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Welcome to the new Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ website!


CourtneyWoods

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Well, now that we've established that we're open to improving the website...

 

Maybe next time around you'll allow us to pull up guild and player stats?

 

I like being able to see how I'm doing compared to other people.

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Personally, I hate the new design. It just... hurts my eyes. It's not as neat or as clear as the old one was.

 

However, I understand that this is a matter of preference. I'm sure there are people who felt about the old design how I feel about the new one.

 

Could we get an option to change between site designs? Even if you leave the layout similar, I'd like a forum skin that's pretty close to the old design. It was much easier for me to read.

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One thing I don't particularly like is the new thread overview. Basically there is for every thread whats looks like an entire line just so that in two places the OP's name and that of the latest poster is display, something which I have never cared about in any forum anyway, yet here now means only half as many threads fit in the same space (i.e. twice the scrolling or page switching).
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Don't care for the grey tones (more partial to blacks and blues), nor the font (it looks stretched vertically.) Buttons kind of wash out.

 

It's not terrible and there are improvements over the old site, but it could use some tweaks, or better yet, give users a choice of skins/stylesheets. Haven't worked much with Drupal, but I'm sure that's one of its base functionalities.

 

Edit: Also I HATE the fact that the menus have no :hover expansion. (As a web guy I know that's to help screen readers, but honestly, I'd rather they make more robust screen readers than forcing web designers to sacrifice utility to everyone else)

Edited by dannomite
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Didn't see the sticky thread and posted this initially in what I suspect is a soon to be locked thread, so cross over:

 

Alternative colouring is fine in itself for me personally.

 

However there are a few readability problems I have already found myself experiencing, due to the up size of pretty much everything.

 

On initial forum load, at 1600x900 resolution the banner header takes up most of the screen realestate, and what little I can see of the forums is a over inflated image and rather large side links to the developer tracker.

 

I am guessing the redesign was aiming for easier accessibility... but may have gone slightly over board with the super sizing every single button, link and image humanly possible, when even typing this post requires me to scroll down the page to see the full post creation frame after the 7th line.

 

Examples:

 

What I see every time I access the forums: http://content.screencast.com/users/...04-17_1746.png

 

How far I have to scroll down through the enlarged images and small handful of initial super links just to get to the forum section overview: http://content.screencast.com/users/...04-17_1747.png

 

 

I am liking the new style itself.... but certain aspects of the design just feel counter intuitive from a perspective of navigation and quick access to where you need (or rather want) to go.

 

Front page suffers the same problem, all the top news used to be expandable and collapsible and everything was available at a glance to peak your interest... now it's a whole scroll down the page affair, but with a fancy Javascript/PHP slide show at the top for marketing.

 

http://content.screencast.com/users/Tikigod/folders/Jing/media/3b1295ae-3e98-4885-8cb1-e20c3046457f/2012-04-17_1757.png

 

Looks impressive when you first load and go "WOW!", but then if you sit back and think about the design you realise the new design effectively isolates first page load from any at a glance news, promotions and trial detection included on the frontpage... all you see is a static slide that gradually changes every 6-7 seconds and the navigation bar to other pages which is likely what you will impulsively use rather than scrolling down and seeing "PLAY THE GAME FREE FOR 3 DAYS TRIAL!"

Edited by Tikigit
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We are excited to unveil the brand new Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ website! We’ve completely rebuilt the website from the ground-up, with the intention of providing you with the latest game updates in an easy to navigate way. In addition to all of the latest news and information that is released, we’re also going to give you much more information about in-game content. Right now, you can check out our updated Flashpoints page on the Holonet, which includes information for each of the seventeen Flashpoints currently in the game.

 

Read More

 

 

Congratulations... new web page probably required alot of work, can you however tell me, who was the not so intelligent person responsible for yellowish text on black / very dark background? aka every second post?

Yellow and black is the highest contrast color combination, but contrast is not the same as readability. There is a trade-off between contrast and readability: too little contrast makes things hard to read, but too much contrast creates so much vibration that it diminishes readability.

 

High contrast makes more sense outdoors when something needs to be read at a distance at high speed (driving at night), but even on the highway, yellow and black is used sparingly, for warning signs. Normal highway signs use less-jarring white on green or blue on white. Yellow on black is really overkill on a stationary screen 12" away from the reader's eyes.

 

White on black is nearly as bad as yellow on black. The screen makes this problem worse, because you do not have simple white, as on a piece of paper, but bright light, whether white or yellow. Some people prefer dark backgrounds on web pages, as on slides, to cut down on the amount of glare, but black is an unnecessary extreme, and tends to be favored by adolescent males, both designing and reading. If this is not your target audience, and you like dark backgrounds, you might think of other alternative colours.

 

With a dark background, ensure you do not have overly-bright lettering: tone down white lettering to a pale gray, or dull the colour used to minimize extreme contrast and glare; this principle is used when doing slides, as well: at least 5% gray is used to cut the glare of bright white. Interestingly, this still "reads" as white. Also, make the text bold, so it has enough body not to be "eaten alive" by the darkness.
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