The new layout

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Khuri
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The new layout

Post by Khuri » Fri Jun 27, 2008 11:04 am

Hey Universe!

Now we moved to a new webserver, given us more ressources for the future of this website, for more guides, more tools, and, in the close future, more interactivity for you with the website. But one thing will not change alltogether: AO-Universe has been and will stay ad-free!


As you might've noticed, with the move to a new server we also changed the websites layout in general and the news page.
The news page should give you more useful information on top now and look smarter at the same time.

The general layout of the website has been rewritten from scratch and should now be more browser compatible and faster to load then before. The new menu layout should give you faster access to the information you need. A zillion little bugfixes happened all over the place, and should clear the path for new additions.


How do you like the new the frontpage, the layout?
Your feedback is, as always, much appreciated :)

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Snakebite
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Post by Snakebite » Fri Jun 27, 2008 12:50 pm

After a couple of moments of 'what teh hell???'...

I LIKE IT! :lol: :D
Image
Don't make me come in there and Moderate you!

Lamargo
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Post by Lamargo » Fri Jun 27, 2008 3:56 pm

Lookin good! :)

Once little bug for you though...

When you post on the forum, after hitting submit, the next screen which comes up with the link to view your new post makes the menu options come up as what I can only describe as 'default' names and "DM", or similar, instead of the little radial buttons.

I only saw it on my last post. I'll post this and take a better look...

-edit-

Yeah, it's definetly wrong, think that page hasn't had it's template changed yet, I've made a screenshot to show you what I mean.

http://www.keepandshare.com/doc/view.php?u=656118
[img]http://www.scene-and-heard.com/ao/sigs/sig_lamargo.jpg[/img]
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Khuri
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Post by Khuri » Fri Jun 27, 2008 5:00 pm

Thanks for the info and pic! I know where that comes from, Lamargo. I'll fix it in a bit :)

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Post by Lamargo » Fri Jun 27, 2008 5:19 pm

No probs. I know how it can be to setup a site like this, theres always that one file or that one section you miss when editing in the format! Glad to help! :)
[img]http://www.scene-and-heard.com/ao/sigs/sig_lamargo.jpg[/img]
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Khuri
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Post by Khuri » Fri Jun 27, 2008 10:01 pm

Lamargo wrote:When you post on the forum, after hitting submit, the next screen which comes up with the link to view your new post makes the menu options come up as what I can only describe as 'default' names and "DM", or similar, instead of the little radial buttons.
Fixed!

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ZoeF
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Post by ZoeF » Tue Jul 08, 2008 10:48 am

Sometimes i got the feeling the layout is the same as it was before except for the little drop down feature if you know what i mean. And i also realised that the order on the website lacks a bit here and there. Sometimes i have a hard time actualy finding a guide, and than i am not speaking about the guides itself those can be a bit to complex for what actualy is needed.

Some guides that you have on your site are way better on other sites. Maybe you guys / girls should think about direct linking to other guides that are better ?

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Post by Trgeorge » Tue Jul 08, 2008 11:59 am

Better/worse guides & linking.... :roll:

I guess it's all the matter or personal prefferences. Yes, some guides are a bit complex, but so is the game. We try to include all the important info as well as try to teach players a thing or two so they don't get stuck somewhere.

So beside the fact indentifying "better" guides is near imposible, there's another problems with linking to other sites. Copyright would be the first. Another one would be diversity. We're just one of many fan-sites. Like the rest (well, most of them), we do it because we're passionate about game and as such, we support other sites. But if everyone would just link "best" guides, there would be no diversity and no need for different sites. Yet again, some players wouldn't like "best" guides or find them either too complex or lacking information.

In short: we never claimed we're the best. But we try to be unique as well as offer players choice which guides they'll use. We appreciate the feedback and if we agree informatin is usefull we edit guides.

PS: If you have problem finding guides, there's search option. Just enter NPC or item/reward name and you'll be able to find relevant guide. There's also new option to search guides by patch content was added (only 17.x series so far, harder to find info on older patches).
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ZoeF
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Post by ZoeF » Tue Jul 08, 2008 12:45 pm

Hehe i tried that search function. And either you people forgot some common names in some of the guides or the search function lacks 2. Try to search for hollow island. And you wil know what i mean. I know i had troubles finding other handy guides with this search function. Like i said before the site needs a rehaul 2 get everything in place.

And something else i noticed and i wich 2 say. The script editor on the site lacks alot of usefull gizmo's like the popup window, %t, %1,2,3,4 and alot of chatcmd functions and so on. And if i can recall what you said we try to give people some good info about some other things i got the feeling that with this part your making it to easy.

Just a good guide ( don't say it is the best ). But anyone who tried it ( from start to finish ) said it was easy to understand and one of the better once around. http://www.zoef-design.be/ao/

And with linking you don't break any copyright. I can place a link 2 coca cola on my site and they wil not put me infront of a judge.

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Post by Trgeorge » Tue Jul 08, 2008 1:59 pm

While we maybe have most complete set of guides, there are some we're missing. HI is one of those, so no wonder you can't find it.

As for script editor, I'm not the right person to adress it.
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Khuri
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Post by Khuri » Tue Jul 08, 2008 2:21 pm

First off, thanks for your comments. Feedback is appreciated.
However, i need to negate some of your comments.

Doing a new layout doesn't always have to mean it's all eye candy. In fact the whole layout of the website was redone (apart from the forum part, which only got little tweaks). Check the code, if that helps you. However you're right, the visible parts did not change too much. Thats because we like the structure and no one came up with a better solution yet, to say so.

Guide search function:
Obviously, searching for "hollow island" doesn't result in a guide for hollow island, because no guide for hollow island exists as of yet. Which also reflects in the very first guide you can click on, when you search for this name.
As example, in this guide it says:
"Note: This Chip is VERY hard to obtain, as soon as we have a guide for hollow island we'll add a link here."

Order of the website:
The order of the website confuses you in which way? Or is it just combined with the comment about the guide search function, you used to search for a guide that doesn't exist?
Now don't get me wrong if i sound sarcastically maybe, sorry about that, but we do like feedback. But if you say "Like i said before the site needs a rehaul 2 get everything in place" isn't going to help us much, except that we know you don't seem to like it. So how about giving us an example how the site should be structured to be more user-friendly?

Scripteditor:
You are right, it does not mention the use of the game variables "%t, %1, %2..." - although %1 gets mentioned once at least, but thats not much.
However, what specific chatcmd functions are you missing?
The "gizmo" of a popup window does exist. It's called Textreference. So do Links, Itemreferences, Image-Links...
There's also a small help-file, linked right on top of the editor, that should answer the users question like "what is a textreference?", and shows roughly the outcome in the preview as well, once you tried it out.
Tell me, how quickly did you check the features that you seem to miss out all these buttons that are right there, since the tool was updated last in 2006?


Your own guide is nice, however you should get a spellcheck run on it. The word "will" is written with one "l" only all over the place. Same as the word "stil". Now english isn't my native language, but i see a couple more errors by just looking over the "basic info" sites.
Personally, i think guides should usually be written in a kinda "neutral style". Now on the "dance commands", the last text part, i think the last sentence is totally misplaced there.
"ofcourse if you paste them all after eachother you wil see that everything gets over ritten by the next one so therefore we need some kind of delay in the script. Ofcourse funcom thought about that inplace of fixing the lag"

Thats just my oppinion though.

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Post by ZoeF » Wed Jul 09, 2008 12:23 am

Well first off all let me give you some examples as it seems you don't know what i mean with abilitie of finding the right guide.

Did you ever look in the Classic AO guides section.
You have roughly said don't wanne count them around 100 guides there. Located in 6 sections, wich have some small sub sections in between them. Now if you do the following it would be much better.

When you click on Classic AO open a drop down and put the seperate sections on there ( main section not the sub once ) And you would :
1. scale down the load time of the page
2. search time of people looking for a guide
3. have less maintenance problems as you can find the thing you need to edit in less time
4. ...

This is just one of the things i see and don't like.

And now to tell you what i think about your discusion about english spelling. I don't give a darn about it. If people can understand me i am happy i don't wanne be mister smart ass looking i can type strict.

But if you wanne take it that way i can do that to.
your sites end vieuw ( html ) is of such a value it makes me laugh. Maybe i can't type english but atleast my site is HTML STRICT. Your site isn't even close :: check here
With my site it states :: This Page Is Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict! And yes the site also contains php. So think the next time when you go into defense mode and assault someone there spelling. Make shure your site is decently scripted and we wil talk again.

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Post by Uragon » Wed Jul 09, 2008 9:50 am

ZoeF wrote:And now to tell you what i think about your discusion about english spelling. I don't give a darn about it. If people can understand me i am happy i don't wanne be mister smart ass looking i can type strict.
If I have to be completely honest with you, I don't want to have to read over ten spelling errors a page. And here you are preaching about valid HTML... Please, go troll elsewhere.

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Khuri
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Post by Khuri » Wed Jul 09, 2008 10:15 am

As i said before, i'm sorry if i sound sarcastically, but your post's been looking like you jumped to quick conclusions. It's my oppinion when i say i like to read guides that are written in more or less good english, especially not containing numbers for words, however thats me.


But now you do some constructive feedback, thanks for that :)

The administration for maintenance of the guides is handling data a bit different then the user page does. However, the idea with a seperate page to select the section first (or decide to view all at once) doesn't sound too bad. Could add the option to only display sections where a guide exists of, as in Notum Wars for example some sections are empty.
The loading of the page text (Classic AO) goes to around 100kb, that is acceptable in my eyes, seeing as it can hardly be reduced other then viewing less guides on the list at once.
I'll poke the other AOU staff to see what they think about that.


The HTML-compatibility is a big story. Actually, while creating the new layout, it is (was) compatible. However the page is big, and some things just show when running things live, like what happens when users post things. Or the site poll result had a HTML-construct that is working but the W3C doesn't like the layout, i only looked at the vote options (pre result) not the result part when making the layout...
All the XML-typology from the forum parts isn't a real error, though they should not appear now anymore either.
I didn't check the site anymore after putting it live, new things to work on arise quickly :roll: I take that blame.

So, thanks for pointing that out too. It should be more HTML-compatible now.
This is just one of the things i see and don't like.
Go on. I'd like to hear more ;)

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Post by ZoeF » Wed Jul 09, 2008 8:54 pm

For instance when you click on Booster Packs ( in the knowledge section of the links ) You see several sections wich don't contain anything. I am shure if you can build a site like this you can make them dissapear.

And what bothers me the most is actualy the struture of the guides.

Just to explain what i mean ....
http://www.ao-universe.com/main.php?sit ... k=0&id=382

look @ this guide why do you center images / info boxes ? It looks like everything is alignd left and than the images are middle ? Makes no sense 2 me

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