[Usability] I can't breath on this site
Thursday, January 21, 2010 by Alan Lindsay | Discussion: WinCustomize 2011 Feedback
Where did all the white space go? Galleries are terrible, skins are all smashed together now making them all look bad. Give a little space, let the skin breath, its a piece of art not a brick. Haven't we learned anything from deviantart? Its great that the thumbnail is larger, but this does not require sacrificing all the white space.
Homepage layout is terrible. All that is really featured is the WindowBlinds, Icon Packager and CursorFX advertisements. Haven't we learned anything from google? Shrink down the ads, use them more effectively, be more creative. There is no longer a reason for me to go the homepage, all meaningful content is now completely overshadowed by information that doesn't apply to me (I already have these products, what do I care?). News is now buried and can no longer be read on the home page and the New, Popular, Newest and Featured skins are bench warmers that require second looks to determine that they aren't ads themselves... way too much work for me extract meaningful information out of this page. Its useless.
What happened to easy navigation? ALL meaningful links are now buried in a houdini hover menu! Again, haven't we learned anything from google? Put a simple link on the page and people will click on it. This also goes for the terrible terrible "unpinned" filter menus. Opening and closing those babies requires way too much hand eye coordination, not everyone who visits wincustomize is a video game player, some of us just enjoy good art. Again, too much work to get meaningful information, its so much easier for me to just head over here.
Based on this new design its obvious that you are not employing your incredibly talented skinners for work on the website. The last design wasn't significantly better either. Wincustomize is like an old, tattered, dated, ugly museum that stores masterpieces in a utility closet. People who are looking at fine art want a better experience, you need to up the ante, put your talented skinners to work on the website, make it beautiful and functional.
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Reply #2 Thursday, January 21, 2010 2:30 PM
If it was such, then why do thousands of people visit the site ????
Also, I would like to tell you that most of the skinners here share their work on other skinning sites too....even deviantArt is one of them !! And for a skinner, its all about sharing what you create rather than focus on what the site looks like [ till the time its usable ]
Reply #3 Thursday, January 21, 2010 8:40 PM
I have to agree with the lack of spacing in the gallery views, it does feel very claustrophobic.
Reply #4 Thursday, January 21, 2010 9:00 PM
I think the OP is referring to the new site, rather than the current one.... and yes, he makes some relevant points. I'm not too keen on the new format, either... too Googlish for my liking.
Reply #5 Thursday, January 21, 2010 9:20 PM
lol....as if our opinions are going to change anything?
Reply #6 Thursday, January 21, 2010 9:50 PM
Doc, I have expressed my opinions on some things and they've gone ahead and made the appropriate changes. They do care 
I do have to agree that the hover menus are extremely hard to use- when moving my mouse over to the right side pane, I almost always activate another menu item by mistake. I think it would help a lot if a delay was present when switching items on the left side.
Reply #7 Thursday, January 21, 2010 11:12 PM
Bertone didn't care how the mechanics of the Alfa T33 chassis/engine was contrived...he was interested solely in aesthetics.
WC2K10 is all about mechanics - making things work. Aesthetics will be arguably secondary to logical function.
Aesthetes will always argue that function defines the form - which makes function actually quite important, really.
In Nuccio's case he ended up with....
...in 1968....a long time before his Countach...
Reply #8 Friday, January 22, 2010 3:21 AM
I agree the lack of white space is a problem and the boxes around the skins are not helping.
Likewise the expanding side menus don't work well for me. Move your mouse off them briefly and they collapse which is frustrating as a user experience.
Hopefully there will be some changes to these areas and I have made some suggestions to the developers of the site.
Reply #9 Friday, January 22, 2010 9:09 AM
I still think a floating width format would be better for WC. Please get rid of the fixed one...
Reply #10 Friday, January 22, 2010 12:09 PM
+1
About 50% of my screen is wasted space here.
Reply #11 Friday, January 22, 2010 12:26 PM
About 50% of my screen is wasted space here.
Makes little sense, to me at least, that with screens getting wider and wider that the site should get more narrow, albeit, just slightly, still quite noticable...along with having such bright attention getting blinding blue vertical gradients only serves to accentuate it. Bit of a design no no.
Reply #12 Friday, January 22, 2010 2:12 PM
I do have to agree that the hover menus are extremely hard to use- when moving my mouse over to the right side pane, I almost always activate another menu item by mistake. I think it would help a lot if a delay was present when switching items on the left side.
using this as a jumping off point but I am wondering, would people prefer that it just stays open even if it loses focus for a little? Or would they rather it become just a click to open/close menu?
Reply #13 Friday, January 22, 2010 2:24 PM
A bit of a delay would suffice, or a plain [but noticable] open\close button.. right now they jump up and down like jumping beans. Far too sensitive.
Reply #14 Friday, January 22, 2010 2:45 PM
Clicking to open the right pane would be better than what exists now.
Unfortunately, clicking the text already has an action on these menus- the galleries could have an info button separate from the text, but the Home dropdown would require an extra click to get to the same place in some cases (clicking on the left, then 'View More'-- which 'Highest Rated' seems to be missing) since an info button wouldn't make sense.
Reply #15 Friday, January 22, 2010 2:46 PM
using this as a jumping off point but I am wondering, would people prefer that it just stays open even if it loses focus for a little? Or would they rather it become just a click to open/close menu?
A bit of a delay would suffice, or a plain [but noticable] open\close button.. right now they jump up and down like jumping beans. Far too sensitive.
+1
Reply #16 Friday, January 22, 2010 2:52 PM
Quoting vStyler, reply 13
using this as a jumping off point but I am wondering, would people prefer that it just stays open even if it loses focus for a little? Or would they rather it become just a click to open/close menu?
A bit of a delay would suffice, or a plain [but noticable] open\close button.. right now they jump up and down like jumping beans. Far too sensitive.
+1
ok I'm going to try to fiddle around with getting a nice hover delay in there... with all the other bugs I'm working on, however, it might take a couple days to get up so please bear with me
Reply #17 Friday, January 22, 2010 5:37 PM
I'd prefer clicking to open and close it personally. Mouse-overs should be strictly for menus.
Reply #18 Friday, January 22, 2010 6:03 PM
Another thing regarding dropdowns is when your in a gallery and you graze the filter preferences...it starts jumping all over the place.
Reply #19 Friday, January 22, 2010 6:50 PM
Yeah, the filters should definitely be on-click only.
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Reply #1 Thursday, January 21, 2010 1:40 PM
Wow! Chill Bud and have a bubbly on me!
You are right about the skins being a mess and scattered all over the place. What ever happened to catagorizing.