Over the past few months, PMC has been changing its site design in fits and starts, updating different bits and sections. Now, I'll just like to start it off with the opinion that, except for the forums layout, none of them have been an improvement in my eyes. The site is slowly getting bland and ugly, cursed by absolute minimalism.
My biggest dislike is the removal of many button outlines. Someone in your design team apparently decided that just having text + a button outline only when you hover over it is a good idea.
I would like to note that this is, in fact, a terrible idea. People new to the site would have to hover over EVERYTHING to discover the buttons. I can accept that you want minimalism as the site style, even if I think it's ugly. But for the LOVE OF GOD, please just add a slight background color difference or something else to mark it as a button BEFORE people hover over it.
This is especially annoying with the numbers at the bottom of submission pages. I now have to aim carefully at the number instead of being able to just approximately click near it, since there's no clear visible transition from the area of 1 button to another. I now have to hover over the number at the bottom of each page to make sure I don't click the wrong one. This costs valuable time, up to a second per interaction.
Now, that may sound trivial. Just a second per interaction? That's nothing, right?
It is, though. In UI design, it's important for the user to be able to understand where to click for whatever they want in a mere glance. If they have to actually think about it, the user experience is degraded.
In addition, there's the most recent change to the submission layout. In the past, the download options were golden yellow and clearly visible as buttons. Now they're little more than yet another line of black text centered on the post. I hope that I don't have to spell out why this is NOT an improvement.
What I'm suggesting is that you take a very long and serious look at all button design and coloring, and make it more than just plain text. The way this site is going, it'll soon be little more than a grey background with black text for the entire site, with some blue highlights for official site functions like the 'Submit Ticket" button below. Something like that but in yellow would be great for download options.
TLDR: The site 'improvements' are monotonous, boring and counter-intuitive. Make the buttons actual buttons again, even if they have to be flat and minimalistic. Think about using more color than grayscale+blue for the site layout.
set status to Closed, set resolution to Finished, assigned Cyprezz. Since this ticket was opened, the buttons have been restyled to include a "thick edge" which makes them look more like buttons. In addition, this button style was applied to the content actions (download, change skin, vote, etc).
Do you feel the content actions need a unique style / color?
Spatzimizer, exactly what I'm thinking. I get that the site needs a new look every now and then, but the whole site does not need to be turned into Boring 2.0 Someone else commented that it's a thing that there's always someone complaining about site design overhauls. It's true, and I'm often one of them. For all but one of the major sites I use, there's yet to be a layout change to any site that I liked without growing used to it.
I agree. Now that it's 2018, minimalist designs are just, not creative, and feels really drab. I mean, minimalist designs help keep a site less cluttered, but I think we can make it so that it has like, half minimalist and half old PMC, ya know?...
Isn't it interresting how some people (actually quite a lot) always hate on changes and new additions? (especially in the Minecraft community, just saying...)
So far the new Design(the current one, a few days ago it was a bit random looking) isn't bad or good either, it's pretty easy to find everything like before. (that is what matters the most in my opinion)
Update logs could still need some slight changes, because if a update log is long it is long, maybe make a similar system like a spoiler or a "Read more" button.
In my opinion I think the site is just to cluttered, also I can’t access the site on my pc, won’t let me click anything.
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Status: Closed
Opened by Ivain
- Finished
Site Layout & Design
Now, I'll just like to start it off with the opinion that, except for the forums layout, none of them have been an improvement in my eyes. The site is slowly getting bland and ugly, cursed by absolute minimalism.
My biggest dislike is the removal of many button outlines. Someone in your design team apparently decided that just having text + a button outline only when you hover over it is a good idea.
I would like to note that this is, in fact, a terrible idea. People new to the site would have to hover over EVERYTHING to discover the buttons. I can accept that you want minimalism as the site style, even if I think it's ugly. But for the LOVE OF GOD, please just add a slight background color difference or something else to mark it as a button BEFORE people hover over it.
This is especially annoying with the numbers at the bottom of submission pages. I now have to aim carefully at the number instead of being able to just approximately click near it, since there's no clear visible transition from the area of 1 button to another. I now have to hover over the number at the bottom of each page to make sure I don't click the wrong one. This costs valuable time, up to a second per interaction.
Now, that may sound trivial. Just a second per interaction? That's nothing, right?
It is, though. In UI design, it's important for the user to be able to understand where to click for whatever they want in a mere glance. If they have to actually think about it, the user experience is degraded.
In addition, there's the most recent change to the submission layout. In the past, the download options were golden yellow and clearly visible as buttons. Now they're little more than yet another line of black text centered on the post.
I hope that I don't have to spell out why this is NOT an improvement.
What I'm suggesting is that you take a very long and serious look at all button design and coloring, and make it more than just plain text. The way this site is going, it'll soon be little more than a grey background with black text for the entire site, with some blue highlights for official site functions like the 'Submit Ticket" button below.
Something like that but in yellow would be great for download options.
TLDR: The site 'improvements' are monotonous, boring and counter-intuitive. Make the buttons actual buttons again, even if they have to be flat and minimalistic. Think about using more color than grayscale+blue for the site layout.