What is everyone working on? #2 Thread

oh yeah, your running linux :p srry forgot about that

oh and carni, dont listen to them, looks great
when can we test it btw?

See that there is a lot more bearable than before.

I'm working on a revamp of the Dark Source website for TKAzA, and here is a basic mock up I photoshopped. I'm going for something very atmospheric and I'm willing to lose some accesbility for it. BTW, there will be a content box near the middle that may keep going vertically down on the page. Here it is:

I need opinions though, should I go Flash or just plain HTML/PHP?

Edited by: Sallycin

Honestly though, what kind of extended functionality do you need for a mod website? All the clever PHP doesn't really need to leave the forums; the front end is mainly for information (about page and such), and to sell the look and feel of your mod to potential team members and players. I think the eye candy is the main thing there; and the navigation of Salohcins page looks fine to me. As long as you don't go as far as making a silly Flash page, functionality isn't really the most important thing for this application.

Edit: maybe a flash nevigation bar would work, otherwise leave Flash out of it. You can still do submenus in PHP can't you?

Edited by: Jambozal

Woah, I'd like to see that

Google found me this:
Corephp.co.uk
Forums.bit-tech.net

Edited by: ambershee

But it's all in the application. Bad design issues aside (all of those which you mentioned are awful, agreed), what is a mod web page there to do? I can identify only 1 thing: to give info on your project. It's not there to manage your life, just to let users see images, text and possibly music/video information. All of which doesn't require a very funcionality-centric design - all you need is a clear navigation bar. Submenus are in fact useful; it gives users more specific options, while allowing the design to remain clean. I think a sprawling and text-heavy nav bar is far less useful than a concise submenu-bar any day, especially with horizontal bars.

If you were making some kind of content management, user-login based site like ModDB, this would obviously be inappropriate. But given a mod site only has to display information (the forums are for user discussion, not the website front end), I feel the graphical design is much more important than the functionality - and more so if you want to reflect your mod's genre with the site design. As something which tries to do that, I think Salohcins design fits rather well, if being a little on the bare side at the moment.
Edit: and that'll probably be fixed when the content arrives in the middle, hopefully with custom title images etc. Do keep it going down the page though, it feels a little restricted at the moment - the shadows closing in at all sides etc

and:

Edited by: Jambozal

It has issues though, for example, the current gallery section won't work particularly well once you start amassing a larger amount of images. Imo it would be better to have a seperate page devoted to the gallery. Other thing that needs work is that it doesn't really fit the Dark Source theme.

Random webcomic-ish charcter...

Flash wouldn't be that bad as long as it isn't overly shiny. Just don't over do it with visual effects.

OOMPH! - Goldenes Herz

Edit: Shit, wrong thread! :o

Edited by (in order): Jyffeh, Jyffeh

Yeah, I had it open on another tab and I wasn't paying close enough attention.

Nice work, the cropping on that rock is a bit out though. Otherwise I like the foggy atmosphere