Feedback on new skin

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Dear askbot community,

I finally managed to get my new template into a more-or-less functional state. It's more focused towards a community and uses strong typography, clear gutter, a consistent icon set and some neat UI tricks I've learned over the years. It's about 90% complete, with a few things missing. Here's a screenshot

image description

You can get the skin as my github fork (branch to skin-suave). Please leave your comments, and suggestions (either here, or at the github issue site), and feel free to fork and fix stuff yourself! Here are two more details:

image description

Enjoy Manuel

133

maebert

asked 2012-01-04 10:47:14 -0600, updated 2012-01-04 10:48:51 -0600

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Looks awesome!

Evgeny (2012-01-04 10:49:15 -0600) edit

I like that, looks nice. I would suggest that you put the quesion's tags at the bottom, in the same line of the "post a comment" button, since it makes the question more readable. Keep up the good work.

Hanan Natan (2012-01-04 12:33:03 -0600) edit

Wow, really cool! What are the 10% missing? And how long did it take you to get the skin to 90%, Manuel? What problems did you come across? (just to know what to expect if we try to create our own skin, too :-)

piskvorky (2012-01-06 05:58:27 -0600) edit

Look great, I like the hover effect on avatars

byron (2012-01-06 14:44:30 -0600) edit

Good suggestion. I thought about it earlier, but in fact if there already are any comments the button won't be in line anyway. I might move it up to the row with the vote buttons (and just give it a little "comment" icon instead of text) - will make it slightly harder for new users, but remove clutter for everybody else. What to you think?

maebert (2012-01-09 03:33:27 -0600) edit

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Manuel, the skin looks great! Besides the attractive design, I like that the user image is more prominently on the left, the sharing buttons merged with the question tools - quite logical. The "rollover" effect on the avatar is great! Simplified post tools - nice but you need to explain people where the tools are - newbies may not notice them. I like that comments flow naturally under the posts.

The header imo is too large vertically. Many people want a forum as an add-on to their site - where they already have a common header. Vote buttons on the right might make it less likely that people will vote - and the votes are very important data in the forum - this will take some measurement to verify.

Very large comment button might make people comment more often than give answers, but a big button is obvious so maybe it is a good thing overall.

You are using icons in the main navigation - for you it is clear what they mean, but may not be for the people who see them for the first time. I prefer text in the navigation maybe with icons as extra enhancement.

13.2k

Evgeny

answered 2012-01-09 07:48:20 -0600, updated 2012-01-09 07:54:30 -0600

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Hey @Evgeny, thanks for the feedback.

_Header:_ I tend to agree. I'll supply an alternative header that will be a lot smaller by bringing the User-Panel in the same line as the ask button and logo, making everything smaller and tighter (which again brings me to the question whether we can have any way of defining additional variables for templates that can be set in the live settings)
_Comment button:_ I agree, as said before I might merge it into the vote buttons.

maebert (2012-01-11 06:29:22 -0600) edit

_Vote Buttons:_ Good point. We could have a handwritten-style imperative ("Vote me up") on mouse-over the answer. The design as such is clean enough to allow this.
_Navigation Icons:_ my fault, they should at least have explanatory tooltips.

Where is the best way to discuss the template structure?

maebert (2012-01-11 06:32:12 -0600) edit

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This skin looks awesome. The sidebar is logically designed. And I like the way you have grouped the voting up/ down and created a toolbar which can be added on to with other features.

I would like to see some differentiation between the question and answers. May be the answers section can have smaller avatars and shifted to the right by a tab space? Or the question could be made more prominent by increasing the shadow effect.

Also as @Evgeny thinks, I feel the very prominent comment button may be a distraction when the idea is to get people to post answers as answers not a comment on the question.

alooanda

answered 2012-01-09 13:27:10 -0600

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Thanks! The answers have a slightly darker background colour than the question and will always be separated by the huge typography between Question and Answers. I agree on the comment button, though.

maebert (2012-01-11 06:36:14 -0600) edit

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Feedback on new skin