After a week of binge-eating through our 3 year anniversary Tom, James, and I have been heavily tinkering with Dtoid and Japanator code (yes, cblogs are coming!). I was originally going to bury this post in my personal blog, but nobody else is blogging at 2 AM on the home page so I figured I'd steal a little slice of attention from the editors! We have a lot of cool things going on behind the scenes, so I figured I'd tell you a little about what's on my plate:
Dtoid does the iPhone dirty
First up, we've created a brand-new version of the site for the iPhone (which should also work with S60 phones, hopefully). If you own a similar device and would like me to display this version of the site instead of lower low-fi Mobile site on it shoot me an email and I'll try to figure it out. Our iPhone site is very much a work in progress, as viewing your blog and community blogs is still a bit wonky. But it's pretty and it works right now! It even does the rotation thing pretty good. Give it a go and let us know what you think. Hit the jump to see what else is in the works!
New console pages I've always liked how the larger gaming sites have their console areas separated and color-coded with sub-navigation for specific things like "Wii Reviews", so I'm working to bring that to Dtoid (while attempting to not inherit their bloat). Check out this work-in-progress channel page and its accompanying sidebar on the right side:
http://www.destructoid.com/elephant/index-channel.phtml?start=3&t=ps3 Obviously we're a long way from offering a comprehensive database of game data, but at least we're closer to having something that's at least organized in a better, more predictable way. I've attached a sketch of what the final version of this page might look like if I lose enough sleep this week trying to build it! I temporarily set up blog post images to click into these pages to help people find them and evaluate how useful they might be. So far the click activity suggests I didn't stay awake last night until 3 for nothing :) Of course clicks are just clicks. What do you think?
Condensed Mode now sets a cookie, remembers your preference Did you know you could browse Destructoid in two ways? Expanded blog mode and Condensed Mode. If you prefer to view the home page in a summary view instead of a blog, it will remember that as your default state. You can switch back any time. If you leave it will use the last mode you left it on. There's a known bug where it says something like "Bad Mode: Compact" that I think I cleaned up yesterday. If this is still happening to anyone please link me to the page that caused it and I'll take care of it asap.
New tag and headline style On the home page (in expanded mode) we moved the post tags to the bottom of the post image and put them in a red bar. We hoped to make the site easier to skim through topics. What do you think?
What's next? Lots! I like to say we have an infinite pile of 5 minute fixes to make, not to mention some cool ideas proposed in
our feedback system that we're trying to also engineer (cblog voting chief among them).
Our video section is also just a bunch of links to blog posts, which works, but isn't ideal. We're trying to make that faster using Ajax and possibly a lightbox system. Our galleries and comment-tracking system will also ultimately benefit from building that sort of workflow.
That's all for today! I hope all the changes aren't driving everyone nuts. In my enthusiasm to try and make Dtoid a better site I do tend to make wild design changes now and then, leaving some parts out of sync (poor forums!) and introducing new bugs (half the fun of being a webmaster) but overall I hope you've found the site a little easier to use and more useful since we started three years ago. It's been an amazing learning experience for me personally -- one certainly made easier with everyone's help and feedback.
Any suggestions? Sound off!
Contest:
1:23 AM on 03.24.2009
| 
thanks Niero!
Keep up the good work!
Keep up the great work! <3
Also thanks for the iPhone version, and the console specific pages look great!
The mobile theme is slightly too wide for the browser (in the sense that it causes a lateral scroll bar at 320 wide - the S60 browser won't count the part of the screen under the vertical bar), but it doesn't interfere with readability... except for the text input box being on the same line as the 'enter your comment below' prompt. It's probably fine on a 5th edition phone.
That said, I'm pleasantly surprised by how much of Destructoid's content fits into the mobile site, especially in light of the many sites that don't even try.
Looks real good!
I only wish that I could see my messages on the front page next to my avatar, just like before.
Console pages look absolutely grand, though.
Never mind.
All looks rather impressive and although I know I will likely never use 50% of this stuff, it's good to know it's there.
For like a minute, there was a top red bar for images, with the time info. That was hot.
Thanks! :)
I've got a AT&T/HTC Fuze (Windows Mobile 6.1, with Opera Mobile), which does not automatically redirect to the iPhone/mobile site. It loads the full version, which is a bit cumbersome to navigate.
I've got a AT&T/HTC Fuze (Windows Mobile 6.1, with Opera Mobile), which does not automatically redirect to the iPhone/mobile site. It loads the full version, which is a bit cumbersome to navigate.
@ e-roder: yup! here you go:
http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/Niero/new-destructoid-rss-feeds-faster-console-specific--28099.phtml
I guess I should make that easier to find!
What's the situation on the forum-frontpage linking?
I would say keep it as is, it loads fast and it's easy on the eyes to look at and read.
I love the RSS feed
thanks Niero you are the best <3 <3 <3