New Design Launched

Question

Hi guys,

The wait is over! As you can see the new design has been applied and nothingtoinstall.com is live.

I'd like to address a few issues.

captcha image

There were a few suggestions from the Captcha thread. It seems most people like the robot theme. Due to copyright issues, I can't use the images nominated. But I sticked with the idea. I made a Hal-ish image. You can view it on the site:

https://webapps.stackexchange.com/captcha

404 image

the highest voted 404 image was of the stormtrooper looking for droid one. Again, due to copyright I can't use it. But your suggestions matter! So I recreated it. You can view it on the site:

https://webapps.stackexchange.com/404

BUGS AND GLITCHES

I tested the CSS extensively, both on the main site and the Meta. But this doesn't mean I covered everything. If you find any styling issues, CSS bugs please let me know! (start new post for bug report). Just FYI: when it comes to older browsers (IE7, FF2 etc) I don't try to make it pixel perfect.

Answer 1

I think the recreations in Lego is a good idea - you ought to apply it to the other sites too!

Answer 2

I don't like the design. The colors scheme is too bright, a pain for the eyes. There's too few contrast. The font for the question titles is hard to read...

Answer 3

The main site and meta are very, very similar-looking. Was there a reason for this?

Answer 4

A couple of issues I spotted:

Drop shadow clipped on new user and how to ask question dialog

Not a big issue, since I noticed that even after removing the overflow: hidden from both the sidebar and the main content divs the shadows still wasn't very visible (probably due to the fact that the vertical offset was more than the blur amount)

Editor divider disappeared

This is what the editor toolbar should look like

Somehow though the divider div gets a display: none here, resulting in

The buttons won't reflow naturally to take up the empty space though, because each of them is AP'd into position.

Change the title font to something else. Please!

The font issue kind of gets on my nerves a bit. Lucida Grande/Sans Unicode might look good at smaller font sizes, but at larger sizes it's just terrible. Here's the low down for the fonts on my Windows computer:

Lucida (current)

Arial

Tahoma

Trebuchet MS

Verdana

Segoe UI (Windows Vista and 7)

(Click on the pictures for full size image. Browser image resizing is terrible.)

Of all the fonts you could possibly have chosen, Lucida really seemed like the worst.

Edit Segoe UI is now at the top of the stack, yay! Unfortunately this still won't work for good 'ol XP. Ah well...

Tag autocomplete color and spinner

The spinner that appears while we wait for the tag autocomplete to pop up appears to be missing. Also, the autocomplete is using the "default" SO orange, which looks out of place here.

Some simple changes would make it look much nicer

Answer 5

In my opinion, this whole site is now difficult to use and read. Contrast is very low. Very grey. One of the best parts about StackOverflow.com is that it is very quick and easy to read.

Don't take this the wrong way... maybe it's just the non-designer in me talking, but when I use Stack Exchange sites, I'm looking for utility... not shiny.

Answer 6

You may want to also update the CSS / images used on this page. Looks the same as the beta theme.

Answer 7

The bar at the top and the auto-login thing overlapped for me:

Answer 8

Please increase the contrast of unselected grey up-vote, down-vote and favourite buttons against the white background. I have to squint to spot them.

Example: look left.

Answer 9

I'm seeing the Post Your Answer/ Add Comments button really really weird

Answer 10

On Firefox 3.6.7 configured with fonts slightly larger than standard the main question list is squished into a narrow column.

Answer 11

It's hard to tell, but I have a feeling that there are some contrast issues compared to other sites...

Especially with the tags, statistics and linked/related questions.

Also, the white stripes at both sides of the site should be a dark color as at the moment it looks like there is something missing there. By a dark color you draw the attention away from the sides...

Answer 12

Gradients and drop shadows everywhere are sooo Web 2.0.

The design is beautiful, but I'd prefer a more timeless design with a focus on usability and not "cloudiness."

Example

This is my opinion only, but take the fade-in effects over the main navigation buttons. Even though it is beautiful to watch, the fact that they don't light up immediately, but fade in over time distracted me enough to mention it.

Though it is hard to say eye-candy hurts usability, compared to other SE sites, it is a symptom of a design philosophy which takes the high ground on pretty design over pure usability.

I acknowledge that this is a trivial matter and I will probably get used to it over time, but I haven't warmed to the dreamy theme.

Answer 13

<pedantic design>The lack of a margin below the "Ask Question" button just feels slightly claustrophobic.</pedantic design>

Compare

Stack Overflow

Web Applications

Answer 14

I don't know why, but the fact that the top bar is 'all-in-one' and clickable-looking had me looking for the close cross, because it seemed like a notification bar. Guess I'll get used to that.

Also, I get that the gray background of the page title is supposed to be the rest of the 'tab' created by the main link (on this page it's the "Questions" tab), but if you click directly on the logo, no tabs are selected, and it seems slightly weird. The other weird thing is that in the first case, the background extends across the top of the sidebar, but in the 'no tabs selected' case it doesn't.

Answer 15

I find that "fat" buttons and rounded input boxes for "ask question" and "interesting tags" seem totally extraneous to the rest of the layout.

Answer 16

The ui for the share reminder seems to need some css styling.

Answer 17

Analytics page has a scrollbar around the content that duplicates the browser scrollbar.