Comments on: New Layout: Complain before it happens!

By: Inventing Time » Blog Archive » Menu Design Contest

Inventing Time » Blog Archive » Menu Design Contest — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 20:27:24 +0000

[...] Since my attempts to design a new menu for Inventing Situations and Wasting Precious Time have met with mild enthusiasm at best, I’m throwing the floor open to you guys. I’m a programmer, not a designer, and I figure at least one of you must be a better designer than I am or know someone who is. [...]

By: Fred

Fred — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 14:54:20 +0000

The colors are much better now. :)

By: ReptilianSamurai

ReptilianSamurai — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:53:27 +0000

I like the idea of menus, it would greatly clean up the link ‘clutter’ that there currently is on the pages. They aren’t very pretty, but at least they are legible now.

I hope that they won’t use javascript for the tab menus. (Sometimes javascript is turned off). Are you using css for the menu effects?

By: GersonK

GersonK — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 04:52:22 +0000

Thanks Cheb – read your grayscale tip after taking yet another stab at a color scheme. I think the new scheme’s all legible in gray.

I plan to keep the menus short enough that the vertical thing’s not a big issue. And it actually seems to break into two lines acceptably, if not beautifully. Plus, I’d rather avoid going to a more elaborate browser sensitive solution like drop downs.

As for the “general information” item in the Info tab – this would probably be clearer if I’d done a full live demo – I added a third case to the demo page that’ll hopefully help. As long as you’re on a tab, all of the items for that category are displayed in the menu. The current page is listed either to show where you are (on relatively static pages), and on pages like the gallery or current image to allow you to update it.

By: Chebwa

Chebwa — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 02:45:50 +0000

If you grayscale the links in Your Image Manipulating Software of Choice, you’ll notice that the pink is really only a few small shades away from the gray, and that’s the visibility issue; the values are too close. Ideally you’ll want to up the contrast. (I think the general rule of thumb is that you should still (mostly) be able to read it if you squint at it.)

I’m not sure that the horizontal arrangement of sub-links is going to work best, either. It’s not quite scalable past a certain number of links lest you find yourself shortening titles. (But then again, if you have that many sub-links you may need to reorganize things anyhoo). That’s not a huge issue, though, and I doubt your links will really be all that much in flux.

Why do you repeat “General Information” in the general information tab? Why not just make the tab itself say “General Information”?

erm… That’s it I think. :P

By: T-Rex

T-Rex — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 02:02:12 +0000

I always caption with sunglasses on so it looks fine to me.

T-rex

By: Fred

Fred — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 00:13:56 +0000

A little better, but still tough on the eyes for me.

By: GersonK

GersonK — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 23:51:53 +0000

Per your comments, I’ve shifted the colors on the sample page by a bit – using what was the mouseover highlight color as the active tab/lower row bg color and a new color for mouseover. And a slightly darker shade of red for the linked text.

A little better? A lot better? Worse?

Thanks for the feedback.

By: UpSky2

UpSky2 — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 23:06:08 +0000

Ditto (mind, my assessment is hasty, this time): the pink, esp. when italics as in “Latest picture“, is rather illegible.

Menus, however, come out in (fully working) code just as well / identically to the way they do in the ‘photos’.

By: Fred

Fred — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 13:19:17 +0000

The red on dark gray background is really difficult on the eyes. It’s better when you mouse-over and highlight each tab, but it’s difficult to see what each tab is w/out mousing-over it. (I’m using Mozilla in Windows.)