New navigation system for Freewaregenius
Submitted by Samer on May 22, 2008 – 12:08 am25 Comments
As you will no doubt have noticed, my site has a new AJAX navigation system. The purpose behind implementing this: to enable users of my site to view more stuff that they may be interested in.
Please let me know what you think. There are still some tweaks and improvements that need to be implemented (e.g. wasted space in the “featured article” section, as well as a few others). Here’s a list of new functions:
- Featured articles: the left side of the navigation will randomly show one of four featured articles that I have. You can scroll through these using the litte “< >” arrows.
- Tabbed pages: under the Freewaregenius logo. Something that I wanted for a long time.
- Tabbed navigation: bulleted lists of postings, “recent posts”, “popular posts”, “most commented”, etc.
- Category list in the navigation: one that is hierarchical. Note: I will be revamping the category list and adding a “Freewaregenius Pick” category sometime in the future.
- Tags: I don’t have my posts tagged yet, but when I do there will be a tagcloud displayed in the “Tags” tab in the Ajax navigation.
- A subscribe by email formbox: for those of you who want to be notified by email whenever there’s a new post.
- A related posts section at the bottom of a posting: which at the moment is blank because apparently these relationships are bassed on tags, which I do not have at the moment.
- Social bookmarks at the bottom of the page: and a general one at the top near the logo.
Does anyone know of a way to tag and/or categorize postings in Wordpress en-masse without my having to go in and do it for each posting individually? Please let me know.
I do have an opinion on this design, but for now I will withhold it so as not to influence any feedback. Please write with your comments and suggestions.
Thanks!.
I like it, and I’d be used to it soon enough, but I think it takes up too much vertical space. On my 1280×768 laptop, the headline is just visible at the bottom of Firefox’s view. I think you could cut it down almost by half if you could remove some of the blank black space on the left and cut the list to show only 8-10 lines of text.
You could also slim your top banner by at least 1/3 just by removing blank space – perhaps you could make the new navigation pane appear to be inside the top banner?
Cheers.
Agree… the stuff up top takes up a lot of space. On my 3rd monitor at 1024×768, you don’t see the current article unless you scroll down. New content should be at the forefront, archive type links etc should appear in the sidebar, or bottom. Otherwise, it looks cool, and will make things easier to find.
My general strictly personal opinion – anything with AJAX in it should just die. It is mostly heavy, slow and unneeded stuff. It takes enormous amount of work to make good fast site… and only bit of ajax to break it to hell.
I really don’t think it’s polite and proper of me to coment from the site-building point of view… that’s your site, you can do whatever with it…
From the faithful reader point of view – I really… REALLY hope to wake up tommorow and read that this design is very late april’s fool joke.
PS I am very minimalistic in my tastes… if rest of readership screams from happines… It would take me only 4-5 filters in ad-blocker to never ever see parts I don’t want again, so I am not really depressed. Maybe a bit.
I quite like it. But I run my laptop at 1440×900 so I’m guessing the folks at lower resolutions might have a point. Maybe 10 most recent x (instead of 17) would make it a “best of both worlds” scenario? I dunno. Again, @ 1440, I think it’s great
good but ugly, maybe you could bring it down to 7 lines and scrolling
I agree that the new article should be more forefront and not the headline at the bottom of the page. The tabbed thing is nice but on the whole I think there is too much information on one page. Personally I like a more minimalistic approach.
10 most recent instead of 17 would be a nice idea.
But I wouldn’t try to win space by cutting away all the blank space. It will make the page look more crowded, and it would be less easy to find stuff on the page.
Blank spaces are an important part of page design methinks.
I like it, but I don’t think it should be at the top of the page once you go into an individual post.
It’s fine for the homepage, but could you move it into a sidebar or something for when you go into a specific article?
It’s really lousy use of space. The added functions might be nice if they are moved out of the way. Social bookmark links are too darn big. Personally, I don’t find them helpful at all. They lead to snowball status without merit. YMMV.
Take a look at this: http://www.virtualhosting.com/blog/2007/scientific-web-design-23-actionable-lessons-from-eye-tracking-studies/
I’ll send you an archive of that and some of the linked pages, sans web bugs and other crud, via your email link.
IIWM, I’d put all the stuff you have up top and the social links (as little bitty icons) in the left column just below where it says “FREEWAREGENIUS RECOMMENDS”
You might also get some ideas from CyberNet News but don’t adopt their empty space at the top of the page. SnapFiles is another example of a useful page with a stupid design. The whole first screen is filler. Look at the page with a thumbnail view (Thumbstrips or similar browser extension) to see if it’s designed well. If you can’t easily see the “meat”, the design is poor.
Samer,
I suddenly feel lost on your site, it is to busy for me, you could try simplifying it and putting the menus etc at the bottom of the page.
Regards.
First out of the gate, please use some other color for the letters, like black! Henry Ford was right!
He said, “you can have any color as long as its black.”
Legibility is the first order of business!
Changed my mind. Here is a direct link to the web design article with the linked pages and all of the relevant parts of the useit and poynter web sites. http://rapidshare.com/files/116755885/Scientific_Web_Design_-_23_Actionable_Lessons_from_Eye-Tracking_Studies.zip
Another good reference is the sitepoint book, “Principles Of Beautiful Web Design”.
Way, way too busy. You’re trying to do too much.
I agree with the comment about ajax stuff needs to die. It’s exremely slow on every site I go to.
Nearly everyone is coming for the latest story. At the bottom of that story you might have some related posts. And of course search is needed. Beyond that, it’s way overkill, way too busy and extremtly confusing. The latest content isn’t even visible above the fold.
Focus on content, not web design
I really don’t like it. I enjoyed the search by topic down the side. I always find a couple of things I didn’t see before and always find what I need. I had to leave this site to find the software I needed today.
I miss the other look.
Thank you for the great site.
Sorry, thumbs down. My eyes have not yet forgiven me.
I don’t like it – the tabs forum on the left appear too crowded and take too much space horizontally
The headline article is not prominent and appears suppressed and the colour scheme is not attractive
Overall, I think the new design has lost that intuitive easy navigation feel which you had earlier.. strongly recommend a re-design
Sorry.. I meant the tabs form on the right… I think the new layout made me lose my orientation for a minute..
Thanks guys for all your feedback.
I am going to get his design changed to something much much simpler and more compact, but I will retain the Ajax tabs in some form (will make sure to reduce the informational overload and give each entry a lot of space). I’m hoping for a good trade off between form and function.
The featured articles part will be gone, though.
Some notes:
@ fae: the categories are still accessible throught the “category list” tabs in the new nav.
@jae, Brian: not everyone is coming in for the latest story. Approx half my traffic comes from Google into older posts, and very few of these people read other postings besides the one Google served them. The whole point of the new navigation was to get them to look at other posts (that’s why the Nav system appears in the individual posts).
Just wanted to give thanks for all you do. And for what it’s worth, tho some may find the site a bit busy, my personal experiences have always yielded results by simply utilizing the search bar. Also, I have come to enjoy scrolling and clicking through the site aimlessly for the fact that I usually stumble across that very useful program I may have skimmed through previously without giving it full attention (for whatever reason). Most significantly , I find myself gaining knowledge of my OS and habits with every visit. I have learned more about computing since I stumbled upon this site than in all my xp years of trial and error ( and microsoft.com).
I would also like to add i like better the old design, but the new functionalities are indeed interesting, and should not be trashed.
Still, the main problem, i believe, remains:
your link for the software/website featured on every article and for the author’s website is minuscule!
You always have people asking “where’s the link?” and rightly so.
Surely it is just a simple matter of changing a css element!
just my 2 cents of an euro,
pedro
I like the featured articles links, just don’t like the way they dominate the top of the page. Some articles are going to have a little more life. Your summary articles such as the recent turn-based games one and the older only-freeware rebuild one are good. IIWY, I’d strongly consider a move back to the old design with a banner and 3 columns, the left-most of which is dominant. That seems to be fairly common in a lot of places with good reason. Look at the articles I mention above about the F shape and you’ll see why. Maybe it’s cultural conditioning, maybe it just makes sense with the way Western text is organized.
Updated it.
I hope now it has a better balance between form and function!
Didn’t like the ‘new features’ initially (sorry), however I feel the update is good. IMHO it’d be still better cut down a few bars, taking the search function above the line and giving that space to the page. Add all your posts to the scroll window, and it would provide a useful benefit. Still a fav site
I came back here to find that Ian pretty much said what I wanted to say! I would tighten up the banner a bit more (you could reduce the height of each row to match the size of the font better) and to move the search bar up, just as he suggested. As you can see by the screenshot I linked to below, the banner still takes up about half the view on my 1280×768 laptop, even with my pretty slim Firefox setup.
http://img46.imageshack.us/my.php?image=freegenkp7.jpg
Ask for criticism, and you shall receive.
@Joe.
The height of the rows is large that way in order to give the eye some breathing room (compared to the way they were before), making them more likely to be read rather than filtered out.
Your screenshot blocks out the google ad to the left of the search box, leaving what might look like wasted space to you, but what is an important element that is there for a reason.
I suppose I could move things around in order to eliminate one of those rows and reduce the height of the banner by approx 29 pixels, but that might make the left hand side way too compressed/cluttered. In any case I am happy with this result. It is always going to be a tradeoff between form and function and I think this tradeoff is good.
Thanks for all the thought you’ve put into this!
The link I posted above for the eyetracking study is outdated. The new version is at http://rapidshare.com/files/245464062/Scientific_Web_Design_-_23_Actionable_Lessons_from_Eye-Tracking_Studies.iso
This is a “sanitized” (ads removed) local archive of stuff that I find helpful when doing page layouts.