A brand new [H]ard|OCP

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Calavaro said:
Short (sweet?) and to the point.

I like to have dynamic width. I use a widescreen monitor (1280*800) and want to use that extra realestate to get more on screen and do less scrolling.

If you want to be redundant with Featured and Latest Articles.. why not make the Latest articles, 1 or 2 articles high (instead of the massive 7)?

I would, personally, like the placement of [H]News, [H]Enthusiast, [H]Enterprise, [H]Consumer and [H]Console to be a tad LOWER on the screen. Now it sits at the very top and sort of "falls out of direct view". How about dropping it down, as much below the [H]ard|OCP logo, as it is above now? Keep the grey bar where it is, just place the page tabs below instead of above.

News headlines in yellow and that font is perfect. Very easy to read.
However, the yellow in the text below sort of looks out of focus (maybe only for me?), blurred if you will. Same for the white news text.. maybe due to font smoothing (cleartype? :eek: )

I also just realised, I never used the [H]ard Menu... good thing it is gone.

Edit: And as Torgo pointed out. Be careful with color choices for the subsections. [H] has always been maroon and black, with a bit of orange. Remove that and you lose a lot of the original "brand". But then again, maybe it is time to move on to a more "professional" look that appeals to the broader market?
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Dynamic width is just too hard to work with and keep the site looking the way we want. As for the studies we have accessed, it seems that very few, including myself, take advantage of real estates above 1024 when actually reading content.

I am unsure on the depth of Latest Articles, will most likely be reduced to 4 or 5.

Hmmm, dropping the tabs would not lend to the current design, but using the text identifiers in the Featured Articles section is likely to happen as well as we are looking at giving those section headings more "pop" in that area.

I think the blur you are currently seeing is just compression issues. The font will actually be rendered in Flash, so the vectors will be perfect in final production.

Heheheh hard menu gone....check. :)

[H] main page and [H]Enthusiast will remain true to its color roots. :) We will make the new sections more mainstream for sure.
 
generally, i like the visual appeal. HOWEVER, how fast will it load? are we going to be fetching sandwiches while we wait for the ads and such to load (like we sometimes have to with the current design)?

personally, i liked the old [H] design (circa 2000) because it was simple mostly-plain-text and it loaded VERY VERY fast.

but, like any change with any site that i enjoy, i suppose i'll grow used to it.

i would suggest some kind of "log-in" interaction on the home page showing links to my threads on the forum. it is kinda annoying needing to check two sites for content when they're both related.
 
Optimus said:
Very nice screeny. ;)

As far as [H]Console color theme goes, I would suggest something to discourage fan-boyism; a neutral color that doesn't relate to any of the current consoles directly (i.e., xbox360 = green and white, ps3 = black and blue, Nintendo = ... I don't know... purple? maybe red?).

I know my suggestion doesn't really help out so much make life harder, but it's just a suggestion. :(
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Actually a very good suggestion.
 
Looks real good. Good to have a breath of fresh air every now and again. Better site than i could make, thats for damn sure. Keep up the good work
 
revenant said:
...and I like his correct usage of the word "pedantic" in the closing sentances. :)
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I had to look it up.....and yes he did use it correctly. :)
 
Deviationer said:
is it just me or does it look A LOT like anandtech's site just with the hardocp colors?!?
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No, it does not. Outside of the tabs at the top, I will give that you. But MANY sites have tabs....because they make good sense and easy navigation.
 
Wow, this thread is growing faster than I can read it!

My only request is that you keep the Ctrl+wheel to change the fontsize (of the article). I must be getting old (or too much screen time), but sometimes i need really big font to read confortably.
 
MrGuvernment said:
i love this - simple ebcause [H] has need a face lift for SOOO long, and this is it

I dont have anything negative to say except perhaps the option for multiple color schemes to chosoe from [H] is so dark and dismal at the moment :(
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Blame Infinium Labs for robbing you of a site change over a year ago. ;)

[H]Enthusiast will stay dark and dismal. ;) I like it that way. The rest will be different.
 
Rosewood said:
Thats horrible and ugly and stupid.

But srsly, I can't wait for the fuck off insane batshit fast speeds that Im used to at the Shack.
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Um, uh, maybe if you, well, errr, uhhh....what??

Anyways, I think the new [H] looks great. Cant wait for the finished product!
 
Sir-Fragalot said:
I absolutely *HATE* white backgrounds and black text sites. I can't stand it. I like the darker black background, light colored text like it is now, plus the way the new one is.
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My orginal thinking behind the dark colors where that many computer "enthusiasts" (we were not called that back then) were reading at night. Nothing worse than opening up a page at 3am that blinded you. Hense, maroon and black.......easy viewing, even with a gf sleeping in the room....
 
haiku said:
It won't be a concern. This is why I do things in Semantic xHTML and CSS. Things that people can't support will deprecate. Well, in theory :)
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I was just wondering because you mentioned flash content...

As for the layout my concerns are that there is too much information condensed into a small area. Specifically the Latest Articles space. I also wonder if having seven articles in the list will make the [H] News too far down the screen. That is, on the screenshot the news starts nearly a full page down. It makes me wonder if you're trying to cram all the information into a single area.

(also, if the font is the same from Star Trek are there licensing issues for the font?)
 
personally, i liked the old [H] design (circa 2000) because it was simple mostly-plain-text and it loaded VERY VERY fast.
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Maybe the new site, if large, will encourage people to dump 56k :p for those who still have it
 
Party2go9820 said:
I would maybe suggest increasing the exposure to the forums. In fact, I would go as far as to add them as their own sub-section. By your definitions it qualifies as the forums already have their own domain name, staff, etc. To me I spend 90% of my time in the forums so emphasizing the wealth of information and community is important.

The styles and colors look great and it is time for a "brightening". Rock on.

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I am sorry but this will not be happening. The forums are the forums and I love the forums. The forums here are HUGELY successful on their own and we link them deeply and daily. But on that note, I do not want YOUR forums to be seen as a content outlet for [H]. The forums is about you and your opinion, not about Kyle Bennett's or our other editors. So in that, I do not want it seen as part of HardOCP but rather had its own unique identity, which I think in fact has been accomplished already. :)
 
I think the tabs, when highlighted should also be outlined in red/black to stand out more...
or something along those lines so that they all stand out and be immediately noticed when selected.
Also with that Flash font, would it be possible for forum members who have genmay access to
have that as a default font option when posting in the forum?
 
kuyaglen said:
I think the tabs, when highlighted should also be outlined in red/black to stand out more...
or something along those lines so that they all stand out and be immediately noticed when selected.
Also with that Flash font, would it be possible for forum members who have genmay access to
have that as a default font option when posting in the forum?
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The tabs will have a mouse over effect, but we did not want all the tabs to look goofy or terribly redundant and I think that would be easy if you make them too bright.

The Flash font replacement is something that is not even being considered at the moment. Ask me in 12 months.
 
Overall it's a nice fresh look for the [H], but get rid of the whole Latest Articles section for the main page. The main page is about news right? So why should I have to scroll a full page to find news? Latest Articles are already on the left column for the main page, move the middle Latest Articles section to each respective section of the site.
 
I like the layout as it stands in the image. If I followed the technical discussion of how things are going to work, it seems like it should work fine for anyone using Firefox, IE6 (maybe even 5.5+ and honestly I am not sure you really should care about anyone using anything less then IE5, or Netscape 6. I have no ideas on Opera, I haven't used it. Hell, I use Firefox under Linux most of the time too).

I am rather please to see the [H] moving into enterprise reporting too.
 
I like the new site changes.

I'm actually more interested in the business model though. Obviously with new individualized sites and staff there is a new or expanded business approach here. While I wish you success, I would hate for the [H] to lose it's community appeal as that is part of the reason this place is one of my daily habits.
 
I think it looks great, has that "portal" feel to it which I like alot. I'm just with the rest of the group and thinks that the top might just be a shade too busy, maybe move the "Latest Articles" below the "[H]ardNews". I would make the articles feel like a recap of everything else.

Looks good though. :D

 
"I don't know Art, but I know what I hate."

I realize it won't change anything, but I wish to go on record as agreeing with the MANY who have opined that the "Latest Articles" area should go away. If you're interested in Enterprise info, or Console articles, you would go there and read it.

Change is [H]ard... *sob*

Sir_ReeL
 
Along the lines of the Ad's,

would it be at all possible (i know it could be a pain)

but to have a non-flash ad version of the site (while still having flash installed on one's computer)

I don't mind all the ad's and click on them often etc, but it's distracting to try and read with all the motion going on the side of the page etc...


I know its not a big deal thing, but just wondering if it is possible..
 
KodiakStar said:
Along the lines of the Ad's,

would it be at all possible (i know it could be a pain)

but to have a non-flash ad version of the site (while still having flash installed on one's computer)

I don't mind all the ad's and click on them often etc, but it's distracting to try and read with all the motion going on the side of the page etc...


I know its not a big deal thing, but just wondering if it is possible..
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If you would like to not have ads, we will be adding a site that will be add free next year that will carry a subscription fee.
 
I like it overall, but the Star Trek fonts for the Headlines are silly.

-Ed
 
haiku said:
About page load speeds and rendering:

I can say with full confidence that this site is going to be fucking FAST.

For one, the use of flash will be more or less transparent. You wouldn't even know there was flash unless I told you. Even right-clicking the text wouldn't make it obvious. And it loads through java script in a very slick manner, you won't feel the load at all.

The images are going to be sprited. What does this mean? Take a look at www.shacknews.com and now take a look at: http://www.shacknews.com/images/masthead-sprite.png

Basically the homepage of shacknews is only 3 images. Even though it looks like a few hundred. What I do is load one master image and then use CSS to grab the coordinates I need and place them on the page. This saves the server and bandwidth and makes it load faster on the client. With this technique, everyone wins.

When I implemented it on shacknews, bandwidth dropped over HALF and apache hits went down to 25% of what they were. And since the layout is all parsed on the client-side, the page render feels almost instant. Go ahead and keep clearing your cache and loading shacknews, it's a graphically rich site with tons of mouse hovers and other crap and it loads in a blink. The only lag in loading is the ads, which I have no control of.

I'll be using that same technique on the new HardOCP, except I've advanced it quite a bit since shack and I have some newer tricks and I'm pretty sure the new site will render faster and more cleanly than almost any other site you visit.
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Mmmmmm... it does go well with the chicken! :)
 
Bring back DOS :D
I just liked it when the only choice I had to make was to go the [H]
and Kyle did the rest!
Kinda like "What flavor coffee?"
Just want coffee that's all
O well as far as progress goes
It looks promising
I'll try it
Good luck
 
looks amazing. I really like the subdued look. This site is way more like the original [H], or a good evolution from the original. Big thumbs up
 
Looks excellent guys, well done :)

Question: I use FF, and since I usually work at 16x12 and upwards, I use the "minimum font size" property to enlarge the fonts. Will this have an impact on the new site's readability, since it's going to be of static width?
 
I like the new look and appreciate that you stuck with the classic colors.

How come you've never put even a single link to any of the distributing computing pages? You do more than Folding, don't you? If Fridays weren't for Folding, I would've never even known you had a team!
 
S1nF1xx said:
The only thing I don't like is the Console section. This is a computer website, not a kiddie fanb0y console center. Not bashing you guys or anything, but it doesn't seem very relevent to what you guys have been doing over the last few years. And since EVERYBODY now has their own Console section it seems as a sellout.
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On the other side of that remember that adults enjoy game play and love sophisticated toys, think “ The Sharper Image” so forth. A gaming Console is a sophisticated toy that’s lots of fun. Just because much younger folks would be drawn to that category, is not to say that other age groups would not be interested as well. So perhaps to ignore the Console section for the kid aspect is to ignore a larger present/future audience.

Faithful readers of the [H] who joined in High School have grown with it and have gone on through college now, purchased their own homes and are raising families..... they’re older. They will continue to grow older, it’s funny how that happens. But they were kids once when they joined here and they still like toys. Fathers and sons build computers together, and parents post in the forums as to troubleshooting their daughter’s and son’s computer.

It’s rather like when Cadillac uses Led Zeppelin music to sell cars, a move that would have been unheard of 30 years ago, but it targets the boomers who grew up with that music and who can now afford that damn Cadillac.:p It’s smart. It just keeps your audience current through the generations. Smart.

Just my contrary view I guess. :D
 
Just wanted to say I like dark backgrounds and lighter text. Seems easier on the eyes when you are behind a monitor for hours. Hope the color scheme doesn't change.
 
Torgo said:
Thanks for responding. One thing I'd really, really consider is not naming it [H]Console.

While that name invokes the fabulous images of the Revolution, X360 and PS3, the name cuts out the PC Gaming world and the handheld markets. You own www.hardgaming.com. I'd do a corporate restructure and call the section [H]Gaming and change the other section to perhaps [H]Clan or [H]Online. All inclusive and allows you to expand later. You could branch off from there (Gaming) to Console, Handheld, PC and what not if the branding is successful.

You might be already locked into [H]Console, but I'd really, really give [H]Gaming a second and a third look.
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Your thoughts are noted, but our branding progression will remain consistent. Expansion will not be an issue when/if that should happen. :)

And just to further explain, that section will be about Consoles....not gaming specifically. Should we see a reason to expand into PC Game reviews, we will cross that bridge when we get to it.
 
Been reading this site for 4 years, but just registered the other week.

I like it the new look. Ever since you have introduced this new site layout, the old one is starting to show its age.
 
First off, it looks frickin fantastic. Two suggestions:

1.) Drop the tabs at the top down to the tops of the "latest articles" section and when pressed, change the general "[H]ard News" section below to that tabs specific posts. Keep the top section static (allows you to further seperate your ads to target audiences and simply the generation code...I think ;-)

2.) You can lose the "latest headlines" thing on the left side and use the space for ads. I don't know about other people, but I never even notice it's there and it just reproduces info that is elswhere on the page which creates a cluttered look.

I am really jazzed about the enterprise section. Count me in for submitted articles...ha.
 
Looks damn nice and can't wait for it. Great write up and great job on the design.
 
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