New Theme

[ChrisGammell]

I'm sure the interest in the Amp Hour (http://theamphour.com) is dwindling on the EEVblog board, but I was hoping for some feedback on our new theme. If you have any suggestions or see anything that's broken with how the pages render, let me know here and I'll try to fix it.

On the same kind of note, since I'm guessing the radio show's discussion will be moved off this message board in the near future, I'd like to thank everyone for the great input. It has been really helpful.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Well at least "Solder" is spelt correctly...

[Zero999]

I don't like it to be honest.

I think the log graph paper makes the text hard to read.

[alm]

I agree about the background. The initial loading appeared a little slow, maybe the images are too large? Although this may have been an issue with my local internet connection, I didn't have time to double check in Firebug.

Not sure if giving the radio show a separate message board is a good idea, these shows tend to trigger all kind of general electronics discussions, and splitting the communities up doesn't seem the way to go. But I can also understand that you might want to separate the EEVblog from the Amp Hour, since EEVblog is purely Dave, and the Amp Hour is a joint project.

[ChrisGammell]

We aren't going to have a message board for The Amp Hour. Just comments. Dave and I specifically talked about how there are too many boards out there to register for and check these days anyway. Also, I didn't mean the EEVblog forum couldn't still be a place to discuss, just that I figured because of the separation there would be less interest from the EEVblog community. Maybe that's not the case though and like you said alm there would be MORE discussion around here. I was just making predictions based on the lack of activity on the forum in the past couple of days, but that could have been because of the server switch and the fact that we only do the show once a week.

As for the design, I was worried about the graph paper. I'm going to tweak it tonight, try making it even lighter (that's about 300x lighter than the original) and changing the text color. I realized today that the template I started from used brown text for much of it. I think the contrast ratio will improve when I change the text to all black. I have a list running of things I want to change so if anyone else has non-graph paper suggestions, I'd love to hear them so I can try and update all at once.

[saturation]

A very simple design is best, part of the reason is to insure vision impaired, color blind, text-to-speech readers etc., can decode a website accurately.  Also, the simpler it is, the more likely it will render nicely on smart phones, and other devices. 

[Zero999]

Just a couple more points:

The seems where the background images join show which doesn't look very good; it would be much better if they could be hidden.

The way the photographs are superimposed on the background looks amateurish: the outlines where they have been cut from the original picture are very visible. The outlines can be hidden by making the pixels around the edges semitransparent, which can be done in image editing software and saving in PNG format (not GIF) which supports the alpha channel.

[Mechatrommer]

should open the web blog design contest 1st.

[Simon]

yes the text must become black, you will find that different monitors will produce different results.

Really I think the EEVBlog based listeners will tend to leave feedback and have discussions here. Of course if you get regular listerners that have a specific interest in the radio shows and not in the EEVBlog they may tend to hang out over there but I think that is unlikely as they will soon get hooked on the whole blog

[ChrisGammell]

You know Shafri, if there are any WordPress fanatics out there, I have very limited experience and would love to have a "contest". I saw all the awesome work people did for Dave's background image but didn't want to ask too much too soon (I've not done much for the EEVblog forum members yet, ya know?).

I'll tweak on those images tonight Hero, I'm glad you have a good eye for that stuff. My photoshopping is even weaker than my CSS/PHP ability.

Saturation--I'm not sure there would be a lot of smart phones accessing this stuff (at least not by the feed). Do you think this will be the case for people listening/reading about the show?

[saturation]

Hi C,

I'm not sure how many smartphones will be reading your site but a simple site can easily be converted with least problems to any web enabled device.  I don't have a smartphone but all my friends do, and they routinely watch custom videos, youtube, google videos, on their phones, whether its from a dedicated site like youtube or someone's website.

Also to clarify what I posted earlier, its not the smartphone that will be color blind or vision impaired, but real people.  So one tenet of web design is preferably a white background on near black letters for maximum contrast, or a similar combo.  Likewise, its not the design or spiffy graphics that are the core of technical websites, its easy access to information, like Wikipedia.

http://www.usability.gov/guidelines/index.html

Sample design using simple design rules:

http://nihseniorhealth.gov/





 

You know Shafri, if there are any WordPress fanatics out there, I have very limited experience and would love to have a "contest". I saw all the awesome work people did for Dave's background image but didn't want to ask too much too soon (I've not done much for the EEVblog forum members yet, ya know?).

I'll tweak on those images tonight Hero, I'm glad you have a good eye for that stuff. My photoshopping is even weaker than my CSS/PHP ability.

Saturation--I'm not sure there would be a lot of smart phones accessing this stuff (at least not by the feed). Do you think this will be the case for people listening/reading about the show?

[dmlandrum]

To be honest, I just threw the RSS feed into Miro. I don't care how the web site looks.  

I agree that the text's background is a bit too busy. Other than that, I like it.