A brand new [H]ard|OCP

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The top graphic needs some serious lovin. The old graphic is much cooler looking. The new one is like. "Oh hey! I just ripped a linux install font and forced it to mate with an icon from Windows 3.11"



Having the 4 sections broken out twice on the main page is a bad idea. It makes it difficult to look at. It would be better to somehow merge the section pieces together so you know you can look at location X on screen and see all the stuff for that sub-site. I would prefer that to having to locate [H] Enthusiast featured headlines then go find the [H] Enthusiast other stuff separately. I also see that there's an ad-hoc solution to denominating the sub-sections for the featured articles. Merging the FA and the other stuff would eliminate needing ugly ad-hoc solutions.



Most importantly, I feel very saddened to see that [H]ardOCP is now diluting their focus. [H] isn't for everyone, but apparently Kyle is trying to scoop up more audience. It will probably be a great decision for [H]ardOCP because the invasion of the mainstream has begun, and there is no turning back. That just leaves the rest of us original [H]ers to deal with our lifestyle being assimilated into popular culture piece by piece web page by web page. What I see here is another bastion of [H]ardness being breached by the masses. I can only hope that there will be a completely new and separate team assembled for each section. This doesn't mitigate the fact that we will be seeing a lot less interaction from Kyle himself due to the increased workload, but at least we would be assured that [H] Enthusiast will continue to provide the high level of excellence that the original page always has.



 
I like this new design. It allows for massive content expansion with cluttering the main (portal) page up too much. Also, glad to see that RSS feeds will be included.

ALL4AMD, I don't think the design from 4 years ago was the original. IIRC, the original design (back when the "OCP" part really meant something) was ass end ugly (sorry Kyle). 1998, I think?
 
Yes and no. (copied / edited from gm)

Yes:
- The separate sections / divisoins make sense. The [H] is evolving and can easily take the expertise into these areas. Nothing "new" really since most of it is being done anyway in the background, this will bring it all to the front.
- Color scheme somehow seems easier to read. Okay, so I'm 40 and the eyes aren't what they used to me. Although it's the same as it's been (yes, I'm partial to red / black - just loot at my own site, okay the [H] is more Maroon than Red).
- Features / Articles / News in separate sections, handy for finding what you need.
- It doesn't look like there's going to be scrolling text in any of the sections... if there is, don't use it.
- Since it's using fixed width (this is debateable, but I use it) having it at 1024 is good thing. (i've gotten emails telling me my site is out of compliance since it's not designed for 800x600). Coding to a fixed width keeps the look / feel consitient from page to page, while some folks prefer a variable width.

No:
- The top is very busy, took me a bit to get a grasp on what was there. Granted, there is a lot of information you need to pass on to the reader, and that is the part that loads. With four sections / areas it's going to be tough to spread the information out so it's presentable. I know it's dummy data, but the if the latest [H]eadlines is going to mirror the artilces, then dump it. If its going to reflect the actual news headlines (which I'll assume that it will) then it could be handy for seeing what's been posted since the last visit. Depending on the visitors screen, news will be at the bottom of the screen (one or two headlines). Just seems crowded, trimming down the latest articles to 5 would bring the news up more and make it less busy, or moving them to a side bar. The latest articles is a out of proportion for some reason.
- Honestly, it looks like a lot of sites out there other than section graphics and color scheme. This could be because it's a layout that works when presenting and navigating through large amounts of information that changes on a timely basis through out any given day. It's the same but different.

Questions / Clarifications
- Once past the News page, I can see where the layout will be the same but the information presented will be only for that section, so the featured article / articles will have one, maybe two for that section, and the latest articles - for the one section it will seem a litlle lonely - perhaps combine the two?
- Could the vertical ad on the right be narrowed a bit? Off the top of my head I dont' remember the "standard" for vertical banners (I know there are a couple of them) - it just seems to take up a lot of real estate. I know there are bills to pay and advertisers have sizes they like to use.

peace,
Tim
 
Good to see you have not gone too far from what is already a class lookin page. Nice job ;)
 
It needs more ads. ;) Seriously, I like the [H]ard|OCP as It is, But I don't have much of a say in this. :( So do what You want. :(
 
very nice improvement. i dont understand why it is so [H]ard for people to except consoles. there have been some great games on consoles with more to come. beyond the games, consoles will soon do much more... [X]box360 alone will help bring all your toys together. this might be something to write home about...
 
haiku said:
[*]The website will be marked up in semantic xHTML and CSS. It will be very very fast and comply with web standards. Because I am anal like that. And it's important high content and high visibility websites take this seriously. I'm looking at you, billion other websites out there.
Click to expand...
This is very important to me! By default I have my browsers set to not run scrips, java, or any active X stuff, so a very very fast and HTML compadible design is awsome! I'm glad to see someone still cares about people who secure their browsers ^_^ (instead of going to a website to get just a blank page where advanced content should be).
~Thanks

haiku said:
[*]The site is going to be a static width. It's designed for a minimum format of 1024x768. Static width makes the site more readable, more predictable to lay out, and less of a maintenance and expansion issue. The fact of the matter is that very few people keep their browser scaled any wider than 1024px wide and it isn't worth the development effort.
Click to expand...

I'll be honest with you. There are a LOT of people who use 19" monitors (or bigger), and they like to just maximize the browser window. If you have the content set to a limit of 1024, they will have very big spaces on the sides......... when it could be used up and displayed in less space.

I highly recommend from a end user standpoint, that you keep a variable width format. Your right, it might be more work in the end, and a pain in the @$$ to maintain, but........ from the end user stand point, its such a blessing.


Lastly, the color scheme is just a little off. I personally prefer the old style. The black to dark silver gradient with the white text is hard on my eyes. Also, the big titles like the date "Sunday March 07, 2004" are hard on my eyes because again, its not white on pure black. So to sum up, its too much silver, I prefer the pure black background.
I also like the older style because it had more red. With my LCD monitor, black, gold, red, and white are an AMAZING color scheme. And the occasional greys are such that it does not clash too much with the white/gold text.
Oh, one more thing about the colors, I prefer the corner's to be red, instead of black (red like the old design). It gave the news an almost depth feeling to it. With the new black borders, it just looks empty...............

Oh well, I'm being highly critical...... and its not even the sight.... it's a picture.

I hope these are a few guidelines you can consider, play around with, and see what kyle has to say about it. The main thing is keeping it HTML friedly, which is good!

~Hope this helps

PS: Should the very top titles be so narrow? Have you tried making them a little taller for eaiser clicking? Again, just looking at the picture, im not sure if it will be ok or not.
 
Kyle, I'm one of those few hundred you ever expected to visit the original HardOCP page and I read it multiple times per day ever since. :D

A few suggestions and comments:

  • The grey area around advertising "C" doens't fit in at all, either continue with the maroon dotted pattern ar make it solid like the Shacknews box.
  • The submenu (forum, archives, search and so on) would fit in better as text links or sublt buttons using same font size as now in the grey bar under the main navigation at the top. This would a) define a single navigation section b) clear up the grey area over the featured articles to make it a lot easier to read and remove the "clutter" feeling people have commented about. If you don't want to move the buttons you should seriously consider adding a few pixels space between the menu and the Featured Articles headline.
  • As for the Featured Articles, try and get the spacing consistent between the boxes. Left, right, top and bottom spacing are all different around each box.
  • Latest Articles will definately give a good overview of what is going on but you need to fix the spacing here as well. I think it might be a good idea to use the same colour scheme as Latest Headlines for the header and borders. It will make more of a distinction for each group of articles.
  • Last little nit picking, shouldn't the forum button say [H]Forum and not [H] | Forum?
  • I love the decision to make the page fixed width. Dynamic pages are a pain, especially if you have bold text as mouse over and the whole page start to jump around...

The new design over all is a great improvement, just a little bit of polishing left. ;)
 
First off let me say, good for you on the sHTML, I'm with you all the way on that. Standards compliance and CSS are the way to go. Second thing, and you probably won't like me for this, but WTH, I looked at File Cloud, and found what I was affraid of. Most of these standards compliant sites that are popping up all have the same gross problem, font resizing. I run a dell 2001 monitor at it's default res 1600x1200 and I have bad eyes. One of the main reasons I switched to FireFox over IE was it's ability to do infinite font resizing. It's a must for me, and at the File Cloud site, it's compleatly useless. To view that site I would have to turn off the CSS to read it! That's not good. Nor is it good for the [H]. I've been reading this site for a very long time and would hate to not be able to any more, but if I had to turn off the CSS every time, I just don't know if it would be worth it.
I'm a web designer by trade myself, now I know I haven't done nearly as much stuff as you have, but I've always found ways of helping out the disabled in our land (aurial style sheets, alternate style sheet sizes, sheets that support resizing by not using static images and fixed vertical widths on box's, that kind of thing) For example, A list Apart has an excellent article on onion skinning, that is, creting a box with rich graphical borders that can dynamicaly resize in both X and Y. Thing is, most web designers are just too lazy, or too lacking in time to do it. I get the time thing, never enough time in the day, but I think this is worth it.
Also, I just don't agree with the fixed width approach, I think it's a waste of real-estate and also very lazy, but that's just my opinion and not really of any concern.
Hope I didn't offend, that was not my intent, I just wanted to make sure and get my point accross so it wasn't ignored.
 
I think it looks slick except for the "clutter" effect you have with the article blocks at the top of the news. I like the layout of that area, but I would make the suggestion of not putting so manay items in the "recent articles" section. It's just too much for the eye to track.

Otherwise, I like the design.
 
As long as the true to nails reviews and great scoops stay, You can beat the fuck out of the site with Qtip's Batman mod and I will still read it.

Bring on the new [H], Kyle!
 
Put "latest articles" on the side of the site and I'll jump on the boat, the [H] banana boat.
 
haiku said:
[*]sIFR. You'll notice that all of the headlines use the same type-face from the navigation. This is dynamic flash replacement and I use it proudly. If you don't have flash or like myself and the rest of the internet, then the headlines will show up in normal arial. Why use sIFR (Inman Flash Replacement)? Because I think most of the internet is sick of looking at the same 8 god damned fonts for the last decade. Consistent and unique typography helps to promote the brand and kyle gave me very very clear direction on maintaining a specific [H] brand.
Click to expand...
I agree with the concept on this, but not the execution. Why have a jillion little flashlets for each news article? I appreciate websites that don't assume infinite resources on my end, and running more than one or two flash blocks kills that. It's not realistic for me to disable flash entirely, but when I'm on a slow machine I don't want to wait an eternity for the page to load. New fonts are all fine and good, but it seems like it will come at the expense of CPU cycles which I'd rather have go to Folding@Home than to pretty text. If I want pretty text, I can apply a new default font and set it to override, rather than have it forced on me by a flash applet.

My $.02, I await your response.

 
unhappy_mage said:
I agree with the concept on this, but not the execution.
Click to expand...

from the sifr page:

The sIFR javascript file is less than 10k and only loads once. Thereafter, it is pulled from the browser cache. The same applies to the sIFR Flash movies which contain your fonts. If you have five headlines on a page which all use the same custom font, the .swf is pulled once from the server and from the browser cache thereafter. sIFR Flash movies are generally between 8k and 20k depending on the complexity of the font.​

It's so efficient that it's basically transparent.
 
I am not a very vocal poster, but I visit the site at least twice a day from the start. The design is fresh, but the font for news is a bit clustered and overly flashy for daily reading. I also liked the layout of news sections, so when I came back a couple of times a day, I could easily find the last place where I left off. Just my two. I'll still come back unless It's styled with hot pink fonts and an orange background. I am looking forward on the extended coverage. More time to waste reading during the day. :D
Good Luck fellas.
 
Spack said:
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.
Click to expand...

1. This is actually a really good idea but it would not really allow for the site division and sub-branding that we have plans for. But I do like what you are proposing. I can think of some websites that plan would kick ass with.

2. Keeping the latest headlines for now and just to point out it is NOT on the current site. Our thinking here is to give our repeat visitors during the day a non-scroll point to check for new news content.
 
I like it the way it is now............."If it ain't broke, don't fix it!".

The new format looks like an online store, it just needs a "checkout basket"!
If it is to change, at least make the [H]ard|Ocp logo a bit bigger and brighten up the layout.

Just my 2 cents, but I have been here since 2k, and I will always love and supoort this site!

:)
 
The format of the news has changed slightly. We got rid of the whole 1st, 2nd Edition stuff. And let's be honest, that shit didn't make sense to anyone but Kyle and I think even he was making it up.
Click to expand...

Please reconsider this....I, for one, really feel the "EDITONS" are a benefit to readers who visit the site more than once a day. I know that when I visit the site, I skip through the "EDITIONS" that I have already read... (yes, I am weird, I read from the bottom up (ie: the older news first...then on to the newer news).

Aside from that, looks good...
 
kyle i love the look of the new site! i do have a question is their any chance of pulling the defunk hardgaming site and servers under the hardocp banner and whip into shape with actual game news / reviews
 
somecallmeTim said:
Questions / Clarifications
- Once past the News page, I can see where the layout will be the same but the information presented will be only for that section, so the featured article / articles will have one, maybe two for that section, and the latest articles - for the one section it will seem a litlle lonely - perhaps combine the two?
- Could the vertical ad on the right be narrowed a bit? Off the top of my head I dont' remember the "standard" for vertical banners (I know there are a couple of them) - it just seems to take up a lot of real estate. I know there are bills to pay and advertisers have sizes they like to use.

peace,
Tim
Click to expand...

Yes, the layout will change for the specific site pages although each will still have their "own" news section.

On ads, 160x600 is a new standard and heavily sold. That decision is purely monetary, but we just changed that yesterday, and the site actually looks better with the 160x600 there than the 120x600 in my opinion. And it did not really impact our content spacing negatively.
 
Page looks great. Looking forward to seeing some of the Enterprise review. Not a whole lot of that on the net done from a complete user perspective.
 
Looks good, but...i dunno, i guess i just don't like change. yeah i was a little sad when the egg redesigned their page too.

but its definately not a change for the worse, good job on a solid design.
 
I agree with several other posters. Something other than black for the background would be nice. Even if it was just dark grey.
 
mashie said:
Kyle, I'm one of those few hundred you ever expected to visit the original HardOCP page and I read it multiple times per day ever since. :D

A few suggestions and comments:

  • The grey area around advertising "C" doens't fit in at all, either continue with the maroon dotted pattern ar make it solid like the Shacknews box.
  • The submenu (forum, archives, search and so on) would fit in better as text links or sublt buttons using same font size as now in the grey bar under the main navigation at the top. This would a) define a single navigation section b) clear up the grey area over the featured articles to make it a lot easier to read and remove the "clutter" feeling people have commented about. If you don't want to move the buttons you should seriously consider adding a few pixels space between the menu and the Featured Articles headline.
  • As for the Featured Articles, try and get the spacing consistent between the boxes. Left, right, top and bottom spacing are all different around each box.
  • Latest Articles will definately give a good overview of what is going on but you need to fix the spacing here as well. I think it might be a good idea to use the same colour scheme as Latest Headlines for the header and borders. It will make more of a distinction for each group of articles.
  • Last little nit picking, shouldn't the forum button say [H]Forum and not [H] | Forum?
  • I love the decision to make the page fixed width. Dynamic pages are a pain, especially if you have bold text as mouse over and the whole page start to jump around...

The new design over all is a great improvement, just a little bit of polishing left. ;)
Click to expand...

I think you are right about the gray bar. We will look into getting rid of it. I really dont think it brings with it any identity from the previous site (design that never got launched...hehe... that is where it came from).

I am going to argue that those buttons are not going to be used much by anyone anyway and there is no need to give them more realestate. I think we will be sticking with them in size as they are now....(they were even smaller in the previous rev).

Spacing issues will be dealt with later, this is just a mockup.

Actually the button needs to say "[H] Forum" to stay consistant with the current site....

Static width now for sure. Maybe other widths later, but not now.
 
dsargent said:
First off let me say, good for you on the sHTML, I'm with you all the way on that. Standards compliance and CSS are the way to go. Second thing, and you probably won't like me for this, but WTH, I looked at File Cloud, and found what I was affraid of. Most of these standards compliant sites that are popping up all have the same gross problem, font resizing. I run a dell 2001 monitor at it's default res 1600x1200 and I have bad eyes. One of the main reasons I switched to FireFox over IE was it's ability to do infinite font resizing. It's a must for me, and at the File Cloud site, it's compleatly useless. To view that site I would have to turn off the CSS to read it! That's not good. Nor is it good for the [H]. I've been reading this site for a very long time and would hate to not be able to any more, but if I had to turn off the CSS every time, I just don't know if it would be worth it.
I'm a web designer by trade myself, now I know I haven't done nearly as much stuff as you have, but I've always found ways of helping out the disabled in our land (aurial style sheets, alternate style sheet sizes, sheets that support resizing by not using static images and fixed vertical widths on box's, that kind of thing) For example, A list Apart has an excellent article on onion skinning, that is, creting a box with rich graphical borders that can dynamicaly resize in both X and Y. Thing is, most web designers are just too lazy, or too lacking in time to do it. I get the time thing, never enough time in the day, but I think this is worth it.
Also, I just don't agree with the fixed width approach, I think it's a waste of real-estate and also very lazy, but that's just my opinion and not really of any concern.
Hope I didn't offend, that was not my intent, I just wanted to make sure and get my point accross so it wasn't ignored.
Click to expand...

Your concerns are noted and for right now the answer is, "We don't know."
 
Mephisto_kur said:
I think it looks slick except for the "clutter" effect you have with the article blocks at the top of the news. I like the layout of that area, but I would make the suggestion of not putting so manay items in the "recent articles" section. It's just too much for the eye to track.

Otherwise, I like the design.
Click to expand...

The Featured Articles and Latest Articles sections are going to get some tuning graphically. Most likely the Latest Article section will only have 4 or 5 links and will be a bit better organized so as to not get jumbled.
 
DragonNOA1 said:
Put "latest articles" on the side of the site and I'll jump on the boat, the [H] banana boat.
Click to expand...


I am sorry, but that is not going to change. The stark reality of the sitution is the our content pages pay the bills and draw by far the most of our visitors...which in turn, pays the bills. I cannot give away the prime realestate on our webpage when it simply impacts the overall site success.

So I will just say it now and you can decide if you want to delete us from your bookmarks. The news section is going to be a bit lower and its positioning is not negotiable. Sorry. :(
 
haiku said:
...
  • The website will be marked up in semantic xHTML and CSS. It will be very very fast and comply with web standards. Because I am anal like that. And it's important high content and high visibility websites take this seriously. I'm looking at you, billion other websites out there.
    ...
Click to expand...
This REALLY brightened up my whole day. :) So many sites (especially big ones!) do not comply with web standards, so it's very refreshing to see that someone out there *does* care about this. ;)

You know, I have to hand it to you guys, [H] is getting better and better every single day, and my hat is off to the [H] crew. Very, very nice job! Keep it up! :cool:
 
maxius said:
kyle i love the look of the new site! i do have a question is their any chance of pulling the defunk hardgaming site and servers under the hardocp banner and whip into shape with actual game news / reviews
Click to expand...


"defunk"????


www.hardgaming.com is moving along just fine doing what it does. I currently have no desire to get into the gaming news and reviews beyond the console impact.
 
Hexametaphosphate said:
I like it a lot.....

I think the buttons could indeed go smaller.

My only concern about spacing is that the [H]ard News gets plenty of room and stays prominant. I always start by reading all the funny bits, checking out the cool links, etc from the [H]ard News sections.... I will miss the editions a little as well (if they go). Hey, I love the reviews, the forums, and the articles, but please don't lose the personality of [H] OCP that we all love. The first site I stumbled on was Anandtech, and when they redid their site and there weren't the daily updates, jokes, etc (I can't remember if they completely removed all that or it just got pushed into the background) I just quit visiting the site. Solid reviews, good articles, etc are the meat and potatoes of a good tech website, but the personality of a site is just as important. Good luck with the change over and I hope we still get the great links, headlines, updates, jokes, etc, etc we've all come to love.
Click to expand...

I would not worry about [H] or [H] Enthusiast changing much at all other than seeing more content developed for it. It is not my desire nor design to really change HardOCP other than expanding it into other markets.

And, the news is not going to be hard to find or turn into a RSS feed from other sites. The news will always be done by "hand."
 
haiku said:
[*]Some things must absolutely be as they are.
Click to expand...

Hopefully, that will be the case, cuz I can give you a real long list of high profile tech sites I just don't bother w/any more due to layout changes I find unacceptable. Sharky's comes to mind.

No problem w/this or any site going commercial, esp if the alternative is PPV, but narrowing up the user/viewer space w/active-x & flash clutter = adios.

GL w/the new layout & I hope it works out well for all of us.

KACHING!
 
loooking goood

I like it a LOT better...heh i was even clicking the dead links...then i remembered..its not up yet...doh!
 
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