Critique the new site

[Shirow]

I'm not even going to bother, it's not like it's a crucial feature. It doesn't stop the site working and if people want to use IE, they can live without rounded corners ;)

[Jib]

But those corners are pointy.  What happens if I am walking past my computer with a hot cup of coffee deep in though about how much the current song playing is awesome and fail to remember that I had received 500 rubber bouncy balls the night before that I dumped out on the floor, I trip, fall, and impale my left eyeball on the pointy background?

[creepster]

But those corners are pointy.  What happens if I am walking past my computer with a hot cup of coffee deep in though about how much the current song playing is awesome and fail to remember that I had received 500 rubber bouncy balls the night before that I dumped out on the floor, I trip, fall, and impale my left eyeball on the pointy background?

sux2bU, then

q=

[Lexus]

But those corners are pointy.  What happens if I am walking past my computer with a hot cup of coffee deep in though about how much the current song playing is awesome and fail to remember that I had received 500 rubber bouncy balls the night before that I dumped out on the floor, I trip, fall, and impale my left eyeball on the pointy background?

Thats called natural selection. If you manage to do that Ill make sure you get a Darwin Award ok?

[xeno]

Few points:
- As it is now, the front page is a nice "get started" page with everything a new listener needs to
  get started - it's really nice, but it's a bit annoying for regular users to get the screen filled up
  with newbie stuff, so would it be an option to have an "advanced" front page that you could
  choose as default when you're logged in - without instructions, but with more other stuff?

the "now playing" doesn't actually says "Now playing", so I'm just guessing that it is "now playing"
and not just a featured song :)

"Black Heaven - You're Listening To Digital Gunfire
From the album Unknown Album"
- when no album, the from part could be omitted, just stating "Black Heaven - You're listening to Digital Gunfire"

- latest additions:
  - I would love having paging for that... I often use "latest additions" on DG as inspiration when I'm
    gonna go bananas in iTunes / record store, so it would be nice to have access to a longer list :)
  (maybe on the "music database" page)

- music database: would love to have more info in the first list, like "Covenant (6 albums, 5 reviews)"
   or something...
- on the artist page, a list of played song and reviews pr. album

- minor detail - would be nice to choose/auto detect time zone, and not time offset, since
  - I need to know both relative to what (I also associate "Central" with CET)
  - what my offset is relative to that (the auto-detect fixes that though)
  - and then there's the summer time/winter time shit, which is different in each country and
     is bound to screw it up sometimes...

anyway, have to say it's really nice work... - I wish I had the talent to design pages like that :)



 

[Malthusian]

I hate the font.

All the letters look slightly too close together, as if I'd zoomed out and they hadn't scaled well. (I haven't zoomed out.) The double M in "Recommendation" is the worst - the letters literally join together.

It's a bit better when zoomed one level in, but not much. The thickness of the letters also looks inconsistent - again, as when you zoom out of something that doesn't scale well, and pixels start disappearing or appearing inconsistently. Small 'c's are the worst - the right-hand side of the letter looks twice as thick as the join on the left.

I'm using Firefox 3.6.3 on Windows XP and 1680x1050 resolution. Am I really the only one who sees this? I don't have a good eye for visual stuff but it hit me as soon as I looked at the page.

[Shirow]

I hate the font.

All the letters look slightly too close together, as if I'd zoomed out and they hadn't scaled well. (I haven't zoomed out.) The double M in "Recommendation" is the worst - the letters literally join together.

It's a bit better when zoomed one level in, but not much. The thickness of the letters also looks inconsistent - again, as when you zoom out of something that doesn't scale well, and pixels start disappearing or appearing inconsistently. Small 'c's are the worst - the right-hand side of the letter looks twice as thick as the join on the left.

I'm using Firefox 3.6.3 on Windows XP and 1680x1050 resolution. Am I really the only one who sees this? I don't have a good eye for visual stuff but it hit me as soon as I looked at the page.

I *think* this is probably because you don't have font anti-aliasing enabled in your OS. I did actually see the same issue on one PC I tested it on, and I kinda forgot about it. Enabling the anti-aliasing fixed it.

It is using a custom font, I was contemplating dumping it due to this issue and I probably will now that someone has brought it up again.

[Shirow]

Few points:
- As it is now, the front page is a nice "get started" page with everything a new listener needs to
  get started - it's really nice, but it's a bit annoying for regular users to get the screen filled up
  with newbie stuff, so would it be an option to have an "advanced" front page that you could
  choose as default when you're logged in - without instructions, but with more other stuff?

I'll probably add a cookie at some point that saves the page you're looking at, so you can always come back to 'community' or whatever.

the "now playing" doesn't actually says "Now playing", so I'm just guessing that it is "now playing"
and not just a featured song :)

Yeah, this is something I've been going backwards and forwards on. I think I agree that it needs a 'Now Playing' header.

"Black Heaven - You're Listening To Digital Gunfire
From the album Unknown Album"
- when no album, the from part could be omitted, just stating "Black Heaven - You're listening to Digital Gunfire"

Yeah, this is one of those 'fix at the end before it launches' things :)

- latest additions:
  - I would love having paging for that... I often use "latest additions" on DG as inspiration when I'm
    gonna go bananas in iTunes / record store, so it would be nice to have access to a longer list :)
  (maybe on the "music database" page)

How about www.twitter.com/digitalgunfire ?

- music database: would love to have more info in the first list, like "Covenant (6 albums, 5 reviews)"
   or something...
- on the artist page, a list of played song and reviews pr. album

The artist page piece isn't finished yet. # of albums, etc is a good idea. I'll see how it looks.

- minor detail - would be nice to choose/auto detect time zone, and not time offset, since
  - I need to know both relative to what (I also associate "Central" with CET)
  - what my offset is relative to that (the auto-detect fixes that though)
  - and then there's the summer time/winter time shit, which is different in each country and
     is bound to screw it up sometimes...

Yeah, I do need to fix the time part.

anyway, have to say it's really nice work... - I wish I had the talent to design pages like that :)

Thanks, I'm not super happy with it but that's why I'm soliciting input ;)

[faelaenx]

Will you be making the powder blue at least a little bit darker?

[Shirow]

Which blue part are you referring to?

[shadows_illuminated]

REVIEWS:

On a personal note, i like the idea of the reviews. It's always good to get the input of others, especially if you 'know' them (to me anyway). It can open you up to something you might otherwise not have let yourself experience or it can turn you off to something you prejudged you might like before buying it and being horribly disappointed ( <---- personal experience speaking on both sides specifically due to DG). i know, i know, you can preview most anything on places like Amazon, but frankly i don't spend much time on those nor do i throw much credulity at their reviews, though thought-provoking they might sometimes be. i'd much rather see what peers here think. My only issue with the old system was that the 5-star rating was for the whole album, though there could be any where from one to nearly all song from any given album played on DG. And really, most people tossed a rating on after hearing one specific song, which does not reflect the album as a whole. And without any explanation to accompany, one is left wondering... was it a certain song that was rated, or the whole album? And once rated, you cannot take it back or edit it in any way.

i did a whole album review once, song by song, but it actually took quite a while (as i am no pro-music critique and had to look up a lot of verbiage that some real 'philes' would probably want) and i ended up running out of available space for the post. i would have liked to have done so continually, but it hardly seemed practical. Especially since i can tend to be long winded and hard thinking...

So my suggestion really is to institute an individual song rating, with or without comment (even if kept to a minimum perhaps this is impractical or just plain too much work? i'm not a programmer, so i've no idea the level of effort you must put in Shirow, but i suspect it is beyond substantial).

Well, just putting in my thoughts. You asked, you get. Hope they are of some value.

I still would like to see the individual rating.  We can get a feel for what some of the more popular tracks are.  Also these ratings could be compiled together for the album rating, and still allow text reviews for the album.  After all the cd review should be for the whole cd.  This way you can put in your advise for something you're not familiar with but can do the review with what you are familiar with.  I've been on another site that has it and love using it.  I know I have seen that there have been others that like this idea also.  Is this something you plan on working on?

[wildpeaks]

I love how the music database on the new version is loading lightyears faster, good job :)

[Shirow]

REVIEWS:

On a personal note, i like the idea of the reviews. It's always good to get the input of others, especially if you 'know' them (to me anyway). It can open you up to something you might otherwise not have let yourself experience or it can turn you off to something you prejudged you might like before buying it and being horribly disappointed ( <---- personal experience speaking on both sides specifically due to DG). i know, i know, you can preview most anything on places like Amazon, but frankly i don't spend much time on those nor do i throw much credulity at their reviews, though thought-provoking they might sometimes be. i'd much rather see what peers here think. My only issue with the old system was that the 5-star rating was for the whole album, though there could be any where from one to nearly all song from any given album played on DG. And really, most people tossed a rating on after hearing one specific song, which does not reflect the album as a whole. And without any explanation to accompany, one is left wondering... was it a certain song that was rated, or the whole album? And once rated, you cannot take it back or edit it in any way.

i did a whole album review once, song by song, but it actually took quite a while (as i am no pro-music critique and had to look up a lot of verbiage that some real 'philes' would probably want) and i ended up running out of available space for the post. i would have liked to have done so continually, but it hardly seemed practical. Especially since i can tend to be long winded and hard thinking...

So my suggestion really is to institute an individual song rating, with or without comment (even if kept to a minimum perhaps this is impractical or just plain too much work? i'm not a programmer, so i've no idea the level of effort you must put in Shirow, but i suspect it is beyond substantial).

Well, just putting in my thoughts. You asked, you get. Hope they are of some value.

I still would like to see the individual rating.  We can get a feel for what some of the more popular tracks are.  Also these ratings could be compiled together for the album rating, and still allow text reviews for the album.  After all the cd review should be for the whole cd.  This way you can put in your advise for something you're not familiar with but can do the review with what you are familiar with.  I've been on another site that has it and love using it.  I know I have seen that there have been others that like this idea also.  Is this something you plan on working on?

The new site will have individual song ratings and album reviews.

[sinaptic]

I like it! Very clean and simple... It's a lot more intuitive than the last version. I like the colors as well. However, the best part by far is how zippy fast everything loads now. (BTW Using Firefox 3.6.3 on a Windows box)

I say ditch the reviews. If people want to discuss a band/song they like/hate, the forums are a good place for that. Yeah, I left a few reviews, but I'm wondering why I did at this point. Obviously, people can listen to the samples (and the broadcast in general) and decide for themselves if they like something or not. I really don't think anyone really cares that randomuserxxx gave a song a 1 star rating or not. I know it certainly doesn't effect my opinions.

Anyway, I think the only thing I would change in the new layout (and this may have already been addressed, if so, apologies) is the size of headers; the ones in the very light blue color. They seem a bit large to me, and it looks like the type could be tracked out a bit.

All in all though it looks really nice, well done!

[faelaenx]

Which blue part are you referring to?

Heh, no worries. The sarcasm laced humor didn't translate properly from my mind to mine keyboard =P