New ValveTime Design: Let us know what you think!

[Chris D]

Welcome to the new ValveTime.net style!

Along with the new look, we have also upgraded XenForo to 1.3.3 so there are quite a new features too. For the most part we'll let you familiarise yourself with those until another time.

In the meantime, please do let us know if you see any issues at all with the style, or generally if you want to tell us what you like or what you don't like, please head over to the comments.

Thanks!

Chris

 

[tesla]

I miss the recent forum activity sidebar on the right. Apart from that looks fine.

 

[MFL]

Holy shit they brought back Planet Half-life.

 

[Omnomnick]

I miss the recent forum activity sidebar on the left. Apart from that looks fine.

This is definitely something we need back, @Chris D.

 

[Chris D]

Do you mean the Recent Threads block on the right?

 

[Omnomnick]

Do you mean the Recent Threads block on the right?

That's the one. It's one of the features I think needs adding the most, alongside the return of Slides.

 

[User With No Name]

Wow, was not expecting this. Or maybe I should have and I wasn't paying attention again. Though, as many people have pointed out, the only feature I would like to see return is the recent threads side blocks. It was very convenient for jumping right into a beautiful, sprouting forum topic.

 

[Chris D]

It's no problem.

It was a feature included in Xen Porta by default. But the support with that add-on is crap, the author of the add-on is just awful and has received $5,000 from a crowd fund to complete the next version and has since disappeared off the face of the earth.

I didn't care what we lost in the transition from Xen Porta, be it categories, content slider or sidebar blocks, the software had to go. Awful software.

That being said, there is an alternative that I will implement soon. Widget Framework. We had it before. But I wanted to make the upgrade process as simple as possible so we'll start again with it.

 

[ncla]

Too damn dark. Right now the sun is shining outside and viewing the page this dark makes me want to close this website. Light theme would be much more preferred, or at least as an optional feature.

The news entry block background color is almost the same as body background color making it hard to tell where the news entry ends apart from the social sharing buttons.

The sidebar on the main page, why does it change transparency when hovering? Is it the "unwanted child" that you have to lower its opacity?

Browsing more through the site, forum categories background images should be clickable, for example the whole Counter Strike category image. But no, I have to click the link that says "Counter Strike". Also why does some forum categories have brighter font color than others? Are some forum categories unwanted too?

I could probably find something more and be nitpicky, but cba now. Posted here as advised by Nick on Twitter.

 

[Chris D]

1) The colour scheme is pretty much the same as what we had before, but I do take your point about the news post containers.

2) It's a feature in the style that we had created for us. We'll see what others think about it. Have heard positive things about it too. Functionally it makes your eyes more drawn to the rest of the content on the page rather than the sidebar which can, at times, be a bit "busy".

3) We'll see what others think about categories being clickable.

4) The categories which are brighter are telling you that there are posts in there that you haven't read yet.

 

[ncla]

I have visited this site before, and I can tell you that on the old one colors didn't blend so much with each other as on this new one.

"Functionally it makes your eyes more drawn to the rest of the content". Main container block is wide enough to draw attention to it. It should be obvious to people what kind of page layout structure this is on main page ( main content | sidebar ). I do agree sidebar stands out a bit more when hovered, but then why not make both main container and sidebar more brighter?

I do not have my monitor set to the max brightness simply because it burns my eyes, but I should not be punished for using a low brightness. Also this reminds me to clean my monitor.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

I would like to add for the news posting purposes I wish the titles of our articles stood out more than the beige colour (even if the font is larger). I find it difficult to lock my eye onto the really important headlines because they're not immediately obvious as you scroll down. When you hover and highlight a title it instantly fixes that problem, with the red & underline. I'm not saying necessarily that's what the titles should always look like, I'll leave the solution to you!

 

[Chris D]

Any better?

Ideally we would have had this feedback a week ago

 

[Omnomnick]

I think the site could generally be lit up a lot by simply making text white (or something not far off), rather than grey.

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

Oh god what have you done

 

[Aizawa]

I Like it

 

[Dr.IndianaJones]

This is what you did while I was away! I like it.

 

[Lolcomputer]

It looks a lot more compact, simple and comprehensible if you ask me. I don't really think the color scheme is a problem, so I think it's a job well done.

 

[Wheaties-Of-Doom]

Change! AAAH!

Everything looks and acts fine, and I'll get used to it in about a day.

.... although... the large banner that cycled through new stories was kinda nice. Everything feels a little offset without it. That could just be my natural reaction to change, though.

 

[Omnomnick]

Change! AAAH!

Everything looks and acts fine, and I'll get used to it in about a day.

.... although... the large banner that cycled through new stories was kinda nice. Everything feels a little offset without it. That could just be my natural reaction to change, though.

Don't worry, the slider is the number 1 feature I want back, followed closely by the "Recently Active Forums" sidebar.

 

[Chris D]

Unfortunately they're not quite coming back in that order... Slider might take a while longer yet. But it's high on my list too.

 

[Krynn72]

:arms:

Wasn't the last full site redo just like 2 years ago? I feel like we keep changing just for the sake of changing. I don't see anything in particular that makes this new version any better than the previous one. Was prompted by back-end issues?

I also agree that the colors could use some tweaking. Dark red text on near-black backgrounds for instance is hard to read. The font color for post-text should be brighter (like it is in the reply box). I also think the default font size for writing in the reply box should be bigger. Its hard to read over what I'm writing right now unless I move my head in closer, at least at my screen resolution.

 

[Pikminiman]

As has been said, I miss the "Recent Activity" window on the front page. That said, though, everything else looks great to me. Since I reside in a dark room, the low-contrasting colors actually suit me well. And there's still a dedicated page for "Recent Activity," so it's not as if it's gone completely.

I especially like the fact that the total width of the website pages is significantly larger now, what with widescreen monitors.

I also like the fact that the "Compose" box at the base of forum threads (like this one) periodically saves drafts of what you're typing, which means I won't accidentally lose progress if I'm typing giant forum posts, as I've occasionally done.

Finally, I can't tell definitively whether the main font is different now, but it certainly feels different, and I like the change.

I'm a little confused as to why clicking on news posts now goes to the forum-thread-version of that article (rather than its article view), but it's not really an issue.

 

[Chris D]

I'm a little confused as to why clicking on news posts now goes to the forum-thread-version of that article (rather than its article view), but it's not really an issue.

I think opinion is generally split over that view. Personally, I began to hate the appearance of "comments" vs posts. At the end of the day, our comment system is our forum, so for me it seems pretty pointless making those posts look like they're NOT part of the forum.

But that's just my opinion

It's not impossible to do the same thing again, but I wouldn't jump at it just because we're used to it.

 

[Chris D]

:arms:

Wasn't the last full site redo just like 2 years ago? I feel like we keep changing just for the sake of changing. I don't see anything in particular that makes this new version any better than the previous one. Was prompted by back-end issues?

Well the last redo certainly wasn't for the hell of it. We still feel it was important to rebrand. At the same time we moved to a different forum platform (which is a good thing because vBulletin 5 is a pile) and a new style was all just a side effect of that.

Unfortunately, in over two years, we have skipped two relatively major XenForo upgrades. This left us lagging behind and I don't feel right that we should be on 2 year old software for many reasons. So we're currently using the build that was released about 2 weeks ago. A year ago, one of the upgrades effectively broke most styles because they implemented responsive design. As a result, we basically couldn't upgrade with the same style we already had. It would have been possible to fix up the style that we already had, but it would have been just as many man hours to do that as it would have been to create a new one.

I'm not going to act on too many of the suggestions and feedback straight away. But the feedback is great, guys, thank you.

 

[Vegeta897]

I like the sticky top bar.

Make the post text a bit brighter.

Make a fluid width option.

The red is good for buttons but not text on the dark gray. Make it a tad brighter.

A more prominent "New Posts" button would be nice, since it's an incredibly useful and often-clicked link.

What new features can we have now that we're updated?

edit: Make the padding between the end of my post and my signature a bit larger.

 

[AYKO]

I liked the design. Liked better than the old one. Simple and classy. Never heard about XenForo software but i looks nice.
But, white texts would make posts more readable.

 

[Destructo-Bot]

Another vote for brightening the post text, and changing the reds. Red traditionally means, this needs your attention NOW, and it is being used almost randomly for things that really aren't terribly important. The POST and EDIT buttons are fine, the NAME color should change, the NEW post flag color should change. Additionally for people with a display with lesser chroma subsampling (i.e. those of us using an HDTV for a monitor) will get extremely blurry text with reds and purples over dark colors.

From a design perspective, this is not a great scheme.

 

[Tollbooth Willie]

this looks weird as shit

 

[Hectic Glenn]

I'm a little confused as to why clicking on news posts now goes to the forum-thread-version of that article (rather than its article view), but it's not really an issue.

I've always been the one pushing for that layout, since I think it's really important when our stories are linked elsewhere (direct link since they don't show position 1 front page for more than a day or two), that it needs to look like a properly written article piece. I'm of the opinion the 'forum' layout for an article comes across as too casual. The replies are more visible, absolutely, but I personally prioritise the content itself.

I've said this a couple times and people do disagree with me (except Pikminiman), I'd be interested to know if else feels the same as me? If you can't be bothered to post, perhaps just use the thumbs up or agree tick thing, as a means of a vote maybe?

 

[Vegeta897]

Need bigger buttons for the "go to first unread post" thing on each thread. Right now it's a tiny blue circle. It used to be the VT logo if I recall.

 

[Chris D]

Made the message/editor text a shade lighter. Is it ok?

 

[Vegeta897]

Yes, much better.

Also I think .messageContent should have about 8px of padding all around. The post text is so close to the edge of the box and avatar.

This also addresses my complaint about the signature line being too close to the post.


ALSO!!! Please, make the "New Posts" functionality like it was before. Right now, it will not show any threads that you've already read the latest posts in. What I would like to see is the old method, which you can access by clicking the "Recent Posts" link on the top right of the New Posts page. I want this Recent Posts page to be shown by default. It shows all recent posts in order, whether you've read the thread or not.

In other words, make the New Posts link go to this URL: http://www.valvetime.net/find-new/posts?recent=1

 

[Chris D]

Fine. Done.

 

[Vegeta897]

Thank you Chris <3

 

[Brogan]

alongside the return of Slides.

.... although... the large banner that cycled through new stories was kinda nice. Everything feels a little offset without it. That could just be my natural reaction to change, though.

Don't worry, the slider is the number 1 feature I want back

As has been said, I miss the "Recent Activity" window on the front page.

Working on it!

 

[Sidedraft]

I wish there was more space between articles on the news feed page, so you can easily tell between different articles.

 

[Vegeta897]

Clicking the button (which I said before desperately needs to be increased in size) that takes you to the first unread post in a thread scrolls your browser down so that said post is at the top of the screen. The problem is that it does not take the sticky navbar into account, so the top of the post gets hidden by it. This auto-scrolling needs to have an offset added to it to account for the navbar.

 

[AbueloNemesis]

Seems more like a regular blog, honestly I prefer the old design which was more authentic.

 

[FoB_Ed]

Liked the old design better. Also, is tapatalk functionality broken? Not working for me