New Headline Buttons Thread

All I have to say is what the hell? I don't really like them. You made them way way too small, the old way worked much better because the buttons were big and you could flick through the headlines with ease. Whereas these new Buttons are so small its just irritating to try and navigate using them.

May I propose a better system?

You should make it so the user can actually drag the headlines across, so pull the headlines rather than click a single button. I mean something like MacOS's Cover Flow, but with headlines, you can see the same system used on Apples website. So essentially the buttons are replaced with a cool Scrollbar, making better usage of the space, whilst not giving users the ability to click on unwanted functions cause to be honest they are in a god awful position.

Apple.com

So yeah if you look at the top bar with their products on it, you can see how that scroll bar is able to move around the images. With the scroll bar using ModDBs present news system really the scroll bar = a set value, so as you move left and right the bar controls the transitions between each article, so think like the Animation Frame bar in Flash/3DSMax/Maya where you can drag along to a specific point. IMO this would be a much better use of the space and still give the user ease of functionality.

You can also implement the other two icons right next to the Scroll bar as opposed to on the actual imagery.

Having a large bar IMO would just be cool, one click in the direction you want sends you hurtling towards the next or previous article. So I would strongly recommend rethinking that element of the GUI.

Sorry Intense but I don't like it (but then I never liked the Microbuttons).

Also you may want to make it Omnipresent. Just a suggestion.

A scroll bar is one really long thing button with a wheel in the middle, IMO its a perfect system. Heck you could plop it in the galleries from now on if you liked it .

Edited by: formerlyknownasMrCP

Damn! Tough feedback, I thought the new headline system was a massive improvement. Here is why I think it is better:

• Potential to list unlimited no. of headlines (currently listing 10, the old system only supported 4!)
• Loads instantly, no more waiting 30 seconds for the flash to initialize
• Works even without Javascript or Flash support (unlike the old)
• New microbuttons allow you to subscribe to the RSS, browse existing headlines
• Pauses on hover (so the headline wont change with your mouse on-top)
• Can be styled easily

I agree - the microbuttons are a little small and sluggish. I'll consider a scrollbar - though where would it sit? It needs to be intutative, and not interfere with the design. Suggestions and screen mockups are welcome!

The scrollbar could be for a row of thumbnails along the top of the element.

Also, you need to prevent clicks that miss one of the buttons going through to the banner itself. Trying to skip to the next banner but ending up going to the one that's being displayed would be very frustrating.

Varsity wrote: The scrollbar could be for a row of thumbnails along the top of the element.

Also, you need to prevent clicks that miss one of the buttons going through to the banner itself. Trying to skip to the next banner but ending up going to the one that's being displayed would be very frustrating.

That was the very first thing that happened to me, hence my post

Intense I'll whip something up for you

Only criticism I have is that yes it takes up too much space, I can reduce it to the size of a Omnipresent tab if needed. Also please note that yeah I changed the background colour, reason is because it establishes a UI Hierarchy thus distinguishing the headline from the nav bar. My main assumption is that you can make the buttons large enough to cover the Headline image and hence stop the user from clicking on the image, I think your biggest problem Intense was that your were trying to cram too much functionality into a small space, when you want to be doing the complete oposite and making more use of your horizontal spacing and at the same time keep it all simple.

The bar uses an snapping idea where each headline has a set number on the scroll bar, so as the transitions occur the UI thinks to itself "oh I have to go here now" so the bar moves as you call the function to move to the next headline. Alternatively user input can be used.
A way to program the transitions would be that once the user moves the scroll bar within a set range (so say 10-20 values of the scroll bar) then that would be = to the next headline and hence the transition is called when the bar is within that range, so using that you could quite easily make that concept I made work exactly as I showed it.

Also intense be aware that I did make the micro buttons much larger to avoid seams that would cause the user to accidentally click on the background image, that is how I resolved that issue.

I could also come up with something similar for the gallery system.

Edited by: formerlyknownasMrCP

That looks quite good. I'll add it to my list - we will have to live with the current implementation for the time being though, got quite a bit of pressing stuff to complete thats all!