Front Page Comments

On my primary use computer, a 13" MacBook, I can only see two of the updated galleries upon opening in Firefox 3.6.3.

On my iPod running system 2, Safari shows no galleries without scrolling in landscape, but shows 5 galleries in default zoom in vertical mode (you can't read any of the text in default vertical, but the images solve much of that). Tapping on a gallery's box is required to open the update text in iOS Safari; it doens't do it quickly.

Gallery graphics are being cropped from previous versions.

Explanatory gallery text is missing.

Will streams include more than just blogs?

Thanks for the feedback!

A large part of the new design philosophy is going to focus on "show, not tell".

- The blue buttons on the home page are on the list for potential squishing. The intro text should be different -- and shorter -- once the site remembers your login. This should get three galleries with pictures on the home page, which is an improvement over the current three galleries with no pictures.

- iPods are not a target platform since they represent 0.37% of our visits per month. However, the mouseover thing was a concern. I realized last week why the mouseover is going out of style in favor of the click: devices with no mouse pointers. Now, iPads and whatever else won't be significant for a while so we're probably going to launch with this style interface for now but it's definitely something to keep in mind for the future.

- Gallery graphics are being changed in format. Members will be encouraged to upload new graphics. The old 120x50 size is too bulky and doesn't provide significant guidance to the end user.

- Gallery text: same reasoning as above. Vaporized in all except the alphabetical gallery listings because it most often does not provide guidance to end users. Showing a few popular images from the gallery and a partial series list is far more informative as well as induces less "reading fatigue". Kids don't read these days.

- Streams: The blogging feature of the site is somewhat of a odd half-finished project. Has been for years. What I'd like to do is combine the "news" and "blog" streams from sites. That way, these types of "here's what's new in my universe" missives can be grouped into one place.

Hi Jason. Also with regards to the front page I think it would be nice to be able to have pagination on the News/Updates area, especially for the Galleries. The reason being is that finding the other updated galleries isn't really as intuitive since you have to click several times to get to it. Also it took me a few seconds to figure out where I need to go to see the longer list of updated galleries. The same applies to the marketplace, it's not as intuitive but I know that one isn't really developed yet.

Also I don't know if it matters to anyone but for me I'd rather see a pop-up of the gallery when I click the front page... The reason being is that once one gets lost browsing a gallery then getting back to front page of RS is harder. Not everyone has the RS link at the bottom of their gallery either so... Just a thought.

Finally I would say the "short text" in the blog stream isn't really necessary. I would rather lose the short text and gain more blog subjects. It would be similar kind of to how the forum stream is presented...

Gallery browsing will change slightly from what you see today. There will probably be some sort of bar at the bottom that's always on the screen. A lot of people put the bar up top (i.e. digg, google images, myspace, etc.) but I hate that.

I did forgot to put the "see more updated galleries" or "see more market items" at the bottom of all those lists. That should be on there.

Short text of the streams -- well, just blogs at the moment -- is necessary because people might not necessarily name their headlines in appropriate ways. We *want* to give people every reason to click on them. I know that this preview text should be there, but I haven't decided if it should be hidden or what. We don't have enough blogs being created that it really makes sense to feature more than 5-6 on the home page. If/when that picks up, we can probably provide correspondingly shorter previews.

Love it, love it. I like how you can click on the updated pictures of the gallery updates and see the bigger picture. I find it visually pleasing, and so easy to use- and explore the galleries being updated. The mini pictures are genius