radicalness)

one thing that has bothered me no end, that I kinda do a mad flip-out everytime it occurs,
is the automatic page refresh on the homepage and other pages... grrrrr rawr
it's unnecessary.
Truley.
I have a little button up there ^ that allows me to do this manually.
It's so frustrating reading through headlines and their intro's in a rush, anticipating, with fear, the dreaded refresh, which occasionally removes the topic I would have middle clicked to open in a new tab.... now I have to go find the bloody thing.

answer me this: why was the decision made to refresh automatically, anyway?

Lekker, lekker,
shmaak the site
just venting my frustrations with grannies crossing the road,
all the best
J to the mjolnir.

reply to post by SkepticOverlord


As a relatively new member of ATS, I just wanted to tell you that I am VERY IMPRESSED (!) with this website

The contents and topics shared within the forums is undisputedly unparalleled. Also, you have a very impressive staff here at ATS which is much the reason why we DO have such a great community here. I have taken part in other conspiracy and controversial topics as per forums (which I will decline to name which ones as it's not privy to point being made, and as I am sure you may conclude which ones they might be) and the difference is night and day in terms of user content, information, regulation, and general community behavior and attitudes. These values are what separates ATS from the other conspiracy sites.

With that said, I am sure whatever changes you ultimately decide to make here will be beneficial.

Thank you SkepticOverlord, Simon Gray, and all other ATS Moderators I have not listed for your hard work, integrity and utmost unobtrusive moderating.


Sincerely

unb3k44n7
-83

As others have said, please don't mess too much with the current format of the recent posts page. I visit this wonderful site several times a day and have for years and never ever look at the front page. If you must change the recent posts pages with pictures and such, please have an alternate text version that looks and works like it does now. I will cry if "my" ATS home Page goes all modern.

I've finally gotten use to the last redesign and do like rich blue colors. Understand the desire to move to new coding standards and compliant layouts but please don't bury the content behind images and dumbed down views.

For what it's worth, half my visits here are from my Android phone with my browser user agent set to "desktop" and it has always worked well with the exception being quoted text doesn't reflow on zoom.

Thank you for hearing our opinions.

Very Nice the only thing is maybe some Color other than the Grey Background, Something more Up & Cheerful in Lew of the many Depressing News that comes through ATS. Just a suggestion .

Anything that loads fast is good, and anything that loads slow is bad. I am not much into fancy designs and whatnot. Simple is better. Much like a boxey volvo sedan that is safer than a saturn sedan.

My only gripe with the site was the ribbon on the bottom of the page that slowed down the loading time of pages. It seems that got worked out now.

The auto scaling and the speed are great. I can actually grab the scroll bar and whip up and down without any hiccups. I cant do that on any ATS page currently.

I know during the last redesign my color blindness made the initial roll out horrible. Everything glowed in this puke green sea that washed out all the text.

There dont appear to be any conflicting or blending color issues on the example page.

The one thing that could ruin it for me is if you jam all those video/recap links on every page again. And the god awful ribbon. That thing coming out is an immediate drain that brings everything to a halt.

Those things kill my speed. I have to block them all to make the site useable.

To be completely honest Skeptic, the aesthetics of the current iteration of ATS is pretty chaotic. I can't speak about performance or code elegance (or the lack thereof), but I would venture to guess that is also chaotic. It is actually one of the reasons I don't have as much "respect" for this site as I once did.

I very much welcome a change in the UI of ATS, and I think CSS3/HTML5 is a wonderful technology.

Make it tapatalk compatible. Please.