[News] Stratics Central Sports a New Look

[_zigzag_]

As part of our planned upgrades and other assorted cool stuffs we have workin', we're happy to share a preview of our new front page design. This note from Den Dragon, Stratics founder:

"We are proud to present a preview of the new direction Stratics is taking in terms of our central site's design and layout. As you may notice, internal content pages and news articles will still be utilizing our older design, until such time as we have all content (excluding network sites) migrated over to the new format.

Our sincere hope is that you enjoy this new approach toward functionality and presentation - and that our further updates meet with your satisfaction as well.

Note: There may be some issues resulting from viewing the site through certain browsers. If you notice any sort of strange happenings or funkiness with the page's appearance - such as bats flying out of your computer screen, or Jessica Simpson appearing at random on the page - please send a note including details of the problems experienced to: [email protected]. Thank you for your patience as this transition takes place!"​

 

[Crysta]

Wow... that is hideous, and an incredible step backward in ease of use. Please don't ever make the UO section resemble that.

Maybe I should elaborate a bit...

Crippling the number of navigation options doesn't make a website "more up to date" or "easier to use". Streamlining it to make it look "modern" does not do this either, and odd script based menus that have the highest probability to break on some systems as the only navigation option is never good (yes I know there are buttons too, but that doesn't change much). This new design focuses on look over functionality, really... while that's the way sites seem to want to go to make things seem more "mainstream" these days, all it does is frustrate users both new and old (IE, the idea of "mainstream" is completely wrong). The old page had a combination of the scripts and plain text links, arranged in an easy to understand pattern... no matter who was visiting they could find what they were looking for with relative ease.

The layout now is fairly off-putting somehow... having it arranged as it is feels incredibly unnatural.. the eye is drawn to the lage text box on the left, then has to move right for more options and the buttons. While this might SEEM like a good flow seeing as english speaking people read from left to right, it isn't. Because of reading in that manner, the eye will instinctively go to the left first where the old layout had various links and such, then move right to the other side noticing more links before settling on the text in the center.. you might say "thats the same as the new one", but it isn't.. with the new the eye moves to the left and stays there, pausing for a good LONG while before moving out of necessity rather than flow. Or, depending on the person, they might have been drawn directly to the center with the old, noticing the links to the sides which give an open, free feeling. Being forcibly drawn to the left is incredibly stifling.

And past all that, the "Stargate-wannabe" logo bar is just plain ugly and contrived. Not only that, you didn't do it right... blocking the text with the logo is just a plain bad idea. Rahter than Stratics, people will think they're visiting Stra[large logo somehow involving parts of the letters A, S, and T]ics, or, depending on the person, Strastics.

 

[kennykilleduo]

Looks great , easy to use , though the top Blue portion is a little to much , nice work..