New Layout Submission

[Siege]

http://www.spitefultowel.com/smr_layout01.jpg

Rough draft by a guy I got in contact with through SpaceDoG ( old SM/SMR player ). Post on here what you think about it and changes you would like to see, sooner the better because we want to get moving with this while we still can. The guy has some other work that looked impressive and we would have to pay him ( fairly reasonable ) to move forward with it. He would also redesign goods icons, etc.

[Infinity]

It looks clean and slick and it will be possible to implement it keeping the pages very light.
So, thumbs up for the looks

However, there is one thing that needs to be considered...

Middle area is used a lot for game interaction (lol, that is the only place with interaction), so the header and the navigation (CS, PLot a course etc) should be inline, and rather thin, so we keep the usable area as big as possible.

Other than that, it's slick and clean and I love it! Nice shiny goods icons and a few more perhaps for shields, armour, stuff like that, and it will look totally great!

[Siege]

I really like it tbh, but I do have my constructive criticisms/opinions..

- Would like the font to be a little..more low profile/thinner

- Would like the boxes to have the corners cut off or something to give it a more modern/less boxy look, even if you just chopped the corners off to give it a hexagonal type look it would be cool imo.

- Border/Trim on boxes could be a little thinner.

- I like that turquoise message button color a lot, maybe a little more use of that, and I also like the lime green for some things, it pops nicely.

- I think trader info like experience, and level and progress to next level bar could be on the left side underneath the trader name and rank, then put all of the ship information on the top and the forces information (mines, scouts, cd's) in their own little cutout on the right.

- One of the major things that needs to be done is get rid of all the non pertinent links like rankings, preferences, etc. put them under one universal link on a separate page called like ''Galactic Communications Panel'' or something to that effect.

- It's 2010, why do we need examine buttons seperate from each location now? Seems to take up a lot of unnecessary space, we could have it either just hyperlink the name of the location to enter or even make like a tiny link like a + sign or something you click so that it's marked as an interactive location unlike a federal beacon.

- Move the locations in the ?? box beside the sector navigation box so there is more room below for traders and less scrolling involved in populated sectors. With this we could Put enemy and friendly traders on dif sides of the screen so it's easily recognizable and clickable during battle (especially now that you don't have to refresh for the movements of traders to take effect, in a fleet fight it's easy to click your own trader).

[Beausoleil]

My thoughts:

Pros

• I like the placement of Current Sector, Plot A Course, Local Map, and Galaxy Map up at the top, on their own.

• I like the clear division of user stats from ship stats on the right-hand side

• I love the little box on the top right with the user name, Messages, and Log Out button. The Messages button, once clicked, could produce a drop-down with the different types of messages displayed - you then click on the type of message you want to see. Probably want to move the Log Off button somewhere else though, so its less likely to get clicked on accident - hate to log off while trying to check a scout message in the middle of an op!

Cons

• The grey color scheme needs to be changed; too many of those shades are associated with "disabled", and psychologically, it's gonna make people feel weird about clicking on stuff. A little more color overall would go a long way; I love the turquoise-ish color used for the "Messages" button; maybe this could be used more liberally?

• The "Next level" bar doesn't need to be so pronounced. I'd say it's actually a fairly unimportant piece of info - does not need to be that prominent, and could probably be merely a couple pixels tall or something.

• Borders are a tad thick; should be more like what we currently have in place

• The center box containing the different sectors needs to be bigger, so as to accommodate the 'scan' button that gets tacked on when you have a scanner, as well as a warp sector

• We can probably get rid of the "Examine" button on locations; if there is only one option, why not make the name a clickable link that takes you into that location? We could move all the listed locations into the "?" area, and leave the bottom of the page for displaying ships.

Other ideas

• Boxes could potentially be made more rounded at the edges

• Font a bit thick/generic looking; doesn't quite fit the theme

• Maybe we could make it so that key areas can be changed to whatever color in the RGB spectrum from a menu in preferences, with some preconfigured defaults available as well

• Siege brought up the idea of having two columns at the bottom of the screen, one for people in your alliance and one for enemies. I'm iffy about it, but I can see things for and against it. Discuss.

[Infinity]

- It's 2010, why do we need examine buttons seperate from each location now? Seems to take up a lot of unnecessary space, we could have it either just hyperlink the name of the location to enter or even make like a tiny link like a + sign or something you click so that it's marked as an interactive location unlike a federal beacon.

I believe this is a security measure.

As for the year and technology, whole area could have been clickable in 1998 too

[Edgecrusher]

I don't mean to be unappreciative, cause I really value people spending time on this, but what exactly is new in this? I agree that it looks slicker then what we have, but the idea was to drag the interface from the 90s into the new millenium. That includes better graphics and a more intuitive interface, but when I look at this all I see is a rearrangement of functionality and a slightly more appealing style.

I understand we can't take leaps forward, but it seems like this new interface is scribbling in the margins that doesn't justify the work it would take to adapt the code.

[Page]

I'd like to mention for all the people talking about putting stuff in the ? box, it's the box for the messages like turn/fed/etc warnings and general error messages, as well as scout/news tickers, so putting other stuff in there too will make it likely that those things may move up and down on a page load.

Also the left bar seems really wide to me and hence takes away a lot of space from the centre area, it wouldn't be much of an issue for me as my screen is pretty wide anyway, but I can see it being annoying for some.

[N.ator]

i do like the bar on top with the logo of SMR and the new current sector and plot course/galaxy map links.

[Freon22]

I wanted to make a comment on this layout. I am not playing right now but I do plan on returning as soon as I can. So here is my input on this layout, first I see what he is doing. He is trying to give the layout some depth thats the thick borders you see, the black then the light grey borders. He is also trying to use some gradient color mix, it just a dark grey to a lighter grey I would think that the smr players would want a better color theme. There are a few ways that gradient color mix can be done, you can use images, javascript, css3. Each have their own problems and short coming across different browser.

For what he is trying to do I give a thums up, for the layout itself its a little to square looking for me. The bar that holds the Current Sector and other buttons may end up having a problem on some of the pages. There are a few pages that has alot of links that have to fit into that bar. The top area where the SMR logo is showing is going to take up header space which mean player are going to have to scroll down more.

I would think that if SMR is going to pay for a layout it should have slide out panel that holds links and ship info. This would open up more space on the screen for better graphic and a easier to see current sector that can hold more info without having to scroll as much. I also think this layout is going to be table heavy. I see from the jpg name smr_layout01 that this is just the first try at the layout? So maybe a little adjustment here and there, and you will have a good layout.

[Siege]

keep in mind people this is a very quick/rough submission, with the intention of getting feedback like we are getting and making something the whole community likes.